When the object becomes the subject: Redefining the Teachers' Standards as learner standards

In England, the Teachers’ Standards are often used formatively to guide quality improvement towards a final summative, quality assurance process which takes place to ensure that the standards have been met and the trainee teacher can be awarded qualified teacher status (QTS). In this blog post, we posit that the mechanism that guides these improvement processes for novices directs them mostly towards their own teacher role with not enough focus on student learning and progress, something which Coe et al. (2014) describe as the reoccurring ‘yardstick’ in defining effective teaching.