Teacher Education Policies in the European Union and the Quality of Lifelong Learning
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| HOW TO DESIGN AND
IMPLEMENT A REVOLUTION IN TEACHER EDUCATION AND TRAINING: SOME LESSONS FROM ENGLAND |
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by David H.
Hargreaves |
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| Abstract Since 1984 England has been engaged in a profound and continuing reform of teacher education and training. This paper offers the following twenty lessons that might be learned from English experience: Lesson 1 Do not let those who are engaged in teacher education and training in higher education lead the reforms; Lesson 2 Devise a national curriculum for initial teacher training, and specify the expected outcomes and establish standards (but not too many); Lesson 3 Rethink the structure of the teaching profession so that trained teachers do what only trained teachers should do; Lesson 4 Accredit and inspect all institutions providing teacher education and training; Lesson 5 Embed the initial training of teachers in effective schools and provide flexible and employment-based routes into the profession; Lesson 6 Give practising teachers the principal responsibility for trainees; Lesson 7 Pay trainee teachers a training salary; Lesson 8 Establish 'training schools' as centres of excellence in teacher training; Lesson 9 Avoid a 'theory-practice' division of labour between higher education and school; Lesson 10 Record the standards achieved by trainees as the first step to their induction and continuing professional development; Lesson 11 Link the initial training of teachers to schools involved in research and development activities; Lesson 12 Focus educational research on supporting teachers and policymakers in pursuit of evidence-informed policy and practice; Lesson 13 Provide education and training for school leaders; Lesson 14 Provide sabbaticals and research fellowships for teachers; Lesson 15 Devise a coherent and cost-effective system of continuing professional development; Lesson 16 Staff the training institutions with practising teachers seconded from schools; Lesson 17 Create networks of schools to transfer professional knowledge of 'what works'; Lesson 18 Ensure that principals and teachers model 'learning how to learn' for their students; Lesson 19 Create a professional culture of coaching and mentoring; Lesson 20 Transform schools into learning communities. Introduction The United Kingdom has many of the blessings that accrue to several countries that are united in many aspects of their culture and life. But in education matters, the United Kingdom is far from united. Scotland has a separate education system and I shall say nothing whatever about it. Many aspects of the education service in England and Wales are very similar, as is the case with teacher training, but there are differences. I shall therefore confine my remarks to England. Since 1984 the education and training of teachers has gone through what must surely be described as a revolution. It has been a period of sustained change, one reform following another with remarkable speed. Almost every reform has been opposed, and even resisted, by the staff of the institutions, mainly universities, involved in initial teacher training (ITT). There is no agreed version of the controversial history of these events and there is deep disagreement on how these reforms should be evaluated. Official versions of the reforms, especially from those who advocated them and from the ministers who imposed them, are very different indeed from those of the teacher trainers. Indeed, there is a fundamental lack of consensus about the very terms in which the reforms are to be described. Many, perhaps most, teacher trainers would see these years as a move away from a broad or liberal teacher education to a much more narrow and instrumental training in competence or competencies. Teacher trainers usually insist on the concept of teacher education whilst the responsible government agency is called the Teacher Training Agency 1. All these changes have been accompanied by a severe loss of power and influence by the teacher trainers based in higher education institutions, as they have come under external scrutiny and the control of others, which not surprisingly has caused resentment and bitterness among the teacher trainers and increasing impatience among the groups with the power to enforce reform. There is thus no impartial or neutral account or evaluation of these events and I advise you to be deeply suspicious of any actor in them claiming to offer you one. Rather, I shall focus on what other countries might learn from the reforms in England. Many countries are involved in reforming teacher education and training, so any attempt to set out 'lessons learned' is surely welcome, with the essential cautionary note that the art and science of policy transfer are in their infancy (Cf. Dolowitz, 2000). To some countries, some of the English reforms will seem unremarkable and obvious common sense; but the same reforms may shock or scandalise other countries - it all depends on your own history of teacher education and training, your own experience of reform and your own values and preferences in the light of the changes you expect in education at the birth of this new century. There are twenty lessons which might be of interest to you and which might form a basis of discussion and debate between our countries. Lesson 1 Do not let those who are engaged in teacher education and training in higher education lead the reforms In England, the initial training of teachers (ITT) has until