Introduction: teacher education as public policy

In order to understand teacher education policy in Scotland, it is necessary to set the wider public policy context in which teacher education sits. The first part of this chapter does that, before going on to look at teacher education as a policy field in itself. Against this background we then problematise the specifics of teacher education policy in the Scottish context, which includes an exploration of the policy community itself, processes of policy deliberation and resulting policy instruments. Our intention is not to produce a chronology of teacher education policy in Scotland – that can be found elsewhere (eg, Hulme and Menter, 2013) – but rather to consider how teacher education policy functions as a part of wider public policy making in Scotland.

Scotland has had separate education legislation from the rest of the United Kingdom (UK) since the ‘Scottish Office’ was first established in 1885. However, public policy in Scotland is now legislated through the Scottish Government, education being one of its devolved functions (alongside health, justice, rural affairs, housing and transport). Devolution and the (re-)establishment of the Scottish Parliament in 1999 promised new ways of working – promoting access, consultation and transparency. While the extent to which these early aspirations have been met is still debatable, the sentiment reflects the perceived will of the Scottish people and, in theory, the electoral system in Scotland does allow for this kind of approach to governance. The Scottish Government is elected through a system of proportional representation, meaning greater likelihood of a coalition government than should be the case under a ‘first past the post’ system (still the voting system for the UK government). Proportional representation therefore supports the greater likelihood of a consensus government; one that engages in bargaining and compromise, both within the confines of parliamentary engagement and with wider stakeholder groups. This is important in the context of teacher education policy, as consensus politics are evident in the minutiae of policy development and enactment, as will be illustrated.

However, despite the greater likelihood of a coalition government under the proportional representation system, a Scottish National Party (SNP)-led majority government was returned in 2011, following an SNP-led minority government in the 2007 General Election.

Introduction

In the past decade, as we have seen in the previous two chapters, teacher education has assumed greater significance in global education policy (OECD, 2011a, 2011b; Asia Society, 2013; World Bank, 2013). Strategies to improve education outcomes have increasingly focused on improving teachers’ learning, leading to national reviews of teacher education. A repertoire of global reforms has sought to increase control over teachers’ work and performance while simultaneously emphasising teachers’ knowledge and discretion (Tatto, 2007). International organisations and global policy entrepreneurs have promoted a degree of convergence around certain core themes:

• • the quality of entrants;

• • practicum enhancement;

• • the imperative of career-long teacher learning;

• • school leadership;

• • the use of evidence, including research, to inform improvement.

Critical scrutiny of teacher education is not new. Recent debate connects with longstanding deliberation on the knowledge bases, content and control of teacher education, the location of professional preparation and the status of personnel involved in this complex enterprise.

It is important to establish the provenance of policy ideas in education and how they are transformed as they migrate. Moving beyond a ‘transfer’ paradigm, an alternative approach invites interrogation of the ‘homeless terms’ that populate global education policy (Popkewitz, 2013a, p 6). Thus, for example, we see how critical analysis of policy requires interrogation of seemingly transcendent and ahistorical ideas that are presented as lessons derived from comparison. Procedures for competitive comparison are supported by a renewed enthusiasm for evidence-based education and what some have called ‘improvement science’. Supranational policy texts work to universalise (and normalise) particular readings of the qualities and characteristics of the ‘effective teacher’ and models of teacher education that ‘work’. Working against the grain requires reflexive engagement with the analytical categories and units of comparison deployed in research for policy (Sobe, 2013a). It is important to ask how policy moves make possible particular understandings of ‘teacher quality’, and how these are linked with constructions of the future citizen, the educated person and a just society.

Throughout this book we consider how ‘travelling policy’ is recontextualised within local sites of influence (Jones and Alexiadou, 2001; Seddon and Levin, 2013).

Introduction

In this final chapter we review all of the earlier work and ask what lessons may be drawn from the cases and themes that have been discussed. In particular, consideration is given to the respective evidence for convergence and/or divergence in teacher education policy across the five jurisdictions. The influence of globalisation and the significance of wider social and political change are also reviewed.

A sociocultural and historical perspective is adopted to review these questions, so that questions about national identity, the positioning of education systems as ‘nation builders’ and the particular role of teachers within these processes are critically examined. This raises issues of values, citizenship and democracy.

The final section considers possible scenarios for the future – as schooling changes its shape and organisation, how will the education and preparation of teachers need to respond?

Convergence or divergence?

Our analysis here indicates some policy convergence, particularly across Scotland, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland (RoI), all of which seem to be following Continental European models of teacher education at least in part. Policy in Wales, where initial teacher education (ITE) provision followed English models closely until after devolution in 1999, is also increasingly distinctive. England emerges from this analysis as a definite outlier in terms of its ‘marketised’ and increasingly school-led system, although as we indicate later in this chapter, there may be dangers to arguing for English ‘exceptionalism’ in this way.

The ‘practice turn’ (Reid, J., 2011) in teacher education, found in many international policies in the last decade, has played out differently across the five nations. As discussed in several chapters here, especially Eleven and Twelve, common trends are to place more emphasis on ‘practical’ and ‘relevant’ aspects of ITE, particularly the practicum, but the discourses and practices in use here vary considerably. As Beauchamp et al (2013) identify, the language and rhetoric employed to discuss ‘relevance’, for example, reflect differing views of teaching and teacher education. In England, the ‘turn to the practical’ (Furlong and Lawn, 2010, p 6, quoting Hoyle, 1982) has seen the re-emergence of simplified craft models of teaching in which expertise can be acquired through apprenticeship modes of learning in the school workplace.

Introduction

Despite the much-heralded rhetoric of inclusion and social justice, New Labour's education policy since 1997 has lacked genuine innovation. Instead a process of policy development involving the recycling, redefinition and reconstitution of policy ideas and instruments has been evident throughout the government's period in office. Clear continuity with the previous Conservative government's marketisation of education is evident. In a third term, New Labour are committed to accelerating the expansion of specialist schools in the ‘post-comprehensive era’, including the promotion of City Academies and foundation specialist schools. There is continued focus on ‘performativity’ with the introduction of School Profiles, the Pupil Achievement Tracker and more tightly focused performance-related pay for an increasingly differentiated school workforce. The return to two-tier learning pathways is signalled in a 14-19 agenda that seeks to strengthen and extend vocational learning in schools and expand the Apprenticeship system.

New Labour's reconstitution of tried and tested policy responses can be partly explained by policy makers’ need for instant responses in an era of increasing global policy complexity. This proclivity to present the old as ‘new’ can also been seen as a means of managing the tensions and contradictions evident in a platform of education reform that is couched in the language of social inclusion, yet extends the market in education and regulates this through ever more intrusive instruments of ‘governmentality’. New Labour's laudable focus on interagency working, embedded in the national childcare strategy, Sure Start and Children’s Trusts has a compensatory flavour redolent of Fabian concepts of social regulation. The problem of underachievement is often framed by a deficit view of children and families in ‘disadvantaged’ areas. In tackling social exclusion, anti-inclusive strategies aimed at ‘re-socialising’ and ‘reeducating’ working-class children and their families are consequently deployed (Gewirtz, 2001).

The radical centre ground approach to politics espoused by Giddens (1998) contains an uneasy mixture of market and social democratic values. The social progressivism of New Labour operates within an economic realism that reifies the market concept as an inevitable adjunct of processes of globalisation and modernisation. New Labour's politics of education has shifted during the government's period in office to accommodate a reworking of progressive possibilities that foregrounds personal responsibility and employability.