The Views of Recently Qualified Primary PGCE Teachers and their Headteachers on Effective Initial Teacher Education

abstract

The Teacher Training Agency (TTA), established in 1994, aims to raise standards in initial teacher education (ITE) in England and Wales and to disseminate information about effective teacher education practice. Inevitably, however, effectiveness in teacher education is a problematic concept. This article explores the idea of effectiveness in ITE, reporting interviews with 12 recently qualified primary teachers and their head‐teachers. Both groups viewed effectiveness overwhelmingly in terms of the adequacy of the teacher education curriculum in preparing students to teach the national curriculum in schools. There were mixed views about the ways in which ideas like critical reflection contributed to course effectiveness. It is concluded that effectiveness is necessarily a dynamic social construct. Any official, centrally driven view of effective ITE should be, and is likely to be, contested.