The Political Contexts of Teacher Education Policy in England and in the United States

• In Event: Social Contexts of Teacher Education Policy in England and the United States

Abstract

1. Objectives

The study posed three questions:

1. How has emergent policy affected the structure, content and practice of teacher education?
2. How has organizational learning occurred for both universities and schools?
3. How have the conceptions of teaching and teacher education changed for schools and for universities? How are these changes likely to affect teacher’s development and professional knowledge?

2. Perspective(s) or theoretical framework

England’s higher education monopoly of teacher education was broken in the early 1980’s allowing the market to operate in the provision of teacher education and facilitating an important role for schools in the education of future teachers (Judge et al., 1994). Later the nature of the teaching profession and of professional knowledge were re-defined and reforms were introduced which resulted in a further move away from higher education and toward schools which assumed the responsibility for defining best practices within a national framework (Furlong, 2008). Currently, the system of teacher education in England is highly diversified and dominated by a “technical rationalist vision of teacher professionalism”.

Similarly, in the United States teacher education has become far more diversified in the past 20 years than ever before with approaches now including an even broader range of institutions and theories of teacher learning. Remarkably, given the similarities with what has occurred in England (e.g., Teach-First in England has strong associations with Teach-for-America), there has been little exchange between these two countries regarding their approaches to teacher education, and the kinds of teachers that are now entering practice as a result of these policy and programmatic changes.

3. Methods, techniques, or modes of inquiry

Using a socio-cultural historical framework, this paper examines how policy has influenced teacher education structure, governance, orientation, curricular offerings, and prospective teachers’ learning in England and in the United States.

4. Data sources, evidence, objects, or materials

The data comes from a two-year study in both countries using video-recordings, lesson-plans, interviews and questionnaires from prospective secondary teachers, and from program documentation on the different routes to learn to teach in both countries, including interviews with faculty and school personnel. The study includes analysis of policy documents and interviews with program designers.
5. Results and/or substantiated conclusions or warrants for arguments/point of view

While the current US situation is similar to that of England in the 1980s, the reaction of university-based teacher educators in the US may yet result in stronger university-based teacher education and a proliferation of university-practice-based models for learning to teach which have been slowly developing for more than 20 years.

6. Scientific or scholarly significance of the study or work

While other scholars have considered the problematic nature of emergent policy in England (Furlong, 2005), and in the U.S. (Cochran-Smith, 2008; Zeichner, 2012) there has not been an in depth comparative study of these two countries grounded in practice. The implications of the study reach beyond England and the Unites States as these policies may paradoxically result in lowering the quality of teaching and learning in this current globalized environment.

Authors

• Ian Menter, University of Oxford

• Maria Teresa Tatto, Michigan State University