Beth Dickson

Reshaping teacher education through the professional continuum

The current policy gaze on teacher quality is resulting in significant shifts in how teacher education is conceptualized, designed and delivered. Traditional approaches to teacher preparation and continuing professional development (CPD) are being challenged, and often displaced, by new models that expedite the process and experience of becoming a teacher, relocate teacher preparation from universities directly to schools and widen the pool of teacher education providers. This “reshaping” of teacher education and leadership development is at a critical point of reform in a number of systems, driven by the need to align with curriculum and wider education reform and the effect of the dual exposure of international comparative tests and economic performance. As a consequence the practice of teacher education, by which we mean the pedagogies, programmes and places through which and where teachers are prepared, must adapt to become more responsive to demands from government to deliver high quality teaching that is developed and sustained throughout a teacher’s career. This means reconceptualizing teacher and leadership development as a career-long process developed by and through the professional continuum. It requires the redesign of the practice of teacher education, necessitating new thinking and fresh approaches to the rich pedagogies that must underpin professional learning programmes, the sites of professional learning and new partnership arrangements. Crucially it also involves widening the pool of teacher educators so that all teachers and school leaders are recognized as teacher educators.

Teaching as a clinical profession: translational practices in initial teacher education – an international perspective

In response to evidence that teacher quality has the greatest in-school impact on student learning, and the consequent need for reform of intial teacher education, clinical approaches to the preparation of pre-service teachers have gained international prominence since the turn of the twenty-first century. This adaptation of medical discourse for the preparation of teachers has presented a new paradigm for teacher preparation and professional learning: a key tenet of this approach is the ‘translation’ and application of theory and research in the sites of practice. This paper will explore the ways in which two clinical pre-service teacher preparation programme, The Master of Teaching at the University of Melbourne and the Partnership Model at the University of Glasgow, utilise clinical approaches to develop the research-informed practice of pre-service teachers working at designated clinical sites (schools). A central aspect of this paper is a discussion of the ways in which the medical metaphor and its consequent models can be effectively translated into different national contexts, and the affordances and appropriations required when undertaking this cross-disciplinary work.

The Place of Leadership Development for Change Agency in Teacher Education Curricula for Diversity

Leadership, particularly teacher leadership, is a policy priority in many educational systems, being regarded as a key element in raising achievement. As these expectations of teacher leadership grow, the place of leadership development in teacher education is an emerging issue. Leadership development might provide the means to enable novice teachers bring about the changes in curriculum, pedagogy and ethos, necessary as schools become more diverse. In this chapter we consider how leadership development in teacher preparation programmes might contribute to the development of change agency for diversity. We begin by interrogating three commonly held assumptions about the contribution of initial teacher education to the development of a teacher. These assumptions include the view that initial teacher education is the only or main phase in a career when teachers learn; that the kind of knowledge teachers need can be transmitted during this phase; and finally, that teachers demonstrate their grasp of knowledge by applying knowledge developed elsewhere. In the next section we then turn to ‘leadership’ and identify some of the tensions within this concept. In the final section we propose three pivotal concepts of identity, agency and expertise implicit in notions of teacher leadership and argue that we need to consider these if we are to build a model of teacher education for change agency.