Routledge Initial Teacher Education at Scale: Quality Conundrums

Debates about what constitutes quality in initial teacher education have resulted in a series of quality conundrums that have to be unravelled by teacher educators. Using the lens of scale and adopting a new approach to understanding quality, this book draws upon empirical research into five large-scale, high-quality university-based teacher education providers in Australia, Canada, England, New Zealand and the US. The resulting model of initial teacher education practice shows how ideological concepts and accountability structures around teacher education are in constant tension with operational realities. The book explores how successful large-scale providers have reconciled those tensions and conundrums to ensure their provision is consistently high quality. The accounts also present a robust defence for university-based teacher education. The practice-based accounts of how tensions around quality and scale are being reconciled reveal the competing discourses around teacher professionalism, research and the role of the university in teacher education. The analysis presented promises to change the way we view high-quality teacher education across all providers and international contexts, not just those of large scale. This book will be of great interest to teacher educators, policymakers and educational leaders. Review "This is a brilliant treatise on the current challenges that confront university-based initial teacher education. A thoughtful and well documented discussion problematizing what is meant by quality in teacher education practices, research, knowledge, teacher educators and governance frames the cross-national research carried out by the author to illustrate each one of these challenges. The central question of what is involved in taking quality teacher education at scale is answered in the two chapters discussing the contexts of transformation through the architectures of practice and space. The last chapter on Modelling ITE Practice brings together the valuable lessons accumulated via this exciting and innovative research project. A clear message that emerges from this work is the importance of securing the sustainability of university-based teacher education for the common good. The book is a must for those interested in a thoughtful and critical analysis of how socioeconomic, cultural, and political contexts are shaping teacher education across different settings and how diverse institutions are managing to respond to these forces." Maria Teresa Tatto, Professor, Division of Educational Leadership and Innovation, Southwest Borderlands Professor of Comparative Education, Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, Arizona State University "This is a highly original and important study of large scale teacher education provision in five locations around the world. Drawing on her extensive fieldwork and on a wide range of literature, Clare Brooks brings the spatial perspective of a human geographer to explore a range of 'quality conundrums'. The book will stimulate critical debates in policy and practice in teacher education for many years to come." Ian Menter, Emeritus Professor of Teacher Education, Department of Education, University of Oxford. President of British Educational Research Association, 2013-2015 "Professor Brooks’s background in geography shines though in this wonderfully nuanced account of the effects of global and local discourses on teacher education in five different countries. Based on rich in-depth case studies of five universities with large teacher education programmes, she skilfully explores how they navigate the ‘quality conundrums’ that both support and threaten the quality of teacher education in those (and other) locations. This is a must read for those working in the fields of teacher education and policy, along with all concerned about the relationship between teacher education quality and equity whilst facing intense reform and scrutiny internationally.