ESCalate – the Education Subject Centre of the Higher Education Academy

Advancing Learning and Teaching in Initial Teacher Education Symposium

Convenors: Dr Samantha Twiselton and Dr Sue Bloxham

University College St Martin’s, Lancaster

Initial Teacher Education in the Four Nations of the United Kingdom

Jane McKie, University of Stirling, Robin Bundy, Chris Kynch and Andrew Slater, University College St Martin’s, Lancaster

Paper presented at the British Educational Research Association Annual Conference, University of Glamorgan, 14-17 September 2005

INTRODUCTION

[A]ny education system, at any given point in time, is a combination of the past, the present and the future. The past is represented through aims and values, and the mode of working and expectations of the teaching force. For many teachers, the defining years are those in which they are trained and first enter the profession. (Le Métais, 1997, page 4)

The aim of this ESCalate funded research is to provide insights into the ‘defining years’ – the years of initial teacher education (ITE) and its articulation with induction and continuing development in the four nations of the UK.

This is a very preliminary report of our findings and, as such, will not use direct quotation from interviews with participants (these will be embedded in a series of academic papers to follow), but is rather intended as more of a thought piece to stimulate discussion at the BERA conference 2005 about the emerging themes.

SCOPE OF THE PROJECT

The project, involving semi-structured interviews with ITE providers and education policy-makers in Wales, England, Scotland, and Northern Ireland (NI), has the following dimensions. It is:

 intra-national  cross-national  qualitative  interpreted along thematic lines

We conducted interviews with members of staff from the following institutions:

 Four ITE providers in England, two pre- and two post- 1992 universities (in order to gain comparative perspectives on attitudes towards research); one representative from the General Teaching Council for England (GTCE).

1  In Wales, two members of staff responsible for some aspect of ITE provision working in different institutions; a member of the GTCW; and one policy- maker.  In Northern Ireland, three members of staff within education departments offering ITE; two members of the GTCNI; and one policy-maker.  In Scotland, seven interviews were conducted across four universities offering ITE; a representative of the GTCS.

For all countries, the roles and responsibilities of participants varied (we tried to encompass expertise across primary and secondary schooling). In all cases, we have strived to protect the anonymity of our participants.

The purpose of this broad study is to provide an overview of the different national curricular parameters for student learning in ITE in higher education (HE) and in school settings in the different nations. To approach some of the interesting context- dependent similarities and differences in policy and practice, we guided the interviews by focussing on the following aspects of education:

 National policy frameworks for schooling, and for ITE.  Stakeholders in teacher education.  The relative position of ITE within higher education institutions (HEIs).  The different models of ITE as conceived by the individual respondent: its pathways, its duration.  The ethos of ITE: individual, institutional, national.

It is hoped that the completed research, of which this discursive report is a preliminary stage, will help to inform a resource designed for those working within schooling in the four nations of the UK – an insight into the constraints and opportunities of policy and practice in 2005 that can be both a tool for reflection, and a stimulus for dialogue across borders.

SOME THEORETICAL CONSIDERATIONS

Le Métais (1997) observes that values inhere at different levels – individual, community, societal, national, etc. – and that these values may not always be compatible; naturally this can result in many and varied tensions:

National values may be neither national nor discrete. As a result, there may be dissonance between the aims of education expressed by legislation or reforms, and those pursued by students, teachers, parents, education administrators and others. It may be difficult for a single educational structure to reflect a diversity of values and aims, and similar conflicts may arise with respect to internal organisation, curriculum, teaching methods and materials and assessment. (Le Métais, 1997, page 3)

One can begin to see the complexity involved in embarking on a comparative project that hopes to reflect something meaningful about both policy and practice in different nations. A researcher must be mindful of the interplay of the individual and social, the phenomenological and the structural. The picture becomes further complicated when one adds the dimension of time: an interview is a snapshot of what the respondent feels about their work and the context in which they operate at any given

2 time. However, this snapshot is necessarily informed by the past, in particular, the legacy of earlier policies, and the legacy of their own induction into the profession:

It takes time to make and implement policy, build schools, train and recruit staff, develop curricula, materials and assessment instruments, and all this must be achieved before the first pupil attends class. It takes a further 10-12 years for a pupil to complete his/her compulsory education… [t]he passing of time brings about social and economic changes which may affect the continuing relevance (or ‘shelf life’) of educational aims. The time taken to establish or reform the infrastructure reduces the ‘shelf-life’ remaining once a new system becomes operational. (Le Métais, 1997, page 4)

How does one tease out and do justice to these inter-leaved factors? It is difficult, we think, but we have endeavoured to proceed with two things in mind: the articulation of different levels of operation, and hence of analysis; and the awareness that our analysis of policy needs to be read within a framework of inherited ideas and structures.

