This article examines the relationship between pre-service teacher education (ITE) for primary schooling and primary teaching in England between 1974 and 2014, and explores the "fitness of purpose" of the current system of preparing teachers for the classrooms of the twenty-first century. Our historical analysis suggests that, despite 40…

Early in its period of office the new United Kingdom coalition government produced an Education White Paper containing potentially devastating news for higher education training institutions in England and Wales. Drawing on research papers and policy documents, this article takes an historic approach to map the changing face of teacher training…

The paper presents a radical critique of the competence-driven initial teacher education (ITE) paradigm, focusing on the official standards for qualified teacher status in England and Wales, the legal basis for teacher education courses, and specifically the Postgraduate Certificate in Education (PGCE). Broadly, the developing perspective here is…

Pre-service teacher education in England has been essentially school-based since 1992. The article offers a critique of this design from the perspective of a practitioner and researcher working in one of its most influential schemes. The fundamental problem described concerns an impoverished understanding of experience that underpins how beginning…

Almost a decade ago, the new subject of citizenship was created in the English National Curriculum and several universities were funded to train teachers in this new subject. This presented a rare challenge, namely how to train people to teach a subject that did not exist in schools, and in which they were unlikely to have a specialist degree. In…

This paper investigates how teacher education programmes provide adequate preparation for its prospective teachers. It uses adult numeracy teacher education in the post-compulsory education sector in England as exemplar. Using findings from two research projects on adult numeracy teacher education courses, the article investigates the applications…