Teacher education in transition : re-forming professionalism?

The 1990s were a period of quite dramatic change for initial teacher education in England and Wales with wave after wave of Government sponsored reforms.

The changes introduced were highly controversial as those in higher education who were traditionally responsible for teacher education felt marginalised; many believed that what was at stake in these reforms was the nature of teacher professionalism itself.

It was against this background of policy change and political ferment that the Economic and Social Research Council funded two successive research projects to evaluate the consequences of the reforms.

The projects, known as MOTE (Modes of Teacher Education), included two national surveys, as well as more detailed case studies of particular courses.

In this volume, the authors draw upon these two major studies, as well as more recent policy analysis to give a fascinating overview of the impact of policy change throughout the 1990s.

In doing so, they also consider whether a new form of professionalism was indeed created.