Finally, we are aware that we need to accommodate intra-national variation in what is ostensibly a cross-national project. As this was initially intended as a broad- brushstroke attempt to chart and comment upon curricular (both school and ITE) variables in the different nations, it became clear that we would need to be careful when generalising from participant responses. We quickly noted intra-national variation, as did Brisard et al (2003) in the first and tentative stage of their comparative study of ITE in Scotland and England:

The complexity of the comparative object of research comes, first of all, from the coexistence at national level in England of a number of models of initial teacher education whose conceptual and procedural differences by themselves may outnumber the Anglo-Scottish ones and therefore threaten the legitimacy of the cross-national comparative agenda altogether. (Brisard et al, 2003, page 25)

In the following discussion, generalisations about emerging themes have been, wherever possible, tempered by awareness of institutional and programmatic variations, though these subtleties will be easier to articulate in our forthcoming, more detailed, accounts of the project.

PRELIMINARY DISCUSSION: EMERGENT THEMES

Homogeneity and consensus (with particular reference to Scotland)

We will begin with the distinctiveness of the Scottish school system, as this is well- known, and often commented upon in the salient literature. In Scotland, currently there are HMI inspections of schools, but not of university education departments, though university education departments are subject to each institution’s own internal quality enhancement procedures. Furthermore, they need the approval of the General Teaching Council of Scotland (GTCS) for curriculum and syllabus changes:

The General Teaching Council for Scotland has far greater powers than that in England (Finlay 2003), for example in the accreditation of Initial Teacher Education courses, and GTC(S) membership at all levels includes staff in university Education Departments as well as school teachers. Paterson (2002) identifies as pivotal the role

3 played by Her Majesty’s Inspectors of Schools in every major development in Scottish education in recent years, and notes that their contribution as agents of standardisation has been effected through their roles as advisors and evaluators, rather than the narrowly inspectoral role. (Twiselton et al, 2004, page 10)

Similarly, the role played by local education authorities (LEAs) is much stronger in Scotland than in England for example, because of the relative strength and consistency of comprehensive schooling across Scotland. There is no doubt that the role of LEAs has become greatly diminished in England (Education Library Boards - ELBs - are the Northern Irish equivalent, and they have great influence in the controlled sector). The Scottish Executive Education Department (SEED) is seemingly one hundred per cent behind LEAs, and their importance was also acknowledged by ITE practitioners in Scotland, albeit with some reservations. For the most part, their reservations could be expressed as the fear that direct contact – that is, contact instrumental in forging productive relationships – might be diminished by LEAs having more involvement in administering student placements. On the other hand, Scottish respondents recognised that LEAs taking on greater responsibility for securing student placements would alleviate their administrative burden.

The GTC for Scotland represents a wide range of interested parties. It comprises ministerial appointments and representatives from the universities and local education authorities, but the majority of its membership comes from schools. In collaboration with the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) it produced the Standard for Initial Teacher Education, and it validates all teacher education programmes. In addition to – or perhaps because of – a powerful GTC and LEAs, and benchmark standards in Scotland, there is an emphasis upon a language of education as opposed to training (this is also true for Northern Ireland), of enhancement as opposed to assurance, and of guidance as opposed to inspection. Is this just political rhetoric? The majority of our Scottish respondents thought not, although there was some variation on the relative merits of consensus as we shall see below. Overall, there is concurrence with the first stages of the research undertaken by Brisard et al (2003):

