Conference Agenda

The question of equality within school systems is being discussed with new fervour as social cohesion in European society seems under duress. This brings on the demand for changes in the training of teachers as they are seen as the body that can offer the most immediate remedy for discrimination within the school system, which can be a way to promote social equality within the whole of society. An up-to-date understanding of diversity and its consequences is paramount for teachers to tackle this task.

Looking at material collected during a course on “diversity in school” as part of a teacher training degree (Bachelor level), we tried to understand how students' perception of diversity is being influenced by the presentation and discussion of scientific findings on diversity and the consequences they should have for teachers' actions. The insights are used to draw conclusions on how to make the teaching of critical educational research more effective.

Dealing with diversity is an essential part of professionalization, which, however, poses multiple challenges for students' identities: becoming aware of being themselves a person with a diversified identity, and becoming competent in dealing with others' diversity through a so-called "glocal" competence that enables future teachers in diverse classrooms to negotiate, adapt, and collaborate in a super diverse environment while maintaining local attitudes (Madden, 2022).

Teacher training for dealing with diversity often targets an intersection between personality and future profession. Reflection on behavior towards students and the recognition of needs in them necessarily mean a confrontation with personal beliefs and traits. The training as a teacher, however, also has a dimension that transcends the individual level. Teachers and those studying to be such become a community of practice (abbr. CoP, Wenger, 1998) as they develop their skills and negotiate strategies together. The CoP develops into a social group with boundaries of membership and a social identity (Hornsey, 2008). Such a social identity can be described as a professional identity since it supersedes the boundaries of the members that physically meet and know each other to include ideas of what members of the teaching profession are like (Ashcraft, 2013).

For teachers, this means they accept the tacit knowledge of their ingroup as true to become full members of the CoP: they accept the narratives of the diversity discourse as it develops around schools through political documents and professional discourse. In the school system, this discourse often is built on a perception of reality that is no longer in tune with social realities: it still assumes students who are able-bodied, monolingual, and with only one, Christian-based middle-class culture as a background to be the majority, the benchmark of normality (Schmidt/Wächter, 2023). This has far-reaching consequences for teacher students. To be accepted into the CoP of teachers, they must subscribe to this perception of reality, which is at odds with the basis of much of the scientific findings they are presented with in training. Their peers expect them to react to situations in line with ingroup convictions, for example, with regard to labeling and consequent discrimination of student groups because of ingroup narratives. This produces a dissonance between professional training and practice.

Context: Understanding newly qualified teachers’ experiences of arrival into the profession is a well-established research concern in teacher professional learning discourse (Ingersoll and Strong 2011; Kearney 2014, 2015, 2021; Aspfors and Fransson 2015; Spooner-lane 2017; Reeves et al 2022; Shanks et al 2022). Such research has highlighted the complexity of this transition: for example (i) the tensions that newly qualified teachers [NQTs hereafter] may experience (Aspfors and Bondas 2013; Pillen et al 2013; Correa et al, 2015; Van der Wal et al 2019; Stenberg and Maaranen 2021; Kvam et al 2023), (ii) the stress associated with entering the profession (Gallant and Riley 2017; Kelchtermans 2017b; Schaefer and Clandinin 2019; Mc Carthy et al 2020; Schaefer et al 2021), (iii) the techniques used to navigate school micro-politics (Kelchtermans and Ballet 2002a, 2002b; Kvam et al 2023) and (iv) a variety of coping mechanisms that NQTs employ in response to the challenges of arrival in the profession (Mansfield et al 2014; Christensen et al 2018; Bjørndal et al 2022; Lindqvist et al 2022). In parallel, the need for supporting NQT professional learning/socialisation into the profession is a well-established international policy concern (OECD 2005, 2019a, 2019b, 2020; European Commission 2010; European Commission/EACEA/Eurydice 2021; Courtney et al 2023). Subsequently, and in most jurisdictions, NQT induction into the profession has become an established component of teacher education continu/pathways. Despite such widespread attention, there are emerging concerns regarding how NQTs are positioned within induction support structures (Corea et al 2015; Simmie et al 2017; Kelchtermans 2019; Kvam et al 2023). For example, Kelchtermans (2019, p. 86) makes the case that ‘deficit thinking’ in teacher induction/mentoring processes (i) positions the NQT as ‘incomplete and not fully competent’ and (ii) focuses on ‘individual’s weaknesses and shortcomings, rather than their strengths and potential’. To counter the potential for deficit thinking, Kelchtermans (2019, p. 87) argues that ‘the very idea of early career teachers and teacher induction needs to be re-thought, reconceptualised and revised’ and one of the mechanisms put forward for doing so is to acknowledge NQTs existing expertise and agency. We see that this is best approached by appraising NQT arrival in the profession as a form of ‘identity learning’ (Geijsel and Meijers 2006, p. 420) i.e., the ways NQTs navigate ‘the collective meaning-giving’ and ‘personal sense-making’ (Geijsel and Meijers 2006, p. 428) that accompanies the transition.

