The impact of School Direct on teacher education and teacher educator roles

1
The impact of School Direct on teacher education
and teacher educator roles

• Caroline Brennan, Jean Murray and Andrew Read
• University of East London

2
Questions and design

• What kind of work are HE-based teacher educators
  doing in the emerging contexts of the School
  Direct? Is this new / different work or a
  continuation / extension of existing work
  patterns?
• What are the associated changes in roles and
  identities? What are the knowledge bases and
  skills being deployed?
• What kinds of sense are individuals and groups
  making of the new context/s? Are there
  accompanying identity shifts?

3
Research design issues

• Main data collection on-going summer winter
  2014. Questionnaires (target 60, snowball sample)
  interviews with key informants (11 to date).
• Piloting informal interviews 17 HE-based
  teacher educators, 5 HEIs in 2012/13.
• Ethics / data sensitivity institutions and
  individuals
• Factionalised vignettes or pen vignettes - same
  ethical rationale for use as in pen portrait
  methods

4
Teacher educators work 2000 2012?

• McNamara and Murray (2013) argued that by 2012
• Levels of bureaucracy increased regulation in
  ITE and in universities in general (Murray et al,
  2011)
• Variations in types degree of stability in
  HEI-school partnerships
• Many Schools of Education showed ambivalence in
  their commitments to supporting research activity
  in the run up to REF 2014
• Successive reforms and an increasingly casualised
  workforce had eroded some of the traditional
  roles of HE-based teacher educators and replaced
  them with other work
• Reductions in HE-based teacher educators direct
  involvement in practicum in some universities

5
Teacher educators work 2000 2012?

• Time in managing partnerships with schools and
  student-school-HE relations increasing? - Ellis
  et al (2012) termed this relationship
  maintenance
• Changed and substantially increased roles for
  school-based mentors and for HE-educators
  increase in pedagogy of guidance work (Guile
  Lucas, 2004)
• Emphasis on experiential, recent and relevant
  knowledge of schooling within teacher educator
  professionalism - prioritised in recruitment
  (Ellis et al., 2010) and monitored through Ofsted
  and peer / student scrutiny
• Knowledge and pedagogical skills of teacher
  education itself - or knowledge of teaching
  teachers (Loughran, 2006) still under-valued or
  unrecognised (Murray et al. 2011)

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Vignette 1 School Direct smart shoppers

• Schools with School Direct places becoming smart
  shoppers
• ITT / partnership managers spending considerable
  time in schools marketing their programmes to
  schools and / or undertaking detailed financial
  negotiations around the business model on offer
• XX school will be holding interviews for ITT
  providers interested in working with them on the
  School Direct scheme on xx date. Please confirm
  your interest and we will then allocate you a
  time slot.
• Teacher educators repositioned as marketing and
  sales executives

7
Vignette 2 School Direct branded forms of ITT

• 2012/13 xx schools in the HiStar Academy chain
  worked with HEI xx for all their (SD) ITT
  provision.
• 2013/14 HiStar Academy chain moves away from HEI
  xxs provision, deciding to train its own SD
  trainees. Training programme. Effectively SD
  trainees become teachers when the schools judge
  standards met by individuals. HEI educators
  working with HiStar to support trainee
  development. No accredited ITT, although HiStar
  Academy chain now considering formation of its
  own SCITT with HE input....
• Teacher educators repositioned as consultants,
  working for free and giving away their
  intellectual capital

8
Vignette 3 School Direct emerging recruitment
practices

• School XX is recruiting with a partner HEI -
  for a School Direct trainee in a shortage
  subject. The interview panel consists of head
  teacher, head of subject, year tutor and HE-based
  teacher educator. There are 4 candidates, 3 of
  whom have degrees in the subject. The chosen
  candidate, however, has only an A level in the
  designated subject and little other subject
  knowledge, but he is a career-changing parent and
  will fit in here. The knowledge / guidance of
  the HE-based teacher educator and the subject
  knowledge imperative over-ridden.
• Teacher educators gatekeeping experience
  marginalised

