Does Initial Teacher Education (in England) Have a Future?

In spite of challenges, initial teacher education in England may yet have a future, but only if policy makers come to recognise that a narrow training model can only achieve so much. Teacher education (as opposed to teacher training) recognises teaching as a 'professional endeavour', with teachers prepared in a way that will enable them to become competent and confident professionals who can take their rightful place as 'public intellectuals' (Cochran-Smith 2006), equipped to serve the needs not just of the pupils in their classrooms but also of the schools and communities in which they work and live. Cochran-Smith (2004) had previously discussed the 'problem' of teacher education, and shown that, at various stages, it has been conceptualised, in turn, as a 'training problem' a 'learning problem' and, finally a 'policy problem' (2004, 295). The authors would suggest that, with the recruitment of new teachers falling steadily year-on-year and a government-mandated model of teacher 'training' that imposes a narrowly conceived core content framework within a strict compliance model, teacher education, in England now risks becoming a 'professional' problem. The future of initial teacher education in England may therefore depend on those who advocate strongly for teaching as a 'professional endeavour' (Winch et al., 2015, 202), and devise ITE programmes which meet the stipulated minimum requirements but are not constrained by otherwise reductive conceptualisations of teacher professional learning.