The reform of initial teacher education in Wales: from vision to reality

ABSTRACT

Over the last four years, initial teacher education in Wales has been fundamentally reformed. The stimulus for those reforms were concerns about the quality of current provision, but more importantly a recognition by the Welsh Government that if their wider reforms of curriculum and assessment were to succeed, then teachers themselves had a key role to play. Teachers would no longer be simply required to ‘deliver’ a curriculum defined by others; they themselves would need to become active agents in realising that curriculum in ways that were appropriate for the children and young people they taught. What is being required is a new vision of teacher professionalism in Wales. But what are the implications of these changes for initial teacher education? The Welsh Government has taken the view that they demand a fundamentally different conception of how initial teacher education is organised, with both universities and schools working closely together to support student teacher learning. This paper sets out the background to these recent reforms, and then examines the way in which three key dimensions of the new model are being implemented in practice. They are: co-construction and governance; integrating university and school perspectives; and re-visioning mentoring.

KEYWORDS:

• Wales
• initial teacher education
• teacher agency

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. An updated version of the MOTE study has recently been undertaken by Whiting et al. (2018).

2. University of Oxford, Cardiff University, Central South Consortium (CSC), the Education Achievement Service (EAS), Education through Regional Working (ERW) and City of Cardiff Council.

3. Other partners in CaBan include the GwE, the School Effectiveness and Improvement Service for North Wales and the Bangor based research institute CIEREI (Collaborative Institute for Education Research, Evidence and Impact).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

John Furlong

John Furlong is an Emeritus Professor and former Director of the Department of Education at the University of Oxford. His main research interests focus on initial teacher education (ITE), educational research policy and the links between the two. A former President of BERA, in 2013–2014 he chaired the BERA-RSA inquiry into research and teacher education. He was a member of the Education Panel for both the 2008 and 2014 UK REFs; in 2014 he chaired the Hong Kong Education RAE Panel. Throughout his career, John Furlong has researched and published extensively on different aspects of teacher education policy and practice. In 2014 he was appointed as adviser to the Welsh Government on Initial Teacher Education; in 2017 he became the first Chair of the Education Council for Wales’ ITE Accreditation Board. He was awarded the OBE for services to educational research in 2018.

Jeremy Griffiths

Jeremy Griffiths is the Executive Director of the CaBan initial teacher education (ITE) partnership. CaBan is a partnership between Bangor University, University of Chester, partner schools and the regional school improvement service. He has over 35 years of experience as an education professional in a range of settings and roles. Jeremy has led ITE programmes in his schools over many years and has recently authored an article in the Welsh Journal of Education on the development of CaBan under the new Welsh ITE accreditation framework. His research interests include teacher professional learning and leadership and evidence-based practice. He is an Associate of the National Academy for Educational Leadership in Wales and recently presented at the ICSEI conference 2020 in Morocco on the Welsh education reforms.

Cecilia Hannigan-Davies

Cecilia Hannigan-Davies is currently Deputy Dean of the Cardiff School of Education and Social Policy at Cardiff Metropolitan University. She was born and educated in the Republic of Ireland, and has been an academic for over thirty years. She holds an Honours Bachelor’s Degree (QTS) in Education from St Patrick’s College, Dublin, a Master’s Degree in Computer Science and Applications from the Queen’s University of Belfast and a Doctorate in Computer Science (Multimedia Intelligent Tutoring Systems) from Ulster University. She has published several papers in international journals and conference proceedings on the subject of technology-enhanced learning and has been a speaker and best practices presenter at many international conferences and workshops in the USA and Europe. Prior to commencing work at Cardiff Metropolitan in 2008, Cecilia spent fifteen years as an academic and e-learning consultant with Ulster University, two years as a courseware developer on the Teaching and Learning Technology Programme (TLTP) at the Queen’s University of Belfast, and seven years as a primary school teacher in the Republic of Ireland.

Alma Harris

Alma Harris has held Professorial posts at the University of Warwick, University College London, the University of Malaya, the University of Bath, and Swansea University. She is internationally known for her research and writing on educational leadership, education policy and school improvement. In 2009–2012, she was a Senior Policy Adviser to the Welsh Government assisting with the process of system-wide reform. Professor Harris is Past President of the International Congress for School Effectiveness and School Improvement (ICSEI). In 2016, she was appointed to the International Council of Education Advisers (ICEA) to offer policy advice to Scotland’s First Minister and Deputy First Minister. She is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences, a Fellow and Council Member of the Learned Society of Wales, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

Michelle Jones

Michelle Jones is currently Head of Swansea University School of Education and Associate Professor of Leadership and Professional Learning. She has previously held academic positions at the University of Bath, and the University of Malaya where she was the Deputy Director of the Institute of Educational Leadership. Dr Jones has worked with government agencies in England, Russia, Singapore, Australia, Malaysia, and Wales, assisting with the design and delivery of their leadership and professional learning programmes. Most recently, Dr Jones has been assisting the Welsh Government as Chair of the Professional Learning Accreditation Group for Wales. She is the Academic Lead for the new National MA Education (Wales) which will be launched in September 2021. Dr Jones is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.