Bridges that need to be built: lessons from England’s initial teacher education reforms
University of Cambridge
Building a curriculum for (initial) teacher education requires consideration of what sort of teachers does society want and need. In a context of unprecedented challenges for societies, the environment, the economy and global politics, the way we prepare new teachers sends important messages about the world that we want to live in, and how we understand the purpose of education, and of schooling, to support people who will create that world. But in an era of international competitiveness with shifting and conflicting politics, alongside global teacher shortages and high levels of teacher attrition, demands for teacher education reform has become ubiquitous; often represented as an important and necessary shift for “better” prepared teachers, “effective” schooling and greater economic sustainability. But what does “good” reform look like, and what can we learn from reform attempts elsewhere? In this paper, I examine the latest wave of England’s teacher recruitment policies, focusing on the implications of the Initial Teacher Training (ITT) Market Review and, through adopting a spatial perspective, ask questions about its impact on spatial and social justice.
In England, the reforms around initial teacher education have been extensive and divisive and yet appear to be influential to many international policymakers. The Initial Teacher Training (ITT) Market Review, introduced by the UK Department for Education, sought to enhance consistency in teacher education by mandating compliance with a government-defined ITT Core Content Framework and introducing an accreditation system for all providers. The review led to significant restructuring, with twelve higher education institutions failing to secure accreditation and four national “super-providers” emerging. The policy’s focus on standardization and centralized control overlooked regional disparities in teacher supply and demand, raising concerns about its long-term efficacy in addressing recruitment challenges in areas with a high demand for new teachers, but also in achieving its aim of securing high quality teachers for all.
Drawing on Soja’s concept of spatial justice and Lefebvre’s triadic framework of lived space (individual experiences), relative space (policy relationships across regions), and representational space (the discourse shaping policy decisions), I examine the specific nature of these reforms, and what early indicators suggest to be their impact. A nation-wide criteria-based accreditation process has had differential effects across the country which has resulted in some clear winners and losers. But the nature and focus of the reform, on curriculum and content management, has both pedagogical and epistemological implications for teacher education. In addition, structural changes are posing a threat to the traditional role of universities within the teacher education ecosystem. This policy initiative is, therefore, an urgent issue of spatial injustice, exacerbating the system’s capacity to address teacher recruitment and supply issues in areas of high need.
These developments have specific spatial effects: not only on the locus of teacher education (narrowly conceived around individual classrooms and practices), and on the shifting of provision to urban centres but also on the centralisation of power and control, deepening inequalities in teacher recruitment and exacerbating shortages in rural, coastal and post-industrial communities. While intended to streamline and improve teacher education, the policy’s failure to account for regional disparities and its urban-centric implementation are not just likely to exacerbate recruitment issues but can fundamentally shift how we understand the professionalisation and professionality of teachers.
So how do we respond? Future policy initiatives should adopt a more nuanced, locally responsive approach to teacher recruitment, ensuring that all communities—regardless of geography—have equitable access to high-quality initial teacher education. But by understanding the pitfalls of teacher education reform initiatives we can also look towards building a new vision for teacher education: one that makes connections across and between schools and universities, that sees an active and vital role for research, and that speaks to the various needs across the sector. Such an approach has the potential to bring the education sector together around a new vision for educational transformation within initial teacher education.
