Control and command: ITT, mentoring and the pedagogy of professional decline

Here I explore this further through short extracts of my chapter in a newly published book ‘Teacher Education in Crisis; The state, the market and the universities in England’ (Ellis, V. ed. 2023).  In Chapter 1 of the book Viv Ellis and Ann Childs state that ‘England now has the most tightly regulated and centrally controlled system of ITE [Initial Teacher Education] anywhere in the world’ (p2). This control is exerted at all levels:

• the grand narrative level, for example the insistence by the DfE of the terminology ITT (replacing education with ‘training’), and the reductive language of trainees, provision, delivery partners and frameworks,
• system level, for example determining who can provide teacher training through new DfE accreditation of ITT provision, 
• curriculum level, for example through the requirement of providers to implement of the Core Content Framework in ITT
• classroom level, for example Ofsted enforcing expectations of trainee teachers’ timetables, 
• relational level, for example the DfE constructing a mentoring framework which dictates the sequence, form and function of mentors’ work with student teachers.

In my chapter I include a focus on mentoring. The following quotes illustrate how we are at risk of mentoring in ITT both becoming and promoting a pedagogy of professional decline. 

Mentoring as compliance, performativity and 'atomization'

‘The overarching compliance agenda in both schools and Initial Teacher Training [ITT] impacts on mentoring practice at a range of scales. Performative education cultures create performative mentoring practices.

[Mentoring in] ITT and ECF [Early Career Framework] is now characterized by pathways that track progress towards Qualified Teacher Status (QTS) standards and the infrastructure of the CCF and its curriculum components of ‘know that’ and ‘know how’ which the DfE claim make up the knowledge needed in the profession.’ (p141)

‘The atomization of teachers’ practice is written into checklists for performance. Non-negotiable classroom and corridor routines have proliferated and there has been an escalation in jargon associated with the ‘science of teaching and learning’.’ (p141) 

Mentoring in the landscape of professional decline

‘The growth in mentoring and coaching has been led by DfE providers delivering ECF provision and will be followed by ITT providers managing DfE expectations of what mentors need to know and how they need to function.’ (p141)

‘Achieving this at scale and speed means that much of the nuance of the terrain has been eradicated. Mentoring is now reconfigured as a component of training new teachers to meet the knowledge outcomes of the CCF or ECF.’ (p142)

‘Some instructional coaching has become distorted to suit a competency based mentoring agenda, and is supported by digital platforms that predetermine content and sequence of teaching routines to be adopted.’ (p142)

Some models of instructional coaching [now often used in ITT and ECF mentoring] have emerged which put ‘instruction’ front and centre, in a misappropriation of the word ‘instructional’ from its North American meaning of pedagogic to a directive and command meaning situated in a compliance culture. (p141)

When mentoring is coupled with problematic curriculum frameworks it can lead us to dead ends. In workload-heavy school environments situated in abrasive accountability cultures members of the profession are unlikely to appreciate the wide horizons that mentoring and coaching can open up. (p142)

What’s next?

As President Jed Bartlett frequently asks in The West Wing, “What’s next?”  The pedagogy of professional decline is now visible in many schools and is being reinforced by the grip that the DfE have on ITT, ECF and now the NPQs (National Professional Qualifications). This so-called Golden Thread is ‘an artefact of the ever-increasing centralization and control of teacher education and continuing professional development for new recruits and existing staff in state schools’ (p144). 

If we want schools to become places where young people flourish as learners, we need new teachers who flourish too.  We need to ask of ourselves ‘What’s next?’

As I suggest in my chapter, we need teacher educators, in which I include mentors,  to see themselves as ‘relational activists (Dove & Fisher, 2019), engaging in behind-the-scenes work and building cross-sectional relationships and influence through practice. […] We need to dare to voice alternative narratives and help new and more experienced teachers, and even those whose journeys have led them onto new maps to create the spaces that will become fertile ground for a more agentic profession.’ (p145)

To read more

The quotes from pages 141-145 above come from Lofthouse, Rachel (2023) Chapter 8. Charting contested terrain in teacher education in ‘Teacher Education in Crisis; The state, the market and the universities in England’ edited by Viv Ellis.  You can access a free eprint of this book here.