9
Vignette 4 School Direct pedagogies of
guidance on beginning teachers as learners

• School XX interviews for 2 School Direct salaried
  places in shortage subjects by asking candidates
  to teach a lesson in their subject. All 6
  candidates are initially rejected because the
  lesson they teach does not include any element of
  Assessment for Learning.
• Following discussion with the partner HEI on the
  training potential of two of the candidates
  they are ultimately appointed and start work in
  September on the SD scheme
• Teacher educators positioned as gatekeepers
  experts in student potential / growth

10
Vignette 5 School Direct pedagogies of
guidance on beginning teachers as learners

• School Y has placed its 3 SD trainees on the PGCE
  programme of HEI xx. Trainees attend the
  university 1 day a week and undertake training in
  schools for 4 days.
• 1 trainee of the 3 reports very heavy teaching
  timetables, often with full classes, leaving
  little time for observations, group teaching,
  other forms of workplace learning. HEI educator
  reports negotiating with school around workload.
  School positions trainee as already a very good
  teacher who can cope with the workload. Teaching
  heavy timetable is good practice for her.
• Other 2 trainees have very different training
  programmes, with less direct teaching.
• Teacher educators attempt to act as trainee
  defender and negotiator, unsuccessfully.....

11
Vignette 6 (Re)negotiating the curriculum /
assessment modes

• School xx requests that the PGCE course followed
  by their School Direct trainees includes
  substantial coverage and written assessments on
  topics x, y and z.
• All named topics have clear relevance to the
  schools institutional teaching practices and are
  instrumental in terms of their focus e.g.
  knowledge of behaviour management must be
  assessed. All part of learning the XXX Academy
  way
• Teacher educators decision making on curriculum
  and assessment explicitly challenged

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Differentiations

• Differentiated effects across the sector e.g.
  smart shopper / SD recruitment pressures most
  intense for universities in urban areas with high
  density of providers and / or where partnerships
  in flux. Pressures lowest where existing
  partnerships stable and well established
  (especially with lead schools in Teaching School
  alliances) and / or less density of ITE
  provision.
• Differentiated effects across responsibility
  levels / roles. Impact heaviest on those in
  partnership / senior management roles.
• Changing patterns of school-university engagement
  over PGCE year as a re-drawing of partnership
  boundaries and practices occurs? Shifting
  patterns of teacher educators work?

13
Overall findings

• Teacher educators investing time in securing
  School Direct trainees and teaching schools to
  work in collaborative partnerships
• New forms of recruitment which in turn bring a
  shift in the gatekeeping responsibilities of
  teacher educators
• Shifting forms of trust because of the changed
  economic bargain between schools and universities
• Teacher educators creating new structures and
  relationships in action as the landscape of
  teacher education shifts around them
• Emergence of new teacher educator-as-broker roles
  
• Where are the tensions in the new work?
• How much of this new work is focused on
  developing the quality of trainee learning and/or
  improving quality? How much is focused on mentor
  / school based teacher educator learning and
  improving the quality of work with trainees?

14
The future?

• In the context of last years patterns of
  allocations where are we now?
• Fears around the dive to the bottom in terms of
  price (and quality?) and further moves towards
  simplified and instrumental models of teacher
  learning. Yet more bureaucracy in the teacher
  education system?
• But where / are there productivities/positives/o
  pportunities, e.g. new pedagogies / new research
  opportunities? Are there emerging new roles for
  school based teacher educators and higher
  education based teacher educators
• McNamara Murray, 2013 argue that new spaces for
  teacher education partnerships to become part
  of a moral learning process (that deals with
  how people who have a stake in the subject at
  hand, interactively assign, re-interpret and
  re-negotiate responsibilities and do not regard
  responsibility as instrumental, something that is
  assigned by an authority (Visse et al 2012
  281). Opportunities for the development of a
  critical pedagogy of teacher education?