An Irish perspective on initial teacher education: How teacher educators can respond to an awareness of the ‘absurd’

Abstract

Internationally, initial teacher education has experienced shifts towards competence and school-based programmatic reforms. As a result, literature on the role of teacher educators operating within the academy suggests a sense of doom as market-based and political distrust of the academy grows. For now, initial teacher education in Ireland is largely housed within the academy. However, several governing policies have recently been published which subtly seek to marginalise the role and practices of teacher educators. Drawing on Camus' understanding of the absurd as emerging from the interaction between the longing of human beings for clarity and the universe's indifferent and silent reply, this paper sets out to investigate possible methods that teacher educators may select in responding to an awareness of the absurd.

What is caught rather than taught: messages of professionalism communicated by teacher educators

“…Through the process of interpretation and translation (Ball et al 2011), we socially verify and sustain the shared enactment of standards within our programs. As policy actors, we have agency in the pedagogical and assessment artistry of our programmes (Ó Gallchóir and McGarr 2021) and as a result, we are responsible as TEs for potentially reductionistic messages regarding professionalism that PSTs may unintentionally 'catch'. Therefore, instead of lamenting the relevance of politically generated standards or globalised conceptualisations of teaching, is it not time that we recognise our agency, and therefore responsibility as pedagogues and, begin to question what we would like these standards to truly reflect and how this can be realised and celebrated within the canvases our own teacher education programmes?…”