Aim: Using a Foucauldian framework (Foucault 1983, 1985; Clarke 2009), the aim of this paper therefore is to understanding how NQTs construct themselves in ethico-political terms i.e., how NQTs, both as person and teacher, construct the relationship that they have with themselves.

Conceptual Framework: Informed by Foucault (1983a, 1985) our understanding of the ethico-political is framed by his conceptualisation of both the ‘values and rules of action that are recommended to individuals through the intermediary of various prescriptive agencies’ (Foucault 1985, p. 25) and the enactment of ‘real behaviour’ by ‘individuals in relation to rules and values that are recommended to them’ (Foucault 1985, 25). As a fusion between the political and the personal, we understand ‘real behaviour’ as those ascendant discourses that steer how the NQT sees themselves and importantly, how they wish to be seen by others. This paper addresses the ethico-political identity of the NQT in terms (i) the ethical substance i.e., the ways that the NQT constitutes themselves (ii) the authority sources i.e., the attributed sources through which the the NQT comes to know their ethical substance (iii) self-practices i.e., the ethical work that the NQT undertakes to understand themselves vis-à-vis unfolding experiences and (iv) telos i.e., the mode of being the prospective teacher aspires toward.

This paper provides an analysis of teacher education policy across the UK and its closest European partner, Ireland and considers the extent to which it enables the enactment of teacher agency to support an enhanced teacher professionalism. Anderson (2010:541) defines agency as the teacher’s ‘capacity to make choices, take principled action, and enact change’. Biesta and Tedder (2006) adopt an ecological approach, suggesting that professional action is defined by the context within which the teacher finds themselves. Similarly, Molla and Nolan (2020) suggest that professional practice emerges from an interplay between systemic expectations, contexts and personal dispositions. To understand the link between agency and professionalism therefore, consideration must be given to the connections between the different variables which influence teachers’ lives.

Moving along a continuum from reflective, to prescriptive professionalism, the paper begins with a consideration of the contextual and policy variables in Ireland, North and South. In both jurisdictions, there is a strong regulatory requirement for entry to, and accreditation of teacher education programmes. In Ireland, the Teaching Council (TC) is responsible for the registration of teachers and the promotion of high standards in teaching. The TC’s Policy on the Continuum of Teacher Education (2011) has been implemented through Cosán: Framework for Teachers’ Learning (2016a), Droichead: The Integrated Professional Induction Framework (2017) and Céim: Standards for Initial Teacher Education (2020), with professionalism as one of the guiding principles for each framework. Similarly, in Northern Ireland, the General Teaching Council (GTCNI) oversees the registration and professional development of teachers through its competence framework, Teaching: The Reflective Profession (GTCNI, 2007). More recently, there is also Learning Leaders: A Strategy for Teacher Professional Learning (DENI, 2016) which focuses on the promotion of leadership at all levels. Both jurisdictions also place a strong emphasis on the importance of ethics, values, and dispositions, and provide guidance and support to teachers in these areas.

Secondly, the paper explores how policy ideas travel across the organisational boundaries between the two devolved jurisdictions of Scotland and Wales. In particular, the paper focuses on curriculum reform and how government-appointed advisors act as intermediaries in the design and enactment of policy ideas (Hulme et al., 2020). Key policy documents from Scotland and Wales, including: Successful Futures (Donaldson, 2023); and Teaching Scotland’s Future (Donaldson, 2010) are analysed through the concepts of ‘spaces and time’ (McCann and Ward, 2013:10) to examine how such trans-national policy making is then experienced by teachers and teacher educators in the local context (Stone, 2004).

Finally, the paper turns to England where, there is considerable emphasis on policy initiatives associated with marketisation and a culture of entrepreneurialism; standards-based and outcomes-defined policy reforms and developments, underpinned by managerialist ideologies. Coupled with this, there has been increased technologies of governance, leading to ever tightening regulatory control and surveillance driven by a focus on accountability and professional standards alongside the provision of centralised curricula. A Market Review of Initial Teacher Training (DfE 2021) and the introduction of a Core Content Framework (DfE, 2019) has seen pre-service teacher education become narrowed, premised on ‘permitted’ pedagogies, practice, curriculum content, and the expectation of standardisation regarding what beginning teachers need to know and be able to do. This reductive form of teacher preparation leads to what we might call ‘pedagogies of the same, rather than pedagogies of difference’ (Lingard, 2007:248); neglecting the role that teachers, schools and universities play in designing assessments and curricula in response to student needs, and in respect of professional knowledge and expertise.