Despite the existence of Benchmark standards and national requirements for all ITE courses in Scotland, at least two Heads of education departments in Scotland acknowledge that TEIs are not totally constrained in Scotland and that it is nothing like in England. One of them believes that that new Benchmarks (QAA: 2000) ‘give a sufficiently broad framework within which you can take the students forwards in all kinds of directions’ and therefore does not necessarily constrain institutions in terms of how they design their course. Unlike OfSTED in England, the Scottish Inspectorate has chosen not to opt for full-inspections of ITE provisions in Scotland, but to look at aspects only, such as how ITE courses address and assess the literacy competence for instance. Not everybody in Scotland are as positive about the new benchmarks, which some describe as ‘a tremendous superficial attraction’ and ‘a mechanism of control’, nor as convinced about the possibility for the Scottish TEIs to use the framework creatively without being seriously criticised for it during the accreditation process. Yet, the simple fact that there is no TTA nor OfSTED in Scotland appears to account for the marked divergence in climate, in initial teacher education, between those who make and enforce the policies and those who implement them… (Brisard et al, 2003, pp 33-34)

Despite this ‘divergence in climate’, the attempt for all stakeholders in education in Scotland to be involved in decision-making leads to equivocal views on the merits of consensus in the interviews: is consensus a tribute to the distinctiveness and

4 democratic complexion of Scotland, or does it risk becoming a constraint? Some have remarked that Scotland is so small that everyone knows everyone else in the education sector, and the mechanisms for widespread consultation actually mean that there are fewer opportunities for dissent i.e. there is an assumption that “everyone has signed up to this.” The positive features of consensus identified in the interviews were:

 community  consistency  familiarity  goodwill  protection from unwelcome proposals to change (security in numbers) and the flipside –  the ability to effect change relatively smoothly within national boundaries.

The (perceived) negative features of consensus to emerge from the interviews were:

 an implicit conservatism  a lack of innovation resulting in stultification  consensus perceived as a form of ‘gentle’ coercion.

Crucially, as one participant observed, when everyone ‘sings from the same hymn sheet’ it can hinder innovation – and it was curricular innovation in particular that was that individual’s concern. In contrast, the heterogeneity of practice in England – in terms of mode of ITE, variety of schooling, and choice of exam board, etc. – was regarded to be an advantage. Heterogeneity of educational practice was clustered with ideas of enterprise, creativity, and innovation in their response.

Overall though, we think it is fair to say that SEED and the GTCS were, in the main, respected and embraced by Scottish respondents. Yes, the conservatism of the GTCS was mentioned, but any reservation was tempered by a recognition that the GTCS provides an important and collegiate voice for Scottish teachers. Crucially, the people who are involved in accrediting the profession are, or were, teachers themselves. In this way ITE can be regarded as largely self-regulating in Scotland, with the guiding presence of the Executive and HMI to ensure the validity of processes and to provide a link between practice and policy.

Professional standing: teaching (with particular reference to Northern Ireland)

In contrast, the lack of a strong GTC in Northern Ireland was noted by Northern Irish participants (although it should be noted that there was a suggestion that it is growing in strength). Despite what might be described as a ‘nascent’ GTC, the status of the profession seemed to be higher in self-reports from Northern Ireland, possibly attributable to the competition for university and college places and the consequent high academic quality of applicants (in terms of their school or degree level of achievement). The small size of the country, and the fact that the education sector is a significant employer, might also have some bearing.

5 Additionally, historically at least, teacher educators working within Northern Irish HEIs have a perceived degree of autonomy that outstrips the reported sense of autonomy felt by participants in the other nations of the UK. It is necessary to make a distinction, however, between the teacher educators working within the two universities in Northern Ireland – Ulster and Queens – and teacher educators at Stranmillis College and St Mary’s College. Stranmillis places students largely within the controlled sector, and St Mary’s within Catholic maintained schools. The vast majority of their courses are undergraduate degrees aimed to train teachers for early years and primary age groups. Their courses are oversubscribed and competition for places is fierce, with students typically needing grade ‘A’s to be selected. However, they are less embedded in a research culture than their counterparts within the Departments of Education at Queens University and the University of Ulster who train subject graduates to become secondary school teachers.

