Book outline
This chapter has outlined three of the key ideas that underpin this book: that quality in teacher education should be seen as a process of transformation rather than standards or indicators of quality assurance; that transformation occurs through the flow of ideas enacted through teacher education pedagogy; and that when ideas about quality get taken up, they can turn into quality conundrums which will affect practices. The next five chapters take each of these quality conundrums in turn, exploring how that conundrum gets manifest and how one of the universities studied works in and around that conundrum.
- • Chapter 2 explores the practice quality conundrum through a comparison of the practices of a post-graduate teacher education programme and the Teach First employment-based programme both located at the UCL Institute of Education in London, UK;
- • Chapter 3 looks at the research quality conundrum through the lens of the research-orientated programmes at Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), of the University of Toronto, Canada;
- • Chapter 4 explores the knowledge quality conundrum, and in particular how it is addressed at Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia;
- • Chapter 5 asks the question who are the best people to work with new teachers: the teacher educator quality conundrum, looking at Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, Arizona State University, in the US;
- • Chapter 6 looks at how to deal with the accountability quality conundrum, using the example of the University of Auckland, New Zealand.
The experiences across these five universities and across the five identified quality conundrums are then brought together in two further chapters. Chapter 7 explores the practice architectures and the practice arrangements pertinent to teacher education and how these arrangements enable and constrain university-based teacher educators’ practices. In effect, these factors influence what practices are possible and which are not. Chapter 8 then uses the spatial lens to look at how the location, relative and representational nature of teacher education gets played out through these practices. Finally, these themes are drawn together in Chapter 9 which posits a model of ITE practice: a diagrammatic representation of how universities are able to “do” teacher education within the highly complex, stratified and challenging environments they find themselves in. The model is intended to illustrate the opportunities and responsibilities available to universities, to help them navigate the complex landscapes in which teacher education takes place. The model is also intended to be a useful way for universities to reconsider their role in teacher education: how they can leverage their influence, exercise their expertise and ensure that as new quality conundrums appear the transformational potential of teacher education is not lost.
