Initial teacher education (ITE) has increasingly come under public and political scrutiny in several countries due to a growing focus on competitive international rankings (Douglas-Gardner & Callender, 2023). This is combined with the rather simplistic argument posited by policymakers that when graduate teachers are well prepared by their programmes of study, they will be ready for the challenges of the classroom, and, by association, student educational outcomes will improve (Stronge et al., 2011).
Furthermore, good teacher preparation is considered essential to stem the rising tide of teacher attrition, a situation that has reached a crisis point in several countries. In Australia, ITE has come under relentless fire, with ongoing reviews determining how universities should ensure they are graduating ‘classroom-ready’ teachers (see for example Australian Government, 2022).
Externally driven and often politically informed, the resultant accountabilities and requirements have resulted in a significant narrowing of what must be addressed in teacher education programmes, a movement seen worldwide (Salto, 2022). With these programmes focusing on addressing the requirements of externally driven standards and their associated prioritisation of content knowledge and classroom skills, the development of broader, transferrable dispositions that are essential to preservice teachers’ career-long identities as professional learners such as curiosity, critical thinking, autonomy and open-mindedness may be pushed to the side.
