European Journal of Teacher Education

ISSN: 0261-9768 (Print) 1469-5928 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cete20

Teacher educations role in educational change

Kay Livingston
To cite this article: Kay Livingston (2016) Teacher educations role in educational change,
European Journal of Teacher Education, 39:1, 1-4, DOI: 10.1080/02619768.2016.1135531
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02619768.2016.1135531

Published online: 05 Feb 2016.

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Date: 12 March 2016, At: 21:40

European Journal of Teacher Education, 2016

Vol. 39, No. 1, 14, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02619768.2016.1135531

EDITORIAL

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Teacher educations role in educational change

Teacher educators have important responsibilities supporting and challenging the
development of teachers for the future. Yet it often seems that teacher education is
caught in the winds of change of school curricula, examination systems and educational policies more generally. Rather than taking a leadership role, teacher education institutions often appear to be reacting to these changes and challenging for
their place in the change process. For example, university faculties of education in
some countries are voicing concern over how to sustain teacher education programmes when other providers, such as schools, are taking responsibly for initial
and continuing professional development of teachers. The speed and complexity of
changes in society signal the need for teacher educators and teacher education programmes to be more proactive and prominent in their contribution to the change
process. New ways of understanding knowledge and how we learn; new and powerful technologies; new patterns of integration and new migration ows across the
world need more dynamic forms of teacher education. Teachers need a strong foundation of initial teacher education but they also need to understand themselves as
learners ready to learn and adapt their practice throughout their careers, supported
and challenged by a range of different teacher education opportunities. A continuum of teacher learning involves multi-layered interconnected approaches to teacher
education (Livingston 2014). This means that it must be recognised that teacher
education takes place in a number of settings and that the role of teacher educator
is taken up by different people working in universities, schools and other contexts.
Each is likely to have something unique to offer and should be ready to participate
in teacher education partnerships and collaborative learning communities. Collaboration and enquiry not only connect people to each other but to new and diverse
sources of knowledge and skills, and to different cultural settings (Livingston and
Shiach 2010). A collaborative approach changes the nature of the activities, the
processes and the people involved in teacher education through dialogue which
challenges and extends everyones learning (Livingston 2008). A new guide published by the European Commission sets out ten key principles for targeted policy
actions to transform teacher education. It emphasises a continuum of teacher
education incorporating collaborative cultures and practices. The Guide (Shaping
career-long perspectives on teaching: A guide on policies to improve initial teacher
education) was written by members of the Education and Training 2020 Working
Group on Schools Policy (201415). The group comprised experts nominated by
30 European countries and European social partner organisations. I was invited to
act as a critical friend and review the guide and I would recommend all those with
an interest in teacher education to read the guide which is available at http://ec.
europa.eu/education/policy/strategic-framework/expert-groups_en.htm#schools). The
guide includes suggested policy actions in relation to the continuum, collaborative
learning and governance of teacher education.
2016 Association for Teacher Education in Europe

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Editorial

The rst article in this issue highlights the importance of teachers continuing to
learn and develop their practice throughout their career. It provides a good example
of an aspect of teacher education that requires a strong foundation in initial teacher
education but also requires ongoing teacher learning as pupils learning needs
change over time. The article concerns the ways in which teachers are prepared for
inclusive practice in order to provide for the increasing diversity of learners in
school systems across Europe and beyond. The authors, Alexiadou and Essex, draw
on research carried out in one teacher education course in England and examine
the ways in which the science programme in particular prepares student teachers
for inclusive practice. They explain that teacher education programmes in England
are expected to prepare future teachers for inclusive practice and to deal with diversity of their pupils in all its forms. However, they point out that the context of such
practice is one of highly differentiated school environments, where the pressures of
the market place through competition with other schools, student choice, publication of examination results, are combined with pressures for high academic standards. Alexiadou and Essex argue that the achievement of real inclusion in
teacher education programmes needs pedagogies of praxis that move beyond (and
sometimes against) the ofcial policy denitions of inclusion, and draw instead on
a more critical approach to the formation of future professionals.
The second and third articles also discuss teacher education within the context of
educational change. In both articles the context is Ireland. Dolan, Waldron, Pike and
Greenwood in the second article discuss the ongoing intensive process of change in
teacher education and indicate that the changing relationships between schools and
higher education institutions have been central to the process. In this context of
change Dolan et al revisit a longitudinal study of primary student teachers engagement and experience across Ireland from the perspective of learning to teach geography during school placement. From the results of their study they emphasise the
importance of developing a shared understanding of what constitutes good practice
between schools and HEIs. They suggest that this should include the voices of student teachers and the development of a supportive context that offers them the
potential to inuence change processes. In the third article, McGarr and McCormack
also draw on data collected from student teachers during their school placement.
The authors explore student teachers reections through the lens of counterfactual
(what if or if only) thinking and examine its role in encouraging student teachers
to reect on negative critical incidents. From their analysis of the data McGarr and
McCormack say that reections on critical incidents were often not critical in nature. They found that the student teachers reections revealed negative critical incidents invoked counterfactual thinking but it tended to draw on and reinforce rather
than challenge traditional views of teaching. This raises questions about current
practice in teacher education and approaches that support students to reect on their
often deeply held values and beliefs about learning and teaching.
Mentoring conversations are gaining increasing attention as a way to enable students and experienced teachers to reect on, challenge and develop their practice.
Mena, Garca, Clarke and Barkatsas, in the fourth article, explore the role of mentoring in the professional development of student teachers enrolled in initial teacher
education in Spain. They aimed to identify the ways student teachers construct
knowledge during three different post-lesson approaches to mentoring: dialogue
journaling, regular conferences and stimulated-recall conferences. The results of
their analysis and comparison of the different mentoring approaches indicate that

