AHDS Annual Conference November 2014 'Teaching Scotland's Future: What you need to know and do.' Workshop from Moyra Boland of Glasgow University on partnership working

1. Partnership working in
Scotland: the evolution of
a new model of Early
Phase teacher education
Moyra Boland

2. Context
• Mergers of Colleges of Education with universities (around
the turn of the millennium)
• Economic factors (student numbers, prices, staffing levels
fluctuated, cost of conventional assessments)
Catalysts
• Rapid and deepening engagement of some staff with
international teacher education research
• Policy context – need to improve the quality of
School Experience placements

3. Research Influences: inter alia
Olwen Mcnamara, Peter Gilroy, Anne
Edwards, Donald McIntyre, Hazel
Hagger, Ian Menter, Christine Forde,
Marilyn Cochran-Smith, Linda Darling
Hammond, Kenneth Zeichner, Judyth
Sachs, Helen Timperley, Sharon
Feiman-Nemser, Bob Lingard...

4. • Philosophical influence
• Based on a high view of teacher
professionalism
• Hannah Arendt The Human Condition
• “Plato opens a gulf between the two modes of action, archein
and prattein (“beginning” and “achieving”), which according
to Greek understanding were interconnected....Plato was the
first to introduce the division between those who know and
do not act and those who act and do not know, instead of the
old articulation of action into beginning and achieving, so
that knowing what to do and doing it became two altogether
different performances.” (1958; 1998 pp.222-223)

5. Technicist construction of teacher Progressive construction of teacher
Teachers receive knowledge Teachers generate knowledge
Teachers implement policy Teachers engage in policy-making
processes
Teachers are largely passive in the policy
space and active in the classroom
Teachers are active in both spaces
Teachers have reducing autonomy Teachers have autonomy generated by and
justified by their practice
Classrooms confine teachers Teachers discuss learning and teaching
issues together
Teachers ‘deliver’ learning Teachers give informed quality teaching
Leadership is hierarchical Leadership is distributed
Teachers are disempowered Teachers are empowered

6. Policy Imperative: Teaching Scotland’s Future (2011)
“Seventy-eight per cent of respondents to our online
survey (n=2381) indicated that the support they received from
the school during placements was 'very effective or
'effective'. Fifty-one per cent said that the support from their
university was 'very effective' or 'effective', but 20% said
support from the university was 'very ineffective' or
'ineffective'.
We need to find ways of encouraging and assuring a
more consistently high quality of placements within initial
teacher education.” (p.43)

7. • Necessitates partnership: could not do this on our
own
– Glasgow City Council
– 2 secondary schools
– 11 primary schools
– 29 student volunteers
– 2 x 0.5 university tutors (interviewed by GCC and UG)
• Imperatives of collaboration and communication

8. support support
Clinical Model
2012

9. Key features of the model
• University staff committed to working in school
clusters for placement duration supervising 27
students FTE
• Seminars
• Learning rounds
• Joint assessment

10. Changing student experience
• Structured learning experiences in school
• Dual sites of learning – blending of theory and
practice across both sites
• Primary and secondary students working together
in clusters
• Robust assessment – no mixed messages

11. Changing roles of teachers
• Equal partners
• Complementary roles
• Affirmed as curricular experts
• Re-engagement with professional knowledge and
understanding
• Career-long teacher learning

12. Changing roles of university tutors
• Changing professional identity
• Theoretically-informed pedagogical experts
• Focussed on enabling clinical reasoning in teacher
candidates
• Facilitating joint assessment – combines the day-to-day
classroom expert with the tutor who knows
about teacher candidate development

13. The Future
• Career-long professional learning linking to
professional standards
• Government funding
• Masters-level profession
• Better outcomes for children in Scotland