The participants who had jobs in a university indicated that they felt well supported and valued by their institution as far as their own research was concerned – which is interesting in the light of the widely acknowledged tension for teacher educators inherent in moving from one area of professional expertise (teaching) to another (research). Certainly this perception compares favourably to the anxieties experienced by some teacher educators working in England, especially in older universities where the pressure to perform well in the research assessment exercise (RAE) is palpable. It might be that the higher status of teaching (“higher but not high”, as one respondent said) in Northern Ireland has helped to better establish educational research into teaching as a legitimate academic pursuit within the NI universities.

Professional standing: research

Related to this, the demands experienced by teachers moving from schools to ITE programmes in HEIs was touched upon by many respondents in England and Scotland. The professional status of a teacher educator has traditionally rested on their career as a successful teacher, not as a researcher (and it is the former that is usually valued by their students); when this balance shifts as they become absorbed into the research culture of an HEI with all that that entails – for example, the need for visible research output, particularly output that ‘counts’ in institutional assessment exercises – there is a lot of ground to make up, often in a short space of time. Naturally these new demands are going to impact upon the self-image and self-belief of an individual, as they often require an ‘expert’ to become ‘novice’, a ‘practitioner’ to become a ‘theoretician’.

Might this transition become eased by the contemporary discourse of the ‘reflective practitioner’, coupled with the new emphasis on teachers as researchers within schools? The commitment and ability demanded of teachers has always been considerable, but, particularly in the wake of teacher training colleges either becoming absorbed by universities or having university status conferred upon them, there is a growing requirement for teachers to seamlessly combine emotional and (academic) intellectual maturity. ITE will logically become the first locus of this synthesis.

Accountability and control (with particular reference to England)

6 “Accountability machinery” was widely regarded to have taken hold in England. This perception was held both within and beyond national boundaries. One participant noted that it was the way in which the accountability machinery was imposed as much as the character of the tests and inspections that has caused widespread resentment. In other words, the lack of consultation and consequent feeling of comparative powerlessness is at least as significant in the minds of English respondents as the practical entailments of inspection and testing, such as the time and effort it takes to prepare for them.

The picture to emerge from English respondents was a mixed one, however. Not everyone resented the impositions of audits and inspections, or rather, their value was noted too: they are there to ensure quality, and a national body with oversight of practices within both schools and ITE provides a greater degree of consistency and coherence than would otherwise be possible in such a heterogeneous sector. The number of schools and variety of types of schooling in England is a factor in that should always be borne in mind when undertaking international comparisons.

England may, historically, have borne the brunt of inspection and ‘initiative overload’. However, in the UK as a whole, there is a consonance between the ethics of teacher educators across nations: even if they are forced by law to become more mechanistic in approach, each respondent found a way to resist excessive reductionism. Their concern for holism, for the development of the teacher as an individual, and their priority of care for children was in line with the educational priorities of teacher educators across the board. Many found a way of interpreting the system to encourage the development of philosophical and politically-aware students in their ITE courses.

The politics of recruitment, placement, induction and continuing professional development (with particular reference to Wales)

School placements and the impact on an HEI’s relationship with their local (and not so local) schools emerged as potent issues for all nations of UK. This was particularly acute when it was necessary to negotiate this across and around borders, and Welsh respondents mentioned the importance of both placement and eventual recruitment to a teaching job as significant to the construction of, and constraints on, Welsh ITE courses. Any review of initial teacher education and training in Wales would need to take into account the permeability of its borders and how that would interact with the potential ‘remodelling’ of its workforce.

Unlike in Scotland, which has the landmark 2001 McCrone agreement guaranteeing a year’s employment in a school following qualification for every ITE graduate, devolution did not allow Wales to do anything about the pay and conditions of teachers. But with the 2004 Higher Education Act there is the possibility of taking up devolution-type powers with regard to HE, and the Welsh Assembly is in the middle of a controversial top-up fees debate. It is anticipated that the current review of ITE in Wales will recommend measures to strengthen teacher induction.

