In 2023 I attended the annual BERA Conference, and was particularly struck by Elizabeth Chapman Hoult and colleagues’ workshop, ‘Revisioning teacher education within higher education: An invitation to engage in a collaborative metaphorical exploration in the light of the Market Review of Initial Teacher Education in England’.
Stimulated by discussions I had with participants during the workshop, this blog post looks at the development of initial teacher training (ITT) curricula in England from 1998–2019. It notes that prescriptive curricula content and pedagogies are not essentially novel practices in ITT. The perception that our current ITT context is unprecedented regarding curricula and pedagogical prescription has caused me to reflect on my own experiences as a pre-service teacher educator, and helped me to realise that I perhaps had rose-tinted views of the past. I fear there is a danger that as teacher educators we sometimes do not adjust our view, reflect and see the bigger picture.
During the workshop, a participant commented that I had been a mathematics lecturer on her pre-service training programme some 16 years ago. I recalled that during this time our ITT programme was driven by the content of Circular 4/98 (DfEE, 1998) which introduced centrally mandated ITT curricula and standards for the award of Qualified Teacher Status (QTS). The Circular sought to ‘equip all new teachers with the knowledge, understanding and skills needed to play their part in raising pupil performance across the education system’ (p.3). It included detailed annexes which constituted the ITT curricula and specified the essential core knowledge, understanding and skills which all trainees were to be taught. The level of curricula content was very prescriptive.
