"Minister Can You Spare a Euro?" The Financial and Emotional Costs of Becoming a Teacher

• In Event: 63.084 - MTCC Roundtable Session 25
  In Roundtable Session: 63.084-5 - The Costs of Standards and Accountability: Changing Landscapes and Global Contexts

Abstract

The past 10 years have seen the emergence of new policies and practices in Initial Teacher Education (ITE) in response to national priorities and concerns regarding the ‘quality’ of graduates from consecutive programmes. A key mechanism of this process was to universally extend programme duration from 12 to 24 months in a purported attempt to deepen and broaden students’ professional development. This has been rendered problematic due to the inability of policy-makers to reconstruct financial mechanisms to support student engagement. Historically, participation in postgraduate ITE has been student self-funded, with few grants or other forms of fee remission; this remains the current policy. This paper focuses on the impact of the costs of becoming a post-primary (secondary) teacher in Ireland.

Authors

• Melanie Ni Dhuinn, Trinity College Dublin

• Mark Prendergast, Trinity College Dublin

• Andrew Loxley, Trinity College Dublin