Professional standards, evidence and collaboration : Cultural disruption in teacher education

This book is about significant cultural disruption in initial teacher education. The disruption can be traced to two main catalysts. The first was a policy change, and the second was spearheaded through a research and development initiative that saw an unprecedented number of universities mobilising for collective agency. Their shared focus was to establish the readiness of teacher education graduates for professional practice. Initially, the policy change took the form of a requirement for preservice teachers to successfully complete a teaching performance assessment to demonstrate professional competence. In the policy enactment, however, research-informed change involved the formation of new networks and interrelationships across multiple educational stakeholders and sites where education policy is remade in and through practice and research. To set the scene for what follows in the book, this chapter sketches the contestation surrounding teacher education and highlights the turn to data, standards and professional judgement as essential in building an evidence base to show the quality of teacher preparation. The chapter also presents an overview of the four parts of the book. Taken together, these bring into the forum the voices of teacher educators (Part 2), followed by provocations from leading education researchers on changes in education, and includes a commentary on getting teaching performance assessments right in the best interests of learners (Part 3). To conclude the book, Part 4 presents future directions for sustainable change in teacher education.