Professionalism and partnership: panaceas for teacher education in Scotland?

Abstract

A critical reading of the Donaldson Report on teacher education in Scotland revealswhat might be termed a 'panacea approach' to addressing perceived current problems in relation to the quality of teacher education. In particular, the essence of the Donaldson Report is that teachers need to embrace 'twenty-first century professionalism' through a partnership approach to teacher education. However, neither 'professionalism', nor 'partnership' are defined or justified explicitly. Through critical discourse analysis we offer possible interpretations of professionalism and partnership within the context of the Donaldson Report. These interpretations include accepting the use of such terms as simple unconscious and uncritical adherence to a dominant discourse, and the idea that the wholesale embracing of partnership is a much more insidious attempt by the state to promote network governance, thereby limiting potential dominance of any one particular stakeholder group. Through systematic consideration of the immediate textual context of phrases relating to professionalism and partnership, and through a more holistic analysis of the wider policy agenda, we offer a critical reading of the Report. We conclude with a plea that as the rush to attend to the more tangible, operational aspects of the proposed reform gather momentum, such a panacea approach to solving perceived problems needs to be critiqued openly.

Pedagogical bricolage and teacher agency: Towards a culture of creative professionalism

“…This is, arguably, a problematic state of affairs not only for teacher educators but also for school managers, at least within the scope of traditional 'top down' forms of organisation and management, though perhaps a dose of bricolage in the professional practice of teacher educators and school leaders might go some way to ameliorate the difficulty. After all, social practices and professional discourse are contagious and prescriptive frameworks are intended to breed conformity rather than autonomy (Kennedy, 2007;Kennedy & Doherty, 2012). If we agree that creativity, flexibility and empowerment are positive educational outcomes for teachers and learners alike, this implies that these characteristics should be core values throughout the education system.…”

Developing a new ITE programme: a story of compliant and disruptive narratives across different cultural spaces

“…The post-Donaldson 2 narrative of partnership has quietly been side-lined (see Kennedy & Doherty, 2012, for discussion of the 'partnership as a panacea' period), to be replaced by a much more centrally directed form of governance which increasingly relies on the achievement of performance indicators as published in the National Improvement Framework (Scottish Government, 2018).…”

Changing the landscape of school/university partnership in Northern Scotland

“…On the cautionary side, Mockler (2013) and Kennedy and Doherty (2012) So, while the partnership -in this case schools, local authorities and universities -has a shared responsibility for teacher education, it is mandated and ultimately controlled by government. It could be suggested, therefore, that in the absence of an explicitly articulated educational rationale for a partnership approach in the Donaldson Report, that the promotion of what could be termed 'network governance' is more to do with issues of control :…( p.845) There are, however, helpful summaries from a number of authors (Peters 2002;Burstein et al 1999) which draw upon the history of partnership and suggest a number of conditions which effective schooluniversity partnerships must achieve.…”