The double-think at the heart of teacher training

What is the point of initial teacher education? Based on my experience as a teacher and teacher educator, I pose the question in light of the recent junior cycle assessment “debate”, the general lip-service paid to initial teacher education (ITE) and the changing expectations of the modern academy.

Over 30 years of engagement with some 7,000 student teachers I would have amassed a tidy sum if I had €1 for every time one of them said there can be no meaningful curriculum change in Ireland without changes to assessment.

These students, based on their own experience of schooling, realised that overdependence on external, summative exams promoted teaching to the test and rote learning, with the result that the assessment tail was wagging the curriculum dog. We’d have surely avoided the recent stalemate around the assessment and accreditation of our 14-15-year- olds’ learning if these students and their peers held fast to their opinions on assessment.

So what changes after graduation? When newly qualified professionals enter the work environment they are inevitably socialised into the culture of their profession.

Gleeson, O'Flaherty, Galvin and Hennessy (Teachers and Teaching, 2015) sought student teachers' views on the proposed junior cycle reforms immediately before and after school placement. While very positively disposed towards the principle of school-based assessment, they were significantly less convinced about its practicality and feasibility after placement. It seems reasonable to suggest that future students will continue to jettison their beliefs about assessment reform once they experience socialisation.

Irish ITE has recently been subject to unprecedented attention to standards, course duration and so on. But the impact of these reforms will be tested when graduates encounter the prevailing scepticism of many teachers about education studies and research.

The Teaching Council’s first policy document wisely defined teacher education as a continuum from ITE through induction to ongoing professional development. It’s both paradoxical and regrettable that recent council thinking eschews the ITE experience in the same way that second-level teachers remain oblivious to their students’ primary school learning experiences.

These ITE experiences are barely acknowledged in Cosán, its consultative document on continuing professional development, and in Droichead, its policy on teacher induction, bridging ITE and school. This failure to acknowledge the importance of continuity is a recipe for further fragmentation.

Its statutory constitution means elected and nominated members of the teaching profession have an effective veto at the Teaching Council.

This is as it should be, but if it wishes to champion genuine change in classrooms, the council must recognise and challenge the influence of socialisation on newly qualified teachers.

The ITE sector must take its fair share of responsibility for the glaring dichotomy between current evidence-based thinking about teaching, and learning and the practice of teaching in schools.

There is, however, a real danger that this gap is about to widen in an academic environment, where the prevailing mantra is “publish or perish”. Joint tutoring of placement students by both ITE faculty and teachers in schools has enabled some communication between the two sectors, but the changing higher education environment creates a dilemma.

Does the teacher-educator prioritise teacher education activities in spite of their poor currency in both schools and the academy? Or do they enhance their academic careers by prioritising research, publishing their findings in journals that are unlikely to be read by practising teachers?

In the latter scenario, the tutoring and assessment of ITE students during placement becomes the sole responsibility of casual university staff, mostly retired teachers unfamiliar with the ITE programme, and/or teachers in placement schools.

This is a recipe for double-think, where student teachers engage with one set of educational beliefs and principles at college, while being assessed according to different criteria on school placement.

For example, while current research emphasises the importance of critical reflective practice, it gains little traction in schools. Contrasting beliefs about the relationship between student assessment and learning is another example. If further distance opens up between ITE and schools, this will exacerbate the socialisation, turning the current gap into a chasm.

The State invests significantly in ITE. The formation of teachers should be intellectually rigorous, theoretically informed, and research-driven. That’s why the HEA-commissioned Sahlberg report recommended establishing collegial institutes to improve the research capacity of our education departments.

Against that background, what’s the point of initial teacher education? Given the impact of socialisation on young teachers, and the lip-service towards ITE in the broader scheme of things, we must look critically at the disjuncture between the initial and subsequent phases of teacher education and establish greater coherence. The current stalemate, which is injurious to teaching, is not an option.

• Prof Jim Gleeson of the Faculty of Education and Arts, Australian Catholic University, Brisbane, is a former senior lecturer in education at UL and member of the Teaching Council of Ireland