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European Journal of Teacher Education

dialogue journaling demonstrated more appraisals of practice, regular conferences

emphasised rules and artefacts, and stimulated-recall enabled student teachers to
construct more sophisticated and specic knowledge. According to them the three
mentoring styles favour different but complementary understandings of practice and
point to the impact of various approaches to mentoring on the type of knowledge
shared and generated in post-lesson mentoring conferences.
In the fth article, Instefjord and Munthe explore the integration of digital competence in teacher education in Norway. They highlight the difference in teacher educators and student teachers views about the inuence of teacher education on enabling
teachers use of technology in the classroom. The authors point out that while nearly
70% of teacher educators believe that students acquire relevant digital competence
through their teacher education programme, less than half of the pre-service teachers
report that their education has taught them how to use technology in the classroom.
From their review of previous research, the authors suggest a framework for understanding teachers digital competence. The framework comprises three knowledge
areas: technology prociency, pedagogical compatibility and social awareness. They
used this framework to analyse national guidelines and curriculum regulations, along
with programme descriptions from 19 teacher education institutions. Instefjord and
Munthe found that the use of technology did not have a prominent position in curriculum documents with few binding learning outcomes for the integration of technology.
They suggest that digital competence is still not regarded as an important component
of teachers professional competence. This nding has important implications for teacher educations role in education change in a context where technological innovation
is at the forefront of developments in many areas of learning, life and work.
In the sixth article, the focus shifts to in-service teacher education and provides
an example of the need for teachers to continue their learning and develop their practice in a changing international context. The authors, Erixon and Wahlstrm, discuss
in-service programmes in the context of transnational policy discourses, driven in
particular by reports from international evaluation surveys such as the Programme for
International Student Assessment and Trends in International Mathematics and
Science Study. Their article explores the complex re-contextualising processes that
occur when translating educational policy into in-service programmes for teachers
education, particularly mathematics teachers in Sweden. The authors emphasise the
impact international policies can have on teaching and the contribution they can
make to changes in the meaning of good teaching and the content and skills that are
provided through education. They conclude that in Sweden there is a clear convergence between the transnational and national policy arenas regarding what is important about school mathematics. Also, there is convergence in the view that it is the
teachers task to compensate for different individual pupil background factors and
therefore a need to deepen teachers knowledge of pedagogy and subject matter.
The seventh and eighth articles in this issue focus on peer collaboration in the
context of the Netherlands. Sjoer and Merink, in the seventh article, focus on understanding the complexity of teacher interaction in a professional learning community
of primary school teachers. As the authors suggest, teacher collaboration is widely
regarded as a powerful tool for teacher professional development and school
improvement. However, more needs to be known about the support structures
needed in schools to enable teachers to work collaboratively in a way that leads to
improvement in pupils learning. The teachers involved in Sjoer and Merinks
study were developing a joint school-based curriculum for science and technology

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Editorial

education. This provided an opportunity to examine the factors promoting and

constraining curriculum development through peer collaboration. The authors present
their analysis of observations of team meetings which took place over the course of
one year, facilitated by a coach, and of interviews held with the head teacher and the
participating teachers. Sjoer and Merink found that an essential factor in the teams
collaboration was the teachers ability to achieve synthesis. Their ndings showed
that the teachers exchanged many examples and were able to create shared ideas in
their approach to teaching science and technology. However, the teachers experienced difculties in determining the level at which a school-based curriculum should
be dened. Sjoer and Merink conclude that teachers need more support in developing the ability and dispositions to work collaboratively. In particular, they highlight
the importance of a continuum of teacher education from pre-service to in-service.
They argue that educating pre-service teachers in how to collaborate with colleagues
is essential for successful innovations in school. In the nal article in this issue
Witterholt, Goedhart and Suhre explore the impact of peer collaboration on teachers
practical knowledge. They investigated how four mathematics teachers from the
same school designed, implemented and evaluated new methods for statistics teaching through peer collaboration. They used a mixed methods approach combing data
from interviews, concept maps and classroom observations to analyse changes in the
teachers practical knowledge. The results of their small study highlighted that teachers are individual learners and that working in collaboration with peers impacts on
their learning in different ways. Witterholt et al found that some teachers considered
their concerns as challenges stimulating their learning, while others experienced their
concerns as a reason to revert to previous teaching methods. The authors conclude
with recommendations for teacher education at pre-service and in-service levels,
including pointing out that change involves both teachers emotions and their knowledge and skills and that leadership and facilitation is important in enabling teacher
collaboration.
I would like to conclude this editorial by thanking Geri Smyth for her role as
Co-Editor. Geri has been Deputy Editor and Co-Editor with me for all but three of
the years I have been Editor. The European Journal of Teacher Education is a popular journal and has a high volume of papers submitted every year. It would not
have been possible to undertake the role of Editor without sharing the reviewing of
papers and editing the journals. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank
all our reviewers who through their peer reviews make a signicant contribution to
the journal.
References
Livingston, K. 2008. New Directions in Teacher Education. In Scottish Education, edited
by T. Bryce and W. Humes, 855863. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Livingston, K. 2014. Teacher Educators: Hidden Professionals? European Journal of
Education 49 (2): 218232.
Livingston, K., and L. Shiach. 2010. A New Model of Teacher Education. In Connecting
Inquiry and Professional Learning, edited by A. Campbell and S. Groundwater-Smith,
8395. London: Routledge.

Kay Livingston
School of Education, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, Scotland
Kay.Livingston@glasgow.ac.uk