Undergraduate Education Studies and Initial Teacher Education
in England and Wales: Emerging themes
Stephen Ward
Bath Spa University College
Paper presented at the British Educational Research Association Annual Conference, University of Manchester, 16-18 September 2004
Abstract
Undergraduate Education Studies courses have developed rapidly in recent years, partly as a result of the need for universities to remove undergraduate teacher education from the constraints of the competence-based teacher training and by universities responding to the popularity of the subject. A variety of curriculum content and emphasis have emerged, differentiating the new Education Studies curriculum from its former existence as the theory for teacher training. This paper attempts an initial exploration of the Education Studies courses on offer by analysing the web-sites of 42 higher education institutions in England and Wales. 23 dimensions of Education Studies in courses are identified and ten emerging themes are noted and discussed. The findings are that courses vary across the following main dimensions: the extent to which there is preparation for initial teacher training or other vocational outcomes; reference to the subject disciplines of education. Most universities appear to be attempting to distinguish Education Studies form teacher training provision and a number of ‘new’ areas of study are noted, such as international education and the study of ecological issues. It was found that in many cases the theoretical frameworks for courses is unclear
Background
The rise of Education Studies
Non-teacher-training Education Studies has existed since the 1960s in a small number of institutions, notably the universities of Cardiff and York. However, the last five years has seen a dramatic increase in undergraduate Education Studies degree courses. 2002-3 saw 2771 students registered on undergraduate Education Studies courses, a 16.7% annual increase, as against 6,959 on undergraduate qualified teacher status (QTS) degrees, only a 0.5% increase. In 2004-05 some 42 Higher Education Institutions (HEI) are offering Education Studies degree courses which do not offer QTS and 18 of these have commenced since 2001. New programmes have grown rapidly and randomly with little connected discussion of the nature of Education Studies as a subject and there is a wide variety of provision. This paper is intended to begin the process of tracing the current scope of Education Studies, exploring its theoretical basis and its possible relationships to professional teacher education.
The escape from state control
This shift from undergraduate teacher training to non-ITT Education Studies is in part an attempt by universities to escape the tight state control of undergraduate courses. The salient feature of initial teacher education in England and Wales in recent years has been its reform by successive governments through the various regulatory instruments: the Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education (CATE) followed by the Teacher Training Agency (TTA) and the Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted). Critiques of these changes are well documented in, for example, Maguire, Dillon and Quintrell (1998), Mahony and Hextall (1997) and Cowen (2002). State control of teacher education has led to a competences-based model with very tight designation of curriculum content focussing on subject knowledge and its teaching (DfES 2002). It is policed by a highly intrusive inspection system (Ofsted, 2002), the results of which are so closely linked to institutional TTA funding that to be unsuccessful can lead to damaging reductions in funding for a university. These controls have brought about a reductionist model of initial teacher training, a culture of compliance with the state-defined curriculum and the removal of the critique of education policy and practice (Bottery, 2000).
Another means of demonstrating control of ITT by governments has been to appropriate the discourse from the universities: students are to be known as trainees, universities as providers, successful teaching as compliance with the standards, assessment as auditing subject knowledge. Successive governments have depicted those in higher education as self-serving professionals articulating opposition to reform merely to sustain the status quo (UCET, 1997). The developments of the last ten years are the outcome of long-standing criticism of HEI teacher training as too theoretical, out-of-touch and unrelated to practice (Hillgate Group, 1989, Phillips, 1996, Hargreaves, 1996).
The seizure of the control of the content and management of teacher education programmes is unlike the treatment of any other undergraduate university subject and has led to growing dissatisfaction among universities. The University of Liverpool in 2000 found the rigours and trials of compliance not worthwhile and withdrew its courses. Others have adopted a less radical response, but one which removes their undergraduate student numbers from the control and inspection regime. This is achieved by converting the four-year QTS degree programme into a 3+1 model: a joint honours degree in Education Studies, followed by a primary PGCE teacher-training year. The PGCE is funded by the TTA and, of course, subject to regulation and inspection. However, the undergraduate programme is funded by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) and relatively free of such external constraints.
The strategy has two the initial advantages that the undergraduate programme is not subject to Ofsted inspection and its subsequent threat to funding and students (not trainees) are able to study a wide range of educational topics which do not have to comply with the teacher-training circulars and can adopt a position which is critical of government policy and professional practice. QAA review of university subjects is far more tolerant of curriculum diversity than its counterparts in the TTA and Ofsted. It is interesting, then, to reflect that, while it was the government’s intention to convert teacher training into a technicist operation through its litany of controls and regulation, the evasion of such controls by universities may itself be creating a generation of undergraduate 'theoretical' study of education free of such constraints.
The increase in courses is explained not only by the conversion of TTA QTS courses, but also by institutions simply introducing Education Studies ab initio, often alongside an existing QTS degree. Sometimes these courses have originated for students who had failed or withdrawn from a QTS programme; in other cases the university has simply introduced it as an attractive option for applicants. Education Studies is proving to be a popular option for students in undergraduate modular schemes and the effect of the higher education market is significant. Its popularity is probably due to a series of factors: education is a comfortable and familiar subject, because everyone knows something about schools and teaching; it appeals to students’ interest in children and young people and, finally, it offers an obvious vocational outcome in teaching, especially to those who are considering teaching but have not finally committed themselves.
But what is Education Studies?
While the Education Studies has proved to be successful, and popular with students, it might be argued that there is a random quality to the curriculum content which depends on the expertise of extant staff and students’ choice of modules. The QAA Benchmark for Education (QAA, 2000) should provide some guidance to the Education Studies curriculum, but it is so generalised and skills-based that its effect is severely limited. In order to discover what Education Studies might be it is necessary to review its broader its antecedents and the historical factors which contributed to its present forms.
