The Future of Teacher Education: Principles and prospects (1)

Teacher educators everywhere experience, and are concerned about, strained university-school relations. As feelings of unease and uncertainty intensify, pressures increase to re-jig teacher education programmes. Consequently, variations on the theme of teachers and teacher educators working together have emerged recently in an attempt to bridge the gulf between campus and the schools. These revisions can easily delude teacher educators into thinking that criticisms of teacher education have been countered and that the future is secured. Another interpretation is that these developments are signals that the logic of the traditional model is out of step with the times. Such signals point to the transformation and redefinition of institutions for a new kind of society. Relationships with historic partners-schools, employers, parents and teachers' unions-take on new meanings as universities and teacher education undergo reorganisation. Under these conditions, the leadership role of teacher education loses its legitimacy. Claims that university-based teacher education generates definitive teaching-related research and is the clearing-house for powerful knowledge about teaching and curriculum are no longer credible beyond the university. Further, universities and school systems increasingly judge their success by participation in an expanded global market. The inevitable outcome is a high degree of competition between (and variety in) teacher education programmes. In that environment, and with few political allies, the university-based teacher education model cannot easily survive as the principal form of teacher pre-service preparation. The challenge for teacher educators is to engage the forces that drive institutional change rather than expecting existing practices to guarantee the future. This paper proposes some principles for new approaches to teacher education that lie beyond present models. The inexorability of change and the unpredictability of the future are ideal conditions for recreating teacher education rather than celebrating its demise.