recently been almost entirely under the control of the universities. Although they could not, strictly speaking, license a teacher to practise, they recommended that a trainee should be given qualified teacher status (QTS), and the recommendation was normally accepted, subject at one stage to the trainee's completion of a one-year probationary period. In 1984 the government intervened by setting out the criteria by which courses of ITT might be approved and the necessary machinery (the Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education). This was not well received by the universities, who interpreted the move as an unwarranted threat to their autonomy. Some of the criteria, for example that the staff of training institutions should have recent and relevant experience of teaching in school, caused consternation. In retrospect, this was the mild and somewhat tentative first step in a long process of imposed reform, and the reaction was the first intimation of the defensive conservatism that was to characterise the stance of the teacher trainers. To this day, many of the teacher trainers believe that their academic autonomy is more important that the government's right to intervene in the interests of the rights of trainees and their future employers. In 1992 the government was to strike again, proposing that graduates pursuing the one-year training course for teachers should cease to follow its traditional pattern, of two thirds spent in the university and one third in a placement in school (the practicum) and instead spend four fifths of the time in school, with additional funding passed by the universities to the schools to cover the additional costs of supervising the trainees on school placement. (Eventually the agreement was that two thirds should be spent in schools and one third in the university.) Once again, this proposal was greeted with strong opposition from the universities. I single out these two reforms, because they were highly attractive to the trainee teachers who had long argued for more time in school rather than the university, and in this they were supported by a large majority of experienced teachers. To my knowledge, trainees today would regard an attempt to repeal these reforms, in favour of the status quo ante, as unthinkable and absurdly reactionary. History, and the rest of my lessons, will, I believe, judge the majority of the university-based teacher trainers to have been self-serving and self-protecting, playing the reactionary under the guise of defending quality, and so reluctantly reformed from the outside rather than being imaginative innovators pioneering news philosophies, structures and ways of working demanded by the new educational challenges. Lesson 2 Devise a national curriculum for initial teacher training, specify the expected outcomes and establish standards (but not too many) Quite reasonably, universities defend their autonomy. Where the content of a university course constitutes a preparation for a profession, that autonomy is likely to be invaded by those who control the licensing process and thus are concerned with the course content and the quality of teaching. In England, the reform of 1984 was the first step towards a national curriculum for ITT, that is, an insistence by government on some core elements common to all courses. The creation of such a curriculum has been progressive over time and is not, I suspect, complete. How much space and time should be left to the discretion of the individual training institution is a continuing matter for debate. Traditionally in England, teacher trainers had just two vague outcomes to ITT - success in completing the 'theoretical' aspect of training, in the form of essays, written assignments and examinations, and the 'practical' aspect, in the form of successfully completing the school placement (usually a simple pass or fail grade). Whilst this was recognised as unsatisfactory, the imposed change to a more competence-based approach (Cf. Whitty & Wilmott, 1991) was controversial. Checklists of the knowledge and skills expected of trainees were, and often remain, unwelcome to most teacher trainers, especially when they need to be formally assessed and recorded. Currently the 'competencies' have been replaced by 'standards', grouped under three main headings: knowledge and understanding (of the subject(s) to be taught); planning teaching and class management; and monitoring, assessment, recording, reporting and accountability. These standards need to be streamlined and probably will be. Lesson 3 Rethink the structure of the teaching profession so that trained teachers do what only trained teachers should do In England, as in many countries, school teaching has become an all-graduate profession, which has enhanced the status of teachers, especially at primary level. In England, however, teachers have had, by international comparisons, a very wide conception of their role, including a considerable amount of pastoral care. Often the teacher is the sole adult in the classroom and receives very little in the way of support. Happily, there has been a rapid growth in the role of teacher assistants who can relieve teachers of many of the routine tasks necessary to effective teaching, such as preparation of materials or the management of student conduct. England came late to the realisation that it is a waste of public money and a drain on the energy of teachers if they are consistently engaged in tasks that can be readily undertaken by assistants. We should have done this much earlier: countries that have not already followed this route should consider so doing, for in the emergent knowledge economies and more