Quality in initial teacher education
| Pages | 63-69 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/09684880010325501 |
| Published date | 01 June 2000 |
| Date | 01 June 2000 |
| Author | David Blake,Jenny Lansdell |
| Subject Matter | Education |
Quality in initial
teacher education
David Blake and
Jenny Lansdell
The national context
The Government's objectives in initial
teacher education (ITE) are deceptively
simple. They amount to a drive to ensure that
high quality candidates are attracted to the
teaching profession, to raise the standard of
all ITE and to increase the number of student
teachers on the best quality courses. The
objectives are set out in detail in the Corporate
Plan of the Teacher Training Agency, the
quango charged with the task of
implementing Government policy. The first
three strategic objectives of the plan,
therefore, are:
(1) To ensure that the teaching profession
attracts and retains high quality
candidates in sufficient numbers to meet
the needs of schools.
(2) To increase the proportion of initial
teacher training places allocated to high
quality providers.
(3) To raise the standard and quality of initial
teacher training (TTA, 1998a, pp. 7-17).
At the launch of the Corporate Plan in May
1998, Estelle Morris MP, then Minister of
State at the Department for Education and
Employment (DfEE), and Anthea Millett,
Chief Executive of the Teacher Training
Agency, both made speeches. On teacher
recruitment, Anthea Millett pointed to the
magnitude of the task in prospect. In
mathematics, for example, to fill all
Postgraduate Certificate of Education
(PGCE) secondary mathematics places,
teaching would need to attract almost 50 per
cent of all pure mathematics graduates. She
acknowledged the problems of recruitment to
the secondary shortage areas as challenging,
and giving ``obvious cause for concern about a
shortage of trainees feeding through to
schools'' (pp. 3-4). She gave her bleakest
warning to date of the depth of the problem
facing the TTA:
But, as the days go by, we shall increasingly need
to pause and ask, are we simply putting our
collective finger in the dam? In other words,
don't we need some structural answer to the
recruitment issues if the waters are not to
overwhelm us? (TTA, 1998b, p. 3).
By contrast, the Minister relied on
exhortation and platitude, with no apology for
a policy which is clearly in crisis:
We are well aware of the extent of the challenge
we face, especially at secondary level, but we are
determined to tackle it. We must build on the
The authors
David Blake is Dean of Education and Social Studies and
Jenny Lansdell is BA (QTS) Primary Programme
Coordinator, both at University College Chichester,
Bognor Regis, UK.
Keywords
Teachers, Education, Quality, Standards, Competences
Abstract
Presents a critique of the assumptions underlying the
Teacher Training Agency (TTA) strategy of defining quality
centrally and imposing its view through a power-coercive
change process. An alternative view of effective teacher
education is developed, based on the contention that high
quality courses result from the thinking and commitment
of teacher education professionals, working with their
colleagues in schools, in local settings. It is argued that
the development of high quality initial teacher training
(ITE) results essentially from the engagement of teacher
educators with ideas drawn from teacher education
practice and research. Centrally-driven curriculum blue-
prints are unlikely to lead to the same high quality results,
rather they will tend to result in mere compliance. The
argument is illustrated by an example of teacher
education development in one institution leading to a set
of propositions about the elements which characterise
high quality teacher education more generally.
Electronic access
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is
available at
http://www.emerald-library.com
63
Quality Assurance in Education
Volume 8 .Number 2 .2000 .pp. 63±69
#MCB University Press .ISSN 0968-4883
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