Measuring the quality of initial teacher education across Scotland

Measuring the quality of teacher education has vexed those involved across the globe. This said, in the main, efforts have centred either on quantitative measures such as test scorers of pupils as a proxy for Initial Teacher Education (ITE) quality, or measuring quality within specific programmes. The Measuring Quality in Initial Teacher Education research project (MQuITE) is pan-Scottish research which seeks to identify a context specific means to identifying quality in ITE and the impact of such programmes on a candidate’s first 5 years in the profession. It is a collaborative project with all higher education ITE providers across Scotland and the General Teaching Council for Scotland taking part. The project seeks to identify the ways in which quality ITE can be measured, thereby adding to the mechanisms that allow providers to offer and judge high impact ITE.

The project itself utilizes an eight dimension framework that marks out for scrutiny the various features of ITE provision and subsequent activities post-qualification. This framework was developed following a thematic literature review which identified the range of approaches hitherto utilized to measure quality. The framework necessitates the gathering of data from a range of ITE participants, such as all graduating students, local authority staff, ITE Tutors, teacher mentors and newly qualified teachers. All these groups except for the latter were surveyed in the summer of 2018, the first year data was gathered. All groups will be surveyed at the end of the 2018/2019 academic year. Specifically, the surveys gather quantitative and qualitative data as to the ways in which ITE higher education provision supports initial teacher development, along with the probationary year for newly qualified teachers.

Initial results point to the ways in which support for teachers in the different arenas for development vary according to group. This presentation outlines the history of the project along with an overview of data from the first year’s surveys. Specifically, partnership is identified as a feature that commands much time and effort on the part of local authority and school staff. In particular the ways in which school staff work across programmes is identified as a quality marker. Moreover, it examines some of the issues in partnership working that are part of the scene across Scotland. The views of teachers and ITE tutors is examined for their views on partnership provision during the university part of ITE. The presentation details the ways in which partnership is seen as a vital part of the ITE experience, but one which has specific issues and problems associated with it. The presentation ends with areas for future development and research.