challenging social environments, the skills that effective teachers need are rising rapidly and it is wasteful if teachers are distracted by inappropriate demands: it simply makes them less effective at their core task. Lesson 4 Accredit and inspect all institutions providing teacher education and training Once it had been decided that courses had to be accredited, there needed to be a system of inspection to check that the criteria had truly been met and that quality was being assured. The immediate difficulty was that HM Inspectorate had no formal right to inspect university provision, and universities (correctly) interpreted this potential intrusion as a dangerous first step towards external inspection of higher education. By 1993-94 the Chief Inspector was reporting that three fifths of the provision for secondary ITT was judged to be good or very good, though there were many detailed criticisms. The preparation of the school-based practising teachers for their new roles as 'mentors' to trainees was a particular target: nearly half were considered to be poorly prepared, which probably indicates some reluctance of the university-based staff to hand over responsibility and a lack of understanding of precisely how such responsibilities might best be exercised. By 1996-97 the Chief Inspector reported that in secondary training
By the time of the Chief Inspector's 1998-99 annual report, 26 secondary courses at 21 providers had been re-inspected and in most cases substantial improvements had been achieved. Between 1996 and 1998, 577 inspections of 13 different subjects for secondary training had been carried out, and the majority of provision was rated as good. Two weaknesses emerged. The first was assessing all trainees accurately and consistently against the newly introduced standards for qualified teacher status (QTS); the second was the weakness of many trainees in the competence of monitoring, recording and reporting on pupil progress. This latter weakness was a persistent one in ITT for primary teachers. Although attention had been drawn to it in 1994, stronger words were used in the 1998-99 report:
There is perhaps, then, an implication that detailed inspection reports on individual training institutions are more effective in improving the quality of training than are the annual reports which give an overview of training in general. However, the overview is important, for it serves as a public record that ITT has improved sharply over a relatively short period. The TTA has a duty to link funding with the quality of training, and so assigns more places for trainees (and thus more income) to those training institutions that, on the inspection evidence, provide the highest quality of training. This is a powerful means of driving up training quality. Two training providers 'failed' their inspections and had their accreditation withdrawn. Five providers were persuaded to close sixteen courses on grounds of poor quality. Since 1994 it is training institutions, not courses, which are accredited. The training institutions thus have the freedom to design and provide courses of many different kinds, provided that they meet certain requirements. Two concerns remain. One is that ITT providers are inspected excessively, a possible fault that could be easily remedied. A second, which is harder to remedy, is that the model of training used by the inspectors is itself rather conservative and thus likely to inhibit desirable innovation. This is important in that the trend to school-based ITT was itself pioneered by a few providers, notably the universities of Sussex, Leicester and Oxford, and then became more standard as a result of top-down imposition rather than lateral imitation. A degree of freedom to innovate is essential to the evolution of teacher education and training. Lesson 5 Embed the initial training of teachers in effective schools and provide flexible and employment-based routes into the profession Lesson 6 Give practising teachers the principal responsibility for trainees As noted above, there was considerable resistance from the universities to the idea that ITT should be more school-based. Indeed, it was only when their power and control over ITT were threatened that the teacher trainers began talking about 'partnership' with the schools - a concept that was previously unheard of, precisely because the teachers who supervised students teachers during their school placement were often very much the junior partners with an unclear role. University staff were keen to remain the senior partner (without actually saying so), with major control over the ITT course structure and content - and the trainees' fees. As ITT became more school-based it was essential that the supervising teachers, should be of high quality, and so there has been a sensible drive to place trainees in effective schools with effective teachers. In this regard supply does not always meet demand. Their role also became much more salient, since trainees spent more time with them than with their university-based tutors. Quite quickly they were assigned a new title - 'mentors'. Although this has become the standard term in England, it is not an apt one. A mentor is usually a person without formal power who can be treated as a trusted friend with whom the protégé may discuss problems in confidence. The supervising teacher has real responsibility for the trainee and thus is a line-manager. The relationship is more like that of master to apprentice - but at this period the university staff treated the term apprentice as one of derision and abuse. The term 'coach' would in my view have been a more appropriate term than 'mentor' but it