Conference Agenda

Like many other nations globally, Armenia is currently undergoing a process of education system reform to enhance educational processes and outcomes as well as to increase the relevance of educational services through innovation and change.

In doing this the Armenian government is keen to take cognisance of what other countries have done and learn from positive experiences and successful outcomes elsewhere. However, the government is not adopting an approach of direct policy borrowing, i.e. “a conscious and deliberate attempt to reform an educational system through the introduction of a policy plan that originated in a different context” (Nir, 2019, p. 1).

Instead, it has adopted an approach we call ‘international co-development’ here, which is focused on capacity building through working with carefully selected international experts – in this case a team from UCL Institute of Education which also comprises experts from the universities of Cambridge and Oxford – to provide context sensitive technical advice that takes cognisance of important aspects of national identity in the context of a distinctly post-Soviet education and research tradition.

Such an approach can be seen to be important in so far as it provides the opportunity to seek to avoid potentially deleterious homogenising influences of globalised neoliberal policy imperatives inherent in the playbooks that tend to be used by transnational policy and funding agencies.

Whilst the importance of quality and efficiency in a context of finite financial and human capital resource is fully understandable and there is legitimacy of a concern with productivity and accountability – provided it recognises the importance of professional agency, provided that performance and is not narrowly measured by metrics, which are often at best poor proxies for what they seek to measure, and provided it does not in and of itself become the raison d'être of educational institutions (see e.g. Tolofari, 2005).

This symposium will explore these, and related issues, with specific reference to the establishment of a so-called ‘Education Cluster’ as part of the ‘Academic City’ initiative (https://www.acarmenia.am/en), which has the strategic goal of providing access to graduates to internationally recognised professional qualifications – with a central focus on teacher education and education research – to strengthen their contribution to individual professional satisfaction and societal economic productivity and the common good as well as to promote the quality, efficiency and internationalisation of the higher education system and, through its focus on professional learning, strengthen education in Armenia.

The approach adopted by the government of Armenia is in keeping with a growing policy focus internationally on teacher education reform as a perceived lever for wider education system reform. In Menter’s words (2019): “dominant values within any society may be manifested in the shaping and reshaping of teacher education”.

The symposium will draw of Menter et al.'s factors (2025) to describe and evaluate the particularities of teacher education provision, which he calls ‘vernacular globalisation’ – and which have elsewhere been termed ‘glocalisation’ (Tatto, 2025) – by drawing attention to how national and global influences interact in particular contexts. As such the symposium, whilst focusing on (teacher) education reform in one country and underpinned by an initial phase of data gathering in Armenia comprising documentary study and focus group interviews, will have a very strong international dimension in its theoretical positioning and data analysis inter alia through an in-depth engagement with international literature on teacher education with a focus on Anglophone, post-Soviet and BRICS countries. The team of researchers brings together colleagues with extensive first-hand experience as teacher educators and researchers from England, Armenia, Austria, and the Lebanon and the discussant will add a perspective from Australia.

The presentation provides an overview of the extensive literature that informs the (Teacher) Education Work theme of the Education Cluster part of the Armenian Academic City project. The paper focuses specifically on international published research around the professional preparation of teachers (and in particular beginning teachers) and examines a range of inter-related factors inherent in a range of different models. Following a search of educational databases using specific selection criteria, the most relevant papers were collated within sub-topics to inform the review. The paper will reflect on wider conceptualisations of the purposes of teacher education, and what teacher professionalism entails (Winch, Oancea and Orchard, 2015). First, it will explore the different models of teacher education that operate in and across a range of international contexts and, through analysis of the underpinning rationales for such models, will identify the inherent assumptions about professional learning that each embodies. It will also explore to what extent these models might reflect a particular signature pedagogy for initial teacher education (Shulman, 2005). Second, this analysis will lead to a broader exploration of the nature of beginning teacher learning and the development of appropriate teacher education curricula. This will include an examination of the specific contextual factors which have a role in determining these curricula, including the influence of both the global and the local. Third, the paper tackles the perennial (and often seemingly problematic) role of both theory and practice in teacher education, and the relationship between the two within the different models under discussion. The issue is an ongoing focus of research, both in England (see for example, Burn, Mutton and Thompson, 2023), in Europe (see for example, Resch, Schrittesser and Knapp, 2024; McGarr, O’Grady and Guilfoyle, 2017; Rasmussen and Rasch-Christensen, 2015) and internationally (Darling Hammond, 2017). In particular, it will explore the way in which innovative, research-informed approaches have attempted to address this seemingly unhelpful binary. Central to any consideration of the relationship between theory and practice is the final area addressed in the paper, namely a consideration of the complex nature of school-university partnerships and the challenges of effective partnership working, including a focus on the role of teacher educators (including those who work either in university or in school settings) and the related professional knowledge base that these educators require.

