Transcript Reforming teacher education in the UK: teacher educators

Reforming teacher education in the UK:
teacher educators’ experiences of an
increasingly marginalised position.
Dr Harriet Rowley (presenting)
Prof Tony Brown & Kim Smith, MMU
Introduction
“Market-based approaches to teacher education are growing internationally. There are
concomitant moves to create uniformity and a system of more centralized authority
over what counts as important teacher skills and knowledge. These kinds of reforms
are overtly meant to help. Each is closely connected to the larger arena of education,
where momentous ideological transformations are underway. The possible hidden
effects of these efforts can be understood only if we look both inside teacher education
programs and to the larger social field of power on which they operate.”
(Apple, 2001; 182)
Broader ideological context
The impact of ideological
transformations on HE’s
“In a relatively short period of time, academic work and academic identity has
shifted from being largely autonomous, self-governing with particular
privileges and public duties, to a profession that has been modernised,
rationalised, re-organised and intensely scrutinised.”
(Fitzgerald & Gunter, 2012)
The impact of ideological
transformations on ITE
• Highly regulated, centralised system (Menter, Brisard & Smith, 2006).
• Coalition Government (2010 –) Introduction of school-based and schoolled route ‘School Direct’.
• Threat to university contribution on conceptual level but also very
existence.
“Teaching is a craft and it is best learnt as an apprentice observing a master
craftsman or woman. Watching others, and being rigorously observed
yourself as you develop, is the best route to acquiring mastery in the
classroom.”
(Gove 2010, n,p.)
Case studies
Roger Deakin
Forced to negotiate with schools using the ‘sub-text of it being a school-led
partnership…whatever that means.’
‘Now some schools want it to be that way in reality and others don’t and are
actually quite resentful, and others would prefer it not but they understand
the political context, so we have these multi-layered conversations where we
know we both have to present it differently to an external audience. Then of
course there are senior managers within the university who we have to
present a very different face to, who are very resistant and at times outraged
at the notion that schools should have such a voice.’
Determining market actor – proportion of income from ITE/research. ‘The
university wants us to to deliver on teaching, but if it is at the cost of research
we don’t want to know.’ Education department ‘pin probe’ in terms of
university income.
Paul Bruner
Restructuring of programme: ‘It has been forced upon us from above.
Academic arguments don’t trump economics ones now’.
‘But the problem we have as an ITT provider is that outside of the maths
education group there’s very little theoretical perspective or research gets
done... You could describe most staff members as people who might have
been good teachers 12 years ago but certainly couldn’t hack it today.’
‘I have a theoretical neoliberal perspective on what’s happening on here. And
rather akin to the health service which is now so privatised so far that actually
it would require Lenin to get it back up in public control. We have a whole
neoliberal agenda that people just haven’t woken up to. And I personally do
feel that the train is too well on the tracks to be derailed.’
Lottie Jowatt
‘I have always been quite good with people and managing relationships with
people…it’s a skill that I have to use a lot so I and the university performs
well…but maybe I shouldn’t have to spend the time I do mediating between
students, schools and the university that way I might be able to some
academic work.’
‘I think we give support to the trainees that’s value for money, and will these
school tutors do the same? I don’t know...I’m thinking the trainees are now
customers because they pay their £9000. They say they don’t get the deal they
wanted at school. I get an email saying “I’m not paying £9000.” They fall out
with the tutor and refuse to pay. What do we do then?’
‘The thing is you have to clearly work out your rationale for why you’re doing something, you know.
We’re very clear about this because it’s research-based. We actually call it…we actually do research-led
teaching and by that what we mean there is we deliberately problematize an area and we’ll go and
design the sessions leading it, so we can research it with the students.’
‘It is finding a way to remain who you are and what keeps you going at the same time as change is
happening…I can see where the change is going and I can see which changes are ones we have to do
because we have to do to tick a box, and ones that are taking us in a direction, because that’s where we
want to go, not because we’re being made to go…For me, doing the PhD over 6 years, it’s given me this
thinking … a bit of me time. Okay, there’s not time really in the system for me, but that gives me
headspace to … because I’m having to change with that, that assists me managing some of the changes
that are happening around me, because I’m pushing my own comfort zone … I’m pushing myself out of
who I was.’
‘It is still me that gets to stand in front of the trainees and that gives you chance to influence things. It is
very easy to be in the director’s box at a football match but the action is down there on the terraces.
You want to be involved. Sink into the mire, embrace the butcher but try and change the world it needs
it. Absolutely. You have to get your hands dirty and at the moment there is still lots of us doing exactly
that.’