Paul Adams

Social justice is prominent across Scottish education, underscored by its inclusion as the first professional value of the 2021 General Teaching Council for Scotland (gtcs) Professional Standards. In this paper we question the extent to which conceptual understandings of social justice align with political and professional domains in Scottish education. We explore inherent tensions between the aims for education in Scotland, and the measures-driven context in which it operates. We present an analysis of Official Reports from the Education and Skills Committee (2016 to 2021) to consider what this might tell us about the balance between economic, social and political concerns within social justice Discourse in Scotland and how this relates to the gtcs-stated social justice values for the education profession. We conclude the paper by offering thoughts as to how the profession might further engage with social justice to challenge the significant economic imperatives inherent in Scottish education.

The 1999 (re)opening of the Scottish Parliament marked a watershed moment towards further calls for small-state self-management. Often set against Nordic lines, subsequent Scottish National Party administrations reflect a strong desire for independence alongside a belief that small states prosper when aligned with similar jurisdictions. This positioning assumes certain things about Scotland, ‘The Scottish’, and the Scottish education system. Whether there exists a ‘Nordic education approach’ on which to base educational governance matters is questionable, however. Rather than present Scottish education as simply aligning with Norden, it is more helpful to identify the pushes and pulls between northern countries and internal/UK factors. This chapter duly examines educational exigencies: the pushes and pulls from Nordic countries and the United Kingdom.

To support diversity in heterogeneous classrooms, differentiation has, over the last 40 years, become commonplace theoretically and practically (Hamilton and O’Hara 2011; Graham et al. 2021; GTCS, ...

Initial teacher education partnership as an example of ‘educational nexus’, often signals particular responses to normative questioning. Set within the ‘theory-practice’ nexus, partnership is positioned as the interleaving of various pedagogic/didactic D/discourses (Gee JP. Social linguistics and literacies. Ideology in Discourses. Routledge, 2012) to realise systemic development. Since the publication ofTeaching Scotland’s Future(Donaldson G, Teaching Scotland’s future. Report of a review of teacher education in Scotland, In Education (Issue December), 2010) Scottish initial teacher education has spent considerable time developing supportive local authority/higher education institution/school partnership arrangements. Problematically, inter-group practice has been privileged over shared theoretical debate. This chapter proposes a ‘spatial heuristic’ centring on the epistemological matters of ‘identifying’, ‘knowing’ and ‘doing’ teaching. It proposes agency ‘…in which the agent is clearly decentred, an approach in which the achievement of agency is not an achievement of the agent alone but of the agent-in-interaction-with-others’ (Biesta G, Tedder M, How is agency possible? Towards an ecological understanding of agency-as-achievement. 44(0), 1–40, 2006) as a key part of professional development and that partnership, subsequently should be reconceptualised as ‘existing’ in the overlaps ‘between’ theory and practice.

The (re)opening of the Scottish Parliament in 1999 cemented calls for small state self-management, particularly along Nordic lines, both to reflect the desire for independence and belief that small states prosper when aligned with similar jurisdictions. However, whether there is a ‘Nordic education approach’ is questionable. Further, this positioning assumes certain things about Scotland, ‘The Scottish’, and the Scottish education system. Rather than present Scottish education as aligning with Norden, it is better to identify pushes and pulls between northern countries and internal/UK factors. This paper examines educational exigencies: pushes and pulls from the Nordic countries and the UK.

This article empirically examines the ways in which Initial Teacher Education in Scotland and Alberta, Canada, seeks to ‘get students in’, ‘get them out and into the workforce’, ‘get on with teaching future teachers’ and how it should ‘get on with students’. Using Adams’ (2016) policy heuristic, which posits that policy can be discerned in three realms: frame; explanation; and formation, this paper considers the middle realm: that of policy explanation. Here, attempts to position policy through public pronouncement, policy directive, mandate and/or missive are examined in the context of ITE in Scotland and Alberta. By analysing policy explanations, the paper marks out how both jurisdictions should begin to attempt to craft ITE located in career-long, professional learning and development that understands and acknowledges tensions between ITE and later teacher-education phases. Finally, the paper makes a tentative proposal as to what such ITE might hope to achieve and how it might contribute to a well-developed workforce, so that both locations and other jurisdictions might orient initial teacher development.

Placement, the part of Initial Teacher Education (ITE) involving Pre-Service Teachers (PSTs) working in school, is a marked feature of ITE programmes that involve Higher Education Institution (HEI) input. In Scotland, placement is a feature of ITE, forms a major plank of the assessment of teaching quality and occurs in partnership arrangements between HEIs, schools and other organisations. As part of the Measuring Quality in Initial Teacher Education (MQuITE) research project, HEI-staff at the nine Scottish institutions offering ITE were surveyed for their views on a range of ITE matters. This paper discusses 150 respondents’ answers regarding placement within current partnership arrangements. Using positioning theory (cf) as the frame for thematic analysis and data highlighted concerns, but significant desire for continuing development of partnership as a mechanism to develop PSTs. The paper has international implications for systems that utilise placement within a standards-based approach to ITE partnership.

Initial Teacher Education quality is often judged through the auspices of audit-style mechanisms designed to facilitate the identification of matters pertaining to the ‘readiness’ of student teachers to enter the world of the classroom as fully qualified. In this regard, quality of programmes is often determined by the knowledge and skills student teachers demonstrate. Whilst ontological aspects are not necessarily elided, they are often ignored in favour of such epistemological matters. While such knowledge-based positions do not describe the totality of ITE quality evaluation they do predominate. This paper identifies a tripartite heuristic for the identification of ITE epistemology that explicitly refers to, and is requiring of, ontological matters in the development of student teachers: identifying teaching, doing teaching, knowing teaching. Whilst it is the result of a Scottish project, Measuring the Quality of Initial Teacher Education (MQuITE), its emphasis is notable for other countries.