Towards initial teacher education quality: Epistemological considerations

Abstract

Initial Teacher Education quality is often judged through the auspices of audit-style mechanisms designed to facilitate the identification of matters pertaining to the 'readiness' of student teachers to enter the world of the classroom as fully qualified. In this regard, quality of programmes is often determined by the knowledge and skills student teachers demonstrate. Whilst ontological aspects are not necessarily elided, they are often ignored in favour of such epistemological matters. While such knowledge-based positions do not describe the totality of ITE quality evaluation they do predominate. This paper identifies a tripartite heuristic for the identification of ITE epistemology that explicitly refers to, and is requiring of, ontological matters in the development of student teachers: identifying teaching, doing teaching, knowing teaching. Whilst it is the result of a Scottish project, Measuring the Quality of Initial Teacher Education (MQuITE), its emphasis is notable for other countries. Towards Initial Teacher Education quality Since the 1980s, higher education (HE) has been discussed in terms of the 'Evaluative State' (Neave, 1998). Based on market ideals, this seeks to reduce waste and ineffectiveness through the marshalling of managerialist and technicist methods and language (Neave, 1998). Whilst state-sponsored evaluation of HE institutional practice has always existed, the Evaluative State seeks to embed change-action. Prior to such alterations, university evaluation took the form of administrative verification, which sought to transcend change rather than meet it. Periodically commissions were called that attempted to meet periods of crisis (actual or perceived) but they were not necessarily systematised (Neave, 1998). The Evaluative State embedded matters such as the regulation of student access, curriculum

Scotland and Pedagogy: Moving from the Anglophone Towards the Continental?

“…More problematically, action is elided when activity becomes the defining feature: successful teaching as the deployment of observable activities that demonstrably effect student attainment whether teachers themselves learn or not. While this may suffice for predefined educational intent, it is professionally narrowing in that it fails to connect teachers 'identifying', 'knowing', and 'doing' teaching (Adams & McLennan, 2021). What is required is the conjoining of activity and action: a perspective that promotes growth development and learning on the part of both teacher and taught.…”

Validación de un instrumento sobre la percepción de calidad en la formación de profesores

“…Dadas estas cuestiones y miradas desde un panorama global, se evidencian los esfuerzos por construir programas que se alinean en torno a una visión compartida de maestros de calidad (Hammerness y Klette, 2015). Se han encontrado distintos aspectos que cont ribuyen a la determinación de una formación docente de calidad, considerando factores como los recursos materiales y humanos de la institución, los contenidos y organización curricular (Adams y McLennan, 2020;Avcı y Kalelioğlu;2019;Ruffinelli, 2013;Sahito y Vaisanen, 2017;Žibeniene, y Savickiene, 2014). Así como, convergencia entre LATAM Revista Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades, Asunción, Paraguay.…”

Developing a context-appropriate framework for measuring quality in initial teacher education

“…We felt this would enable us to capture most of the key issues for Scottish ITE, with some adaptation and further contextualisation. It is important to note here that we have engaged with epistemological questions about what constitutes quality (Adams & McLennan, 2021), but the creation of the framework as presented here focused more overtly on methodological questions informed by this thinking.…”

“…Measuring, identifying or assessing the quality of ITE is an ongoing global project, and it is important to acknowledge at the outset that there exists significant debate around what it means to 'measure', 'identify' or 'assess' quality in ITE. These debates, while important, are not the focus of this article, but we have considered them elsewhere (Adams & McLennan, 2021). Regardless of the specific terminology chosen, in order to be able to say anything about the quality of ITE, there is a need to develop 'tools which are context responsive' (Richmond, Salazar & Jones, 2019: 88).…”