Learning to Teach in the United Kingdom and the United States: Reviewing Policy and Research Trends

• In Event: A Cross-National Examination of Knowledge, Policy, and Practice in Learning to Teach: Part I

Abstract

1. Objectives or purposes

This paper continues the exploration of a comparative literature search in the U.S., and the U.K., on historical, theoretical and empirical trends across policy and research on teacher education in the last 30 years in each country to answer the question of how teachers learn to teach in each setting. Questions concerning how policy supports or hinders what and how teachers learn and how they are expected to teach it will guide this paper. The conclusion will discuss limitations and questions for future work.

2. Perspective(s) or theoretical framework

We examine the evolution of policy from a neo-institutional framework, and use a sociocultural framework drawing on the work of the sociologist Bernstein (1990) on knowledge structures to examine the evolution of knowledge that informs research on initial teacher learning, and its impact on teacher knowledge.

3. Methods, techniques, or modes of inquiry

For each country the historical evolution of different conceptions to prepare teachers will be presented including details on policies that have influenced the development of different modalities, significant shifts in direction, and the consequences of such reforms for teacher preparation, the curriculum, and teacher knowledge. Detail on the explicit or implicit theory behind such changes will be documented. A synthesis of the empirical research evidence will be the major tool in documenting the effectiveness of different approaches to teacher preparation and whether and how research has served to inform policy and practice. Rigorous criteria for inclusion of research studies will be developed within each country context (e.g., what counts as valid, reliable and useable knowledge in each country context).

4. Data sources, evidence, objects, or materials

UK and US policy documents, scholarly analysis of teacher-related reforms, and the research literature on initial teacher knowledge will be reviewed.

5. Results and/or substantiated conclusions or warrants for arguments/point of view

Our preliminary work in this area shows that in the UK from the 1980 neo-liberal policies have had a profound effect in the rapid transformation of teacher education characterized by a move from higher education to school-based. Similarly theories about how teachers learn to teach have morphed from more pedagogical approaches to more subject based approaches to an increasingly apprenticeship model. While in the US there is still a tendency to favor higher education based models of teacher education, the introduction of market based approaches is gaining significant ground. A case study of UK and US institutional challenges in the changing policy environment will be briefly discussed.

6. Scientific or scholarly significance of the study or work

The paper compares each country findings beginning with conceptions of learning to teach to what counts as effectiveness and what knowledge is considered important for teachers to have from the different perspectives of policy, research and practice. There has not been a careful examination of the consequences of neo-liberal policies on learning to teach in the UK and of the possible consequences for the US where these policies have been (relatively) recently introduced.

Authors

• Ian Menter, University of Oxford

• Maria Teresa Tatto, Michigan State University