The professional learning of teachers and school leaders occurs in multiple spaces and potentially throughout their careers. Professional learning matters because it creates opportunities for educational change at a variety of scales from individual, institutional and system-level. Given this connection, it is valid to ask: ‘What do universities contribute to professional learning now and in the future?’ This blog post is based on a short contribution to the opening session at the BERA 2023 conference that posed just that question.
I started my contribution with my takeaway message that an essential role for universities – which translates into being an essential role for academics who teach and research in education – is to ‘hold the space’ for professional learning.
To put this into context, I can offer an English perspective. For a decade the teacher education sector in England has been in the hands of the Department for Education (DfE) policymakers who have viewed teacher training as a market to be manipulated. This is illustrated by the results of the 2022 Initial Teacher Training (ITT) accreditation process. In 2015, Ellis and McNichol argued that as a sector the universities had not recognised or responded with enough force to the threats of the policy implementation of the ideologically based transition from teacher education to teacher training in England. The lack of policy attrition gained by the 2013–14 BERA-RSA inquiry into ‘Research and the Teaching Profession’ was also symptomatic of the DfE trajectory away from the broad contribution that universities could offer in terms of professional learning (BERA-RSA, 2014).