was the latter which prevailed since it clearly kept the supervising teacher as the junior partner and preserved the power and status of the university teacher trainer. In this sense, the concept of 'mentor' has slowed the transfer of responsibility for trainees to the practising teachers with whom it more properly resides. The creation of schemes of school-centred ITT - known as SCITT - in which a school, or more usually a consortium of schools, was explicitly given the prime responsibility for trainees, with the right to decide whether or not to have a university as partner, resulted in a storm of protest from the universities, who claimed that such an exclusion of a university element constituted a de-professionalisation of teachers. In fact such schemes have not been popular with schools, who frequently feel under too much pressure from other reforms to embark on this responsibility, and so SCITT currently accounts for about five per cent of trainees. Moreover, they have been more strongly criticised than university providers by OfSTED, which is perhaps not surprising since they have had a far shorter time in which to meet demanding criteria. Over the last decade or so, governments have experimented with a range of employment-based routes into teaching, all of which are treated with suspicion by the universities, though they have proved attractive to a minority of recruits, especially those who do not, for whatever reason, fancy the 'student' culture of the traditional ITT course. Since 1988 the government has been committed to increasing the flexibility of ITT arrangements: new modular courses, variable start and end points and fast-track schemes will start later this year. Overall, the trend to school-based ITT is now held to be for the most part a success, and this is conceded by most of the university providers. Lesson 7 Pay trainee teachers a training salary This is a very recent development in England, and will be implemented for the first time in autumn 2000. In part it is a response to difficulties in recruitment, which arise from multiple factors, including a growing perception that teachers are overworked and insufficiently valued by society, but specifically by the fact that as public funding for university students has declined, many graduates now enter ITT with considerable debts, to which the additional year on a student grant is likely to add. The idea of a training salary happily brings trainee teachers more into line with junior doctors. It should have been done earlier. Lesson 8 Establish 'training schools' as centres of excellence in teacher training It has been argued that teachers should be trained largely 'on-the-job'. For some, this was to take the form of 'training schools' rather like 'teaching hospitals' in which the novice professional doctor or teacher learns the craft of the profession in an apprenticeship mode with established 'masters' who continue in practice (e.g. Hargreaves, 1990). For others, including some critics of teacher training from the New Right, this was because the training institutions were dominated by left-wing, child-centred liberals who were corrupting novice teachers (e.g. Hillgate Group, 1989; Lawlor, 1990). The move toward more school-based ITT has created stronger and clearer partnership relationships between schools and university Schools of Education, but the government wished to build on this, as well as on the SCITT schemes, to make 'training schools' a reality. These will be centres of excellence which will be supported with advanced information and communication technology to disseminate best practice to satellite schools and to universities, will provide mentor training, and will have an R&D capacity to develop best practice on the induction of new teachers and on continuing professional development. The first training schools are now being approved. Lesson 9 Avoid a 'theory-practice' division of labour between higher education and school In the early stages of the movement towards a more school-based ITT, it was a natural temptation that the university-based staff should define their role and expertise in terms of their command of 'theory' and that the practitioner-mentors should define their role in terms of practical expertise. From the trainees' point of view, the inevitable effect, of course, was to increase the gap between theory and practice. Ensuring that university staff conduct 'theory' seminars in the schools rather than the university, or that the 'mentors' take the lead in seminars analysing academic papers, has helped to narrow the gap, but not entirely close it. Part of the difficulty is that university staff believe that the academic or theoretical part of the teacher's knowledge base needs to be provided at a very early stage, when the evidence suggests that the theory component can be more usefully and critically acquired by the more experienced teacher who has learned to master the 'basics' of classroom effectiveness. My own view is that this gap cannot be fully closed until Lesson 16 is learned. Lesson 10 Record the standards achieved by trainees as the first step to their induction and continuing professional development (CPD) Making ITT more school-based is leading to the improvement of schemes for the induction of new teachers into their first post. For many years induction has been highly variable, with too many teachers in their first year being assigned the duties and responsibilities of an experienced teacher, and so given insufficient support and help. This is now being rectified though the creation of the Career Entry Profile, which is completed by the ITT provider and includes a record of the ITT, the