For the most part, Education Studies has developed as an integral part of initial and inservice teacher training: the theory which informs the professional practice of teachers and student teachers. The subject can hardly be said to have existed before the 1960s when the attempts to create an all-graduate teaching profession began and it developed as a collection of related disciplines in Bachelor of Education degrees. These origins were stormy and contested. Crook (2002) details the historical problems which Education Studies encountered alongside demands for practical teacher training. Richardson (2002) recounts the development of educational theory in teacher training and explains the role of the Robbins Committee (1962) in recommending the development of BEd degrees and the absorption of the training colleges – then run by LEAs – into the universities. This was resisted by the LEAs and instead the universities were linked with the colleges to validate courses. There were concerns among the universities that Education was not a proper academic subject and that there was a lack of a ‘binding theory’ or epistemology of education and it was at this point that the subject disciplines were drawn in to form a theoretical basis for education. RS Peters and CJ Gill, HMI for teacher training, met in a closed seminar at the DES to agree the subjects to be included. The proposal was for psychology, sociology, philosophy and economics. Economics was dropped and history of education substituted. However, as Richardson points out, there was a very limited research base for the disciplines in education in the universities and little research competence in the training colleges. Pedagogy was excluded and
‘.. the absence of pedagogy as a core component of Educational Studies in the undergraduate degrees established during 1965-68 was indicative of the general difficulties of educationists making a decisive theoretical contribution to practical problems in education’ (p.23)
Simon (1994) also points out that the education studies programmes developed in the 1960s suffered from being academic elements grafted onto teacher training by the universities. He suggests that the process was to put theory into what had been essentially the practical and vocational studies in non-graduate Teacher Certificate courses. Crook (2002) describes the consequent neglect of the professional dimensions of ITT as a ‘wrong turn’ that was later corrected by ‘the downgrading of educational studies in favour of longer periods of teaching practice’ (p. 70). These developments were subsequently reinforced by the regulatory frameworks imposed by CATE and the TTA and saw the gradual decline of education studies in ITT courses.
This troubled history lies behind the tensions which have surrounded the theory-practice debate and underlies the difficulties in developing an over-arching theory for new Education Studies courses. Also, at present, there is a lack of a strong network between universities for the sharing of initiatives about aims and content and new course developments appear to be somewhat unconnected and context-dependent.
Education Studies as a new university subject
Education Studies has escaped state control in the form of teacher training regulations. However, it should be noted that the subject is developing in the context of unprecedented change in the nature of universities and university knowledge with the mass expansion of higher education in the market place (Readings, 1996, Barnett, 2000, Delanty 2001). In examining Education Studies it is necessary to take into account the effects of the marketisation of higher education and of political controls on university knowledge.
Universities in the UK have been based on the nineteenth century Kant-Humboldt model of German idealism. For Kant the basis of the university was the struggle between tradition and reason, between superstition and enlightenment. The Kantian university of reason is modelled upon the individual researcher in which reason is the guiding light. Humboldt saw the university as creating and sustaining a national culture, and the German university of the nineteenth century succeeded in uniting reason and culture in the relationship with the state. Humboldt argued that philosophical reflection must be preserved from the Scylla of mere leisure and the Charabdys of practical utility under the direction of the state. ‘The state protects the actions of the university; the university safeguards the thoughts of the state. And each strives to realise the idea of a national culture’ (Readings, 1996: 69). The modern university, then, is a means of the realisation of state nationalism, culture and identity:
The modern university was conceived by Humboldt as one of the primary apparatuses through which this production of national subjects was to take place in modernity, and the decline of the nation-state raises serious questions about the nature of the contemporary function of the university (Readings, p.46).
Under this model, the university defines and codifies what counts as knowledge. Under the new – postmodern - model, the university loses its autonomy from government. The effect is a shift from knowledge as truth, to knowledge as ‘performativity’, that which is seen to be useful in economic terms. It is a part of the dynamic of epistemological change described by Lyotard (1997) as the post-industrial, post-modern collapse of meta-knowledge and the contestation of the nature of knowledge itself. Cowen (1996) describes government policy for university knowledge in terms of global economics and market forces:
…. the governmental critique of the university, in several of the OECD countries, delegitimates the traditional assumptions made by universities about their own excellence, proposes a rebalancing of the relationships between the state, the productive economy and universities and outlines the ways in which the contribution of the universities within this new social contract may be encouraged, even enforced (p.3).
Knowledge, then, becomes, instead of a search for truth, a collection of skills. Barnett (2000) criticises the conversion of university knowledge into ‘performative’ skills through government evaluation procedures. History graduates are no longer historians, he suggests, only those who possess a range of transferable skills for society. Kogan and Hanney (2000) refer to the ‘exceptionalism’ from government policy of higher education, the lack of state control on the curriculum in the university sector. Government policy on higher education has been concerned essentially with access, funding and structure rather than content. However, it is through the skills, supposedly required in the market place, that the government controls higher education. Undergraduate Education Studies has developed in the post-1992 universities as part of the expansion of higher education, the reduced unit of resource and the proletarianisation of academic life. It therefore might be said to have a low academic status, along with teacher training and other new subjects such as media and cultural studies. It is one of the new ‘trans-disciplinary’ subjects which Kogan and Hanney argue have become stronger within the university power structure, at the expense of the mono-subjects, because of their demand in the market.
It is timely, then, to explore the range of theoretical models which are emerging in different institutions. The attempt here is to catalogue in very broad terms the current developments in the epistemological and theoretical framework for Education Studies. In formulating a series of current themes it is hoped that it will contribute to the understanding of the subject for those teaching, managing and studying courses, as well as senior managers in universities.