Parallels with Scotland do exist, however. There is a bilingual emphasis to education in Wales as there is for the teaching of Gaelic in Scottish Highland schools; in the case of Wales, however, Welsh is a compulsory core subject in English-speaking

7 schools. All primary teachers have to be able to teach to a level of Welsh. As a consequence, the content and principles of ITE must reflect the Welsh curriculum. The Welsh dimension has been given a new lease of freedom with devolution. Previously, the Welsh Office looked to Westminster for the lead, but the Assembly has backed models like those outlined in The Learning Country (2001), in which there is a full commitment to comprehensive education. Furthermore, the Welsh GTC has had good funding from the Assembly government to secure a permanent entitlement to continuing professional development (CPD) for teachers, including professional exchanges, networks, courses, and so on.

It is worth noting that the quality and character of CPD was a priority for the majority of respondents from the four nations of the UK, with many advocating the continued involvement of ITE providers throughout the induction year, and perhaps beyond. Some interesting developments are afoot, including the reconceptualisation of schools as sites for multi-agency working. This is mentioned explicitly in the recently- published (2005) second stage review of Scottish ITE.

Summary of discussion

The foregoing discussion has touched upon a number of themes that have salience in all of the four nations of the UK: homogeneity (and its obverse, heterogeneity) and consensus; perceptions of the professional standing of teachers and teacher educators in terms of both teaching and research; accountability and control; and, finally, the politics of recruitment, placement, induction and the continuing professional development of teachers. As this paper is preliminary to a more detailed analysis of which will engage more fully with the qualitative data, we hope that the British Education Research Association conference will yield early debate. If you have any comments or queries, we would be interested in hearing from you; please email [email protected].

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BRISARD, E. AND MENTER, I. AND I. SMITH (2003). Convergence or Divergence? Initial Teacher Education Policy & Practice in England and Scotland. Interim Report of a University of Paisley Funded Research Project November 2002- April 2004 (November 2003).

FINLAY, I (2003). Report on Research undertaken in Scotland [Escalate TEAK project: Tackling Educational Complexity across the UK] www.escalate.ac.uk

HENKEL, M. (1991). Government, Evaluation and Change. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.

LE MÉTAIS, J. (1995). Legislating for Change: School Reforms in England and Wales, 1979-1994. Slough: NFER.

LE MÉTAIS, J. (1997). Values and Aims in Curriculum and Assessment Frameworks, March 1997, International Review of Curriculum and Assessment Frameworks project.

8 PATERSON, L (2002). ‘Scotland’ in Gearon, L [ed.] (2002) Education in the United Kingdom London: David Fulton

THE SCOTTISH OFFICE (1998). Guidelines for Initial Teacher Education Courses in Scotland. Available online at http://www.scotland.gov.uk/

SCOTTISH EXECUTIVE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT (SEED) (2001). A Teaching Profession for the 21st Century: Agreement Reached Following Recommendations Made in the McCrone Report. Available online at http://www.scotland.gov.uk/

SCOTTISH EXECUTIVE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT (SEED) (2001a). First Stage Review of Initial Teacher Education Action Plan: November 2001. Available online at http://www.scotland.gov.uk/

SCOTTISH EXECUTIVE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT (SEED) (2005). Review of initial teacher education stage 2: Report of the Review Group: May 2005. Available online at http://www.scotland.gov.uk/

TEACHER TRAINING AGENCY (2002). Qualifying to Teach: Professional Standards for Qualified Teacher Status London: TTA

TWISLETON, S, EWANS, T et al (2004). Beyond the Curriculum: Empowering student teachers to learn, think and act creatively within the many curricula that impact on their experience.

Useful websites:

Wales http://www.inca.org.uk/index.html (INCA Summary Profile – Education in Wales) http://www.gtcw.org.uk

In 2004, Estyn produced a survey report, 'The Graduate Teacher Programme: A New Route into Teaching', which sets out Estyn's findings on the standards and quality of the Graduate Teacher Programme and recommendations for its future direction and development. The report is available online at: http://www.estyn.gov.uk/publications/GTP_New_Route_Teaching_ITT.pdf http://www.wjec.co.uk/

England

INCA Summary Profile – Education in England (see above) http://www.dfes.gov.uk/delivering-results/index.shtml http://www.dfes.gov.uk/publications/5yearstrategy/

9 http://www.dfes.gov.uk/

The General Teaching Council's website is available at http://www.gtce.org.uk/homepage.asp

Scotland

INCA Summary Profile – Education in Scotland (see above)

Northern Ireland http://www.deni.gov.uk/

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