strengths and weaknesses of the newly qualified teacher (NQT) and an action plan for the induction period, agreed between the school and the NQT. One of the most important consequences of school-based ITT, and especially SCITT schemes, has been to enhance the learning of their 'mentors', as they universally acknowledge. The more the mentor has responsibility for the trainee, the more the mentor questions his or her own practice and engages in reflection on what both of them think and do. This generates high quality on-the-job learning for both. In the early stages of reform, too much was made of the costs, in terms of time and energy, for the mentor and too little of the potential benefits for the mentor and the quality of the mentor's professional development and professional practice. Mentors are, of course, involved in the construction of the Career Entry Profile which newly qualified teachers take to their first post, and this provides the record on which to base the first vital stages in the CPD of the novice teacher, and this is yet another activity in which both mentor and trainee find mutual benefit. Lesson 11 Link the initial training of teachers to schools involved in research and development activities Lesson 12 Focus educational research on supporting teachers and policy makers in pursuit of evidence-informed policy and practice One of the Teacher Training Agency's most successful innovations was providing funding for practising teachers to engage in school-based research and development, usually in association with a university, and then the establishment of research consortia of schools. This was a natural extension of their policy of promoting teaching as a research-based profession. This, too, was threatening to some university staff. In fact, there is no better way of promoting research in a profession than for those who 'mentor' novices to be themselves actively engaged in research and development. If teaching, like medicine, is to become more evidence-based, then more relevant research is needed and more practitioners need to be involved in the creation of new professional knowledge for rapidly changing circumstances and expectations. An important development in England has been the substantial debate about the quality, focus and direction of educational research. Indicators of the change include an external review of educational research (Hillage et al, 1998); the establishment of the National Educational Research Forum, which brings together a range of partners, including practitioners, to influence the research agenda; a major programme of research into teaching and learning, managed by the Economic and Social Research Council; and the creation of some new educational research centres. The drive is towards the creation of knowledge that will influence policy and practice in education and it is expected that in due course the outcomes will exert considerable influence on the ITT and CPD of teachers. There are some in the academic community who remain sceptical of these developments. One senior academic recently insisted that the primary function of educational research is to critique government education policy. Research takes multiple forms and has manifold purposes, but I believe most people believe that its primary purpose is to increase understanding of education in order to inform policy and practice in the interests of their improvement. To contend that critique of government is the primary purpose of scholarship is self-indulgent and courts the curtailment of public funding of educational research and scholarship. Lesson 13 Provide education and training for school leaders School principals in England have normally been recruited from among senior teachers, usually those with experience as a deputy principal. There has been no qualification for headship, though a planned history of relevant in-service training is normally expected to be on the curriculum vitae of applicants. In 1997 The National Professional Qualification for Headship was introduced by the Teacher Training Agency, following an initial pilot scheme. Members of the first cohort have recently received their qualification, which is now being made compulsory for those seeking the post of principal. The programme of training for headship was the focus of considerable debate, even controversy, which raised a range of concerns, such as the nature and extent of the academic or theoretical content, the nature of the skills and competencies to be nurtured, the form of the practical activities undertaken, and the way in which the qualification would be assessed and by whom. Standards have now been set but the debate about the qualification is likely to continue, as is healthy in the early stages of a new qualification. Similarly, explicit standards are being created for other groups, such as subject leaders, advanced skills teachers and special educational needs co-ordinators, though there is no national qualification in these cases. This is widely welcomed, though treated with suspicion in some quarters as this is creating a more differentiated, even more hierarchical, profession. A successful scheme to support newly appointed school principals, the Headteachers' Leadership and Management Programme (HEADLAMP), has been in operation by the TTA since 1995. There is also a successful Leadership Programme for Serving Headteachers (LPSH). A new National College for School Leadership will start work in autumn 2000. Lesson 14 Provide sabbaticals and research fellowships for teachers Involving more practising teachers in ITT and in research and development, especially when these occur in a period when other fundamental reforms