Don't be short-changed - building the knowledge base in teacher education and mentoring

Here in England, the 2021 Department for Education (DfE) Initial Teacher Training (ITT) Review resulted in prestigious universities threatening to withdraw from the sector.  It is not yet clear what the outcomes of the DfE (re)accreditation process will be for ITT and at present providers are up against deadlines to submit for the first hurdle of accreditation.

This is the latest iteration in the radical transformation of teacher education in England which is heavily influenced by government policy. There is an increasing allocation of government training funds and pathways to non-university providers. New DfE content frameworks for ITT and continuing teacher training, including the Early Career Framework and newly configured NPQS have raised professional dilemmas for the teacher education community. These frameworks privilege a government approved evidence base and describe expectations of prescribed knowledge acquisition as the need for teachers to ‘know that’ and ‘know how’. My Leeds Beckett colleague Dr Pinky Jain recently articulated this as ‘a directive stance characteristic of a performative, neoliberal approach’ but also insists that ‘we continue to advocate for policy and practice which conceptualise the roles of knowledge, context and dilemmas in learning to teach through a more critical lens.’

At times of change it is valuable to gain insights from the available knowledge base to learn from what is successful, to build greater understanding and to construct plans from a blend of theory, practice and research. At CollectivED we continue to contribute to this knowledge base with a focus on coaching, mentoring and professional learning.  One of our contributions is the working paper series, through which we curate voices in professional learning.  At the start of 2022 three new issues of our working papers will be published online the first of which (Issue 13) focuses on initial teacher education and mentoring.

In Issue 13 we share examples of innovation in ITTE from Victoria Crooks who writes about training teachers online during the pandemic and from Henry Sauntson who write about storytelling as a pedagogic tool in ITTE. Geraldine Leydon draws on her doctoral research related to mentors and mentoring, Adam Lamb reflects on the practice of mentoring early career teachers and Duncan Partridge reviews Haili Hughes’ book on mentoring in schools. Emma Rawlings Smith and Rachel Lofthouse tackle the policy debate surrounding the ITT Market Review.

We hope that these sit alongside the existing and upcoming CollectivED working papers to provide an accessible knowledge base for those working in the field, whether it is directly with those new recruits to the profession, or in developing provision that both meets the demands of the DfE and our hopes for a successful and sustainable teaching profession.

This is not a time to be short-changed!

You can view CollectivED Working Papers Issue 13 on our website.