Burn, K., Mutton, T. and Thompson, I. (eds.) (2022) Practical theorising in teacher education, London: Routledge Darling-Hammond, L. (2017) ‘Teacher education around the world: what can we learn from international practice?’ In European Journal of Teacher Education 40(3), pp. 291-309 McGarr, O., O’Grady, E., and Guilfoyle, L. (2017) ‘Exploring the theory-practice gap in initial teacher education: moving beyond questions of relevance to issues of power and authority.’ In Journal of Education for Teaching 43(1), pp. 48-60 Rasmussen, J., and Rash-Christensen, A. (2015) How to improve the relationship between theory and practice in teacher education.’ In Educational Research for Policy and Practice 14(3), pp. 213-230 Resch, K., Schrittesser, I., and Knapp, M. (2024) ’Overcoming the theory-practice divide in teacher education with the ‘Partner School Programme’. A conceptual mapping.’ In European Journal of Teacher Education 47(3), pp. 564-580 Shulman, L. (2005) ‘Signature pedagogies in the professions’. In Daedalus 134 (3), pp. 52–9 Winch, C., Oancea, A. and Orchard, J. (2015) ‘The contribution of educational research to teachers’ professional learning: Philosophical understandings.’ In Oxford Review of Education 41(2), pp. 202-216

As part of the Teacher Education Work Theme of the Armenian Academic City project, this paper critically explores policy borrowing in the Armenian educational context. Teacher quality, and assumptions about contingent teacher knowledge, pedagogical strategies and competences required to secure quality in (teacher) education are increasingly reliant on globalised metrics to inform policy and practice. The effects of global education policy borrowing and lending, as well as international assessments of students’ academic outcomes (e.g., PISA, TIMSS) have led to view teachers as technicians (Winch, 2017). Macro-economic measures of teacher quality focused on cost benefit analyses, are exploited to support claims to authority about ‘what works’ in teacher education and therefore what pedagogical techniques can be exported/imported across international contexts. Some question the authority of such econometrics to evaluate teacher quality, arguing that insights from educational research, teacher and teacher education research are excluded from the production of nuanced and responsive professional knowledge (Tatto, 2021). In Armenia, recent reforms to teacher education have identified the 'teacher as a researcher' concept as the highest level of teacher standard. A qualitative exploratory methodology is employed, using analysis of data from desk review and stakeholder interviews to explore gaps in understanding as well as misunderstandings of teacher education quality. To resist a pejorative and uncritical analysis, policy borrowing is not positioned as an inherently good/bad thing. As Burdett and O’Donnell suggest (2016, p. 113) “few would argue that the intermingling of ideas from different education systems” does not have a role to play. We report our findings from our initial stakeholder consultation, analysing data from academics in three universities with pedagogical programmes, teachers and school leaders, parents and various NGOs working in the education sector across Armenia. Our findings illustrate the imperatives for utilising teacher education research could be utilised to address the challenges of policy borrowing; for example, sustaining cultural responsiveness and the localised production of professional knowledge and understanding. Our original contribution is in problematising the philosophical framing of policy ‘borrowing’ through the lens of refraction (Goodson and Lindbald, 2011) to argue that teacher education research has an important role to play in the refraction of ‘borrowed’ ideas. Our findings show that without refraction the sustained production of professional learning and knowledge is put at risk as the notion of ‘international best practice’ dominates the reform discourse and the lack of quality research fails to adapt or localise international policies.

Burdett, N. and O’Donnell, S. (2016) ‘Lost in translation? The challenges of educational policy borrowing.’ In Educational Research 58(2), pp. 113–120 Goodson, I. and Lindblad, S. (eds) (2011) Professional Knowledge and Educational Restructuring in Europe. Rotterdam: Sense Tatto, M. (2021) ‘Developing teachers’ research capacity: the essential role of teacher education.’ In Teaching Education 32(1), pp. 27–46. Winch, C. (2017) Teachers’ know-how: a philosophical investigation. Wiley

The aims and objectives for many development initiatives that involve consultants who advise policy and its implementation, are often driven by international metrics, indicators and definitions of success (Marginsson, 2022). Research quality can be defined within metrics widely used in Research Assessment exercises (Pontika, et.al, 2022), and in doing so define quality as being focussed on three areas: outputs (or publications); case studies that define and demonstrate impact of research; and statements about the institutional research culture and environment. Within these categories, quality is defined through originality, significance and rigour. Such definitions of quality are then also internationalised through performance league tables and international ranking exercises. But to what extent can a state authority, with ambitions to improve their research “performance” (against such metrics) do so in a way that is sensitive not just to local cultural traditions but also to research histories, infrastructures and shared understandings of its role and purpose? This paper reports on the approach adopted on the Academic City project to achieve this aim. Commencing with a thorough review of the state of play in research activities across Armenia, and based on the literature search and review reported by Saghdasaryan in this symposium, and a series of stakeholder interviews with current academics in three merging universities, as well as those in other organisations (both academic, philanthropic and third sector), we sought not just to