A rising tide meets a perfect storm: new accountabilities in teaching and teacher education in Ireland

Talking about the test. Boundary work in primary school teachers' interactions around national testing of student performance

“…However, research on changes in teacher professionalism often portray and conceptualize these changes in a linear and dichotomous way, and there are reasons to argue that different views on professionalism and accountability rather co-exist in the field and represent different discourses that teachers have to negotiate between (Locke et al, 2005;Carlgren & Klette, 2008;author, 2012;Conway & Murphy, 2013). This discussion can also be informed by the work of Beijaard, Meijer, and Verloop (2004), who emphasize the ongoing integration of what is individually and collectively seen as relevant to teaching.…”

Analysing the present: drawing on the legacy of Vere Foster in public policy debate on futures of schools

“…He took issue with the assumptions that teacher educators cannot be trusted to prepare the next generation of teachers; that by holding the profession to account by the imposition of specified criteria or learning outcomes student teachers will be better prepared; and that those who make these decisions and specify these criteria for the audit of teacher education seemingly know best or have a monopoly on what is 'best' for student teachers. Of significance to our argument in this article, Sugrue posited a definition of quality as 'not about high standards but those which are uniform, predictable and verifiable' (Power, 1999, cited by Sugrue, 2013, and went on to argue the case about the logics of accountability versus professional responsibility (also see Conway and Murphy, 2013;Conway, 2012). This distinction is crucial to the profession if in fact it is to take responsibility for its own researchinformed practices and procedures in reply to the importation and enforcement of global neoliberal policies, including austerity measures.…”

The emergence of reading literacy in post-primary teacher education: from the background to the foreground

“…The recently published National Literacy and Numeracy Strategy (DES 2011, 30), highlights that providing high-quality initial and continuing professional development for teachers in literacy makes a very substantial difference to the effective teaching of the skills and to the resulting quality of students' learning. It proposes radical changes to initial post-primary teacher education including lengthening the duration of all such postgraduate programmes from one to two years to allow greater attention to the development of student teachers' understandings and pedagogy of literacy development (Conway and Murphy 2013). While this is a laudable and non-contentious position, and all postgraduate ITE courses in Ireland will in fact be extended to two years from 2014 onwards, the road to achieving this effective teacher education may be a little more difficult, as evidenced by the findings we are about to present, drawn from interviews with student teachers at various stages of their one-year ITE programme.…”