Move over Nelly: lessons from 30 years of employment-based initial teacher education in England

Youens, Bernadette; Smethem, Lindsey; Simmons, Mark

Abstract

Recruiting, preparing and retaining high-quality teachers are recurrent themes of local, national and international education agendas. Traditional university-led forms of teacher education continue to be challenged, and defended, as nations strive to secure a teaching force equipped to achieve high-quality learning outcomes for all students. One commonly adopted policy solution has been the diversification of teacher preparation routes: the alternative certification agenda. In this article, we examine the entire history of one alternative route in place in England from 1997 to 2012, the Graduate Teacher Programme. Using one example of an employment-based programme, we argue that opportunities to engineer innovative and creative spaces in the face of the current teacher preparation reform agenda need to be seized. This case study, which is contextualised in both the international debates about alternative teacher certification routes and the current policy agenda in England, demonstrates the extent to which successive administrations have failed to learn from the lessons of the past in the rush to recycle policies and claim them as their own.

Citation

Youens, B., Smethem, L., & Simmons, M. (in press). Move over Nelly: lessons from 30 years of employment-based initial teacher education in England. Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, 24(7), https://doi.org/10.1080/13540602.2018.1481025

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: May 18, 2018
• Online Publication Date: Jun 9, 2018
• Deposit Date: Jul 17, 2018
• Publicly Available Date: Dec 10, 2019
• Journal: Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice
• Print ISSN: 1354-0602
• Electronic ISSN: 1470-1278
• Publisher: Routledge
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 24
• Issue: 7
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/13540602.2018.1481025
• Keywords: Teacher preparation, teacher education policy, alternative certification, employment-based teacher preparation
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/936906
• Publisher URL: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13540602.2018.1481025
• Additional Information: This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice on 9 June 2018, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/13540602.2018.1481025.