QUALITY IN TEACHER EDUCATION: AN ETHNOGRAPHIC ACCOUNT

ABSTRACT

There has been an attempt to insert market forces into sectors of state spending which has been accompanied by a concern with managerialism. In the educational arena this has resulted in moves towards greater accountability set against the need to monitor quality. This is needed because schools have failed the nation and partly this is the fault of inadequate teaching. One remedy is to subject teachers to regular appraisal, another is to reform teacher education courses. In relation to teacher education CATE clearly spells out how teacher education courses are to be developed and all teacher education institutions have to comply with these criteria; a form of quality control has been inserted. Through a necessarily limited account of work in one institution of Higher Education it is argued that any attemts to measure and debate a construct as complex as ‘quality’ is complicated when the subject of all this attention is an aspect of human endeavour. Quality cannot be considered in isolation from real social contexts. Finally exhortation and crude attempts to enhance teaching through some simple versions of ‘quality control might not be the most successful of strategies; praise, support and proper resourcing all have a part to play.