are being implemented, puts the profession under considerable pressure. There is a very strong case for providing teachers with opportunities for full-time release from normal duties for a form of sabbatical leave or for the freedom to engage in extended research and development activities. The present government is now beginning to open up such opportunities to teachers and they are being welcomed. Lesson 15 Devise a coherent and cost-effective system of continuing professional development Many of the reforms to teacher education discussed above were created in a somewhat piece-meal manner to deal with distinct problems or weaknesses at different times. It has become evident that the whole area of teachers' professional development is being radically changed but not thereby necessarily becoming more coherent and cost-effective. Coherence requires that the different strands be integrated into a whole, and in particular, that ITT and CPD become a seamless web of provision. Cost-effectiveness means ensuring that the costs involved, which are considerable, can be justified as value for money and contribute to the central purpose of the education service, namely the achievements of students. For many years CPD or in-service education and training (INSET) in England has been in a muddle. It has been dominated by courses provided out of school mainly by Schools of Education in universities and by local education authorities, but more recently by the private sector, and the record of these in improving the quality of teaching and learning is highly variable and, taken as a whole, relatively poor. As the Chief Inspector reported in 1993-94
In February this year, the government issued a consultative document on the future of CPD. It sets out, for discussion and debate, 10 fundamental principles and a draft code of practice for providers. This is a most welcome document, written in a spirit of dialogue with teachers. Its concluding sentence is:
It is a pity that this document did not appear several years ago. Lesson 16 Staff the training institutions with practising teachers seconded from schools It has been the tradition in England that the staff of university Schools of Education should either be experts in the 'foundation' disciplines of education (philosophy, psychology, sociology and history), with or without experience of teaching, or be school teachers with substantial experience to act as experts in the practice of teaching. Normally they would be recruited to higher education before the age of 40 and remain there for the rest of their career. This is a one-way street: movement from higher education back into schools is very rare indeed. This system worked well in a stable period with low rates of change, but in the current period of intense and continuing reform, it has several serious drawbacks. The most important is that quite soon the university staff simply lack direct experience of the reforms which practising teachers are having to implement, and so there is a severe loss of credibility in the eyes of trainees. A much better system is to second practising teachers into the university as School of Education staff for, say, two to three years. This overcomes the credibility problem, and provides the teachers concerned with a refreshing change of work. If the seconded teachers are drawn from those with experience as 'mentors', then the transition should be easy. Universities seem to be very reluctant to learn this lesson and this failure will, I suspect, merely weaken the position of the universities in all forms of teacher education, but especially ITT. Lesson 17 Create networks of schools to transfer of professional knowledge of 'what works' In many countries it is recognised that teachers need to increase their skills and the quality of their teaching in the interests of improving student achievement. How to disseminate effective professional practice quickly among a large and widely dispersed profession poses many challenges, not least because the preferred method of disseminating best practice has been through the written word, which is cheap but of very low effectiveness, or courses, which are somewhat more effective but expensive. Both policymakers and teacher trainers are now beginning to accept, with great reluctance, two principles: that for teachers the most credible sources of new pedagogical practices are, quite simply, other teachers; and that the transfer of good practice requires opportunities for teachers to 'tinker', to engage in the process of adapting and adjusting a practice to each teacher's particular circumstances and conditions. Applying these two principles means that disseminating good practice entails providing teachers with many more opportunities to talk to one another about professional matters, to observe one another at work, to 'tinker' together to make sure that a good idea can be transformed into effective pedagogy in a wide variety of situations. But in England, as in many countries, schools have been relatively isolated from one another and lack a strong history of inter-school networking to exchange ideas or engage in alliances to research and develop new practices. In many secondary schools internal networking is also weak, since there are strong boundaries between different subjects, so that transferring good practice from (say) a science department to (say) a humanities department is extraordinarily difficult and so exceptionally rare. An important element of government policy has been the nomination of exceptional schools (such as 'beacon' schools, specialist schools, research consortia, training schools, etc.) that can potentially serve as 'nodes' in