![]() I will address the question of educational quality through some reflections on the question of educational purpose, arguing against a mono-dimensional understanding of the question of purpose. I will then argue for the need for a double ‘push-back’ concerning, firstly, conceptions of educational quality and, secondly, conceptions of teaching. I will start with a brief historical reconstruction of recent developments that have led to the current predicament about teaching and teacher education. Given this, how might we reclaim teaching, for the sake of teaching itself and for the sake of teacher education? In this paper I will seek to respond to this question in the following way. It may contribute, in other words, to a significant redefinition of what teaching is and what it is for, and of what this implies for the work of the teacher. Viewed in this way, the suggestion that teaching matters is not so much an endorsement of the complex work of teachers but may actually be contributing to the undermining of teachers’ professional agency (see Biesta 2017 Priestley, Biesta & Robinson 2015). And thirdly, there is the problematic assumption that teaching is some kind of ‘intervention’ that is supposed to produce ‘effects,’ rather than that teaching is seen as an act of communication that carries meaning for all those involved and thus relies on the open work of interpretation rather than on a simplistic logic of cause and effect. A second problem is that pupil achievement is often operationalised in very narrow and one-dimensional ways, rather than covering the full spectrum of what might – and in my view should – matter in education (on this see Biesta 2010). One problem is the reduction of teachers and their work to that of a ‘determinant,’ as it conflates statistical correlation with the complex relational work of teachers (on the latter see Frelin 2013). Yet it is precisely in such claims that problems begin to surface. While this claim may sound attractive, the idea that teaching matters is often made with reference to research that apparently shows that teachers are the most influential determinant of pupil achievement (see, e.g., Hattie 2003). 2007 Donaldson 2010 Department for Education 2010). One common and rather influential trope in contemporary discussions about education that easily leads to such a distortion, is the suggestion that teaching matters and that, by implication, teachers matter (see, for example, oecd 2005 McKinsey & Co. While this may sound obvious, many discussions about teacher education tend to skip this step and go straight into discussions about the practicalities of educating teachers, often relying on particular notions of teaching that, in themselves, remain unquestioned. After all, it is only when we have an idea of what teaching is and what it ought to be, and when we have an accurate understanding of the pressures contemporary teaching is under, that we can begin to ask questions about the ‘how,’ the ‘what’ and the ‘what for’ of teacher education. ![]() In this paper I wish to argue that any discussion about the future of teacher education needs to start with an exploration of the future of teaching. I make a case for a multi-dimensional view of the purposes of education and for teaching as an act of communication and interpretation that always requires judgement about that ‘what’ and the ‘what for.’ Placing such judgement at the centre of teacher education suggests that the structure of the curriculum for teacher education should be spiral rather than linear-cumulative.ġ Introduction: The Future of Teacher Education and the Future of Teaching In this paper I raise some questions about such views about the significance of teaching, on the assumption that the future of teacher education needs to be informed by a different understanding of what teaching is and what it is for. Such views about teaching and education more generally are also affecting programmes of teacher education. ![]() Unfortunately, such a case for teaching and teachers tends to rely on a rather one-dimensional view of what counts in education – namely the production of measurable learning outcomes – and a rather mechanistic view of what counts as education – namely teaching as an intervention that is aimed at producing particular effects. Many policy makers and educational researchers seem to be convinced that teaching matters. ![]()
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