these networks. On the basis of the existing evidence, I conclude that establishing better internal and external networks between teachers and schools is one of the essential keys to the creation and dissemination of best pedagogical practice and this will require some re-conceptualisation of continuing professional development as well as educational research and development. Lesson 18 Ensure that principals and teachers model 'learning how to learn' for their students It is now widely acknowledged that in learning economies students must not merely reach high levels of achievement at school, but must also acquire the skills of 'learning how to learn' as a prerequisite of lifelong learning. This is a skill that can in part be acquired from the culture of the school if it is one in which school principals see themselves as continuous learners and model the process to teachers, who in their turn serve as models to students because they explicitly interpret the art and science of teaching as a process of continuing learning. Lesson 19 Create a professional culture of coaching and mentoring Lesson 20 Transform schools into learning communities Many of the above lessons can now clearly be summarised as a transformation in the professional culture of teachers to one which values and engages in constant coaching and mentoring. This is not a practice which is to be confined to the relationship between experienced teachers and trainee teachers, but one which pervades the relationship of all teachers to one another, and to students, since in rapidly changing circumstances all teachers can potentially teach, as well as learn from, their colleagues and other learners. This is at the heart of creating in schools a culture of education and training for all, which is an essential prerequisite of applying in schools the lessons of 'the learning organization' so that schools become true learning communities. In such a society it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish professional learning from professional practice. A measure of the extent to which a school system has achieved this idea is this: the more clearly distinct and separate both the education and training of teachers and educational research and development are from the routine activities of teachers in schools and classrooms, the more such a system will need to change to meet the educational demands of a learning economy. This is the test I offer of a country's success in reforming its educational system and its teacher education policies to support the difficult transition to the knowledge economy. Conclusion The reforms in teacher education and training, especially ITT, in England since 1984 have undoubtedly been challenging and have incurred angry opposition from many of the university-based teacher trainers (e.g. Hextall & Sidgwick, 1991; Gilroy, 1992; Mahoney & Hextall, 1997). There was no grand initial design, no utopian blueprint, but a piece-meal, yet by no means slow, process of change. Undoubtedly some mistakes were made in what has been some trial-and-error learning from reforms imposed over a short time-scale, and so some of the changes were abandoned or modified in the light of experience, without loss of general direction. Overall the approach - for it cannot really be called a coherent strategy - has, I believe, been a success. One measure of this is that there are no indications that policy-makers, practising teachers, or trainee teachers would wish to return to the status quo ante, and the evidence is that the quality of teacher education and training has improved and is likely to continue to improve in a climate of continuing reform. We in England are still learning from our lessons: other countries may find here some lessons from which they too can learn about how to design and implement a reform of the education and training of teachers. In knowledge economies, where the quality of the education service is of supreme importance, determining how teachers are best trained and educated is one of the most difficult but important tasks of the reformer. 1 For my own part, I believe that the preparation of people for the profession of school teaching - or teacher formation, a simple concept that the English mysteriously decline to adopt - involves both education and training, but for convenience I shall often use the short, traditional and official language of teacher training which is provided by teacher trainers. References and sources D P Dolowitz (2000) Policy Transfer and British Social Policy, Open University Press. D P Gilroy (1992) 'The political rape of initial teacher education in England and Wales: a JET rebuttal,' Journal of Education for Teaching, 18 (1) 5-22. D H Hargreaves (1990) 'Another radical approach to the reform of initial teacher training,' Westminster Studies in Education, 13, pp. 5-11. Department for Education and Employment (DfEE) documents
I Hextall & S Sidgwick (1991) Imaginative Projects: arguments for a new teacher education, Goldsmith's College, London. Hillage J, Pearson R, Anderson A & Tamkin P (1998) Excellence in Research on Schools, Department for Education and Employment. Hillgate Group (1989) Learning to Teach, The Claridge Press. S Lawlor (1999) Teachers Mistaught, Centre for Policy Studies. P Mahoney and I Hextall (1997) 'Problems of accountability in reinvented government: a case study of the Teacher Training Agency,' Journal of Education Policy, 12 (4) 267-284. Office for Standards in Education (OfSTED)
Teacher Training Agency (TTA) documents:
G Whitty & E Willmott (1991) 'Competence-based Teacher Education: approaches and issues,' Cambridge Journal of Education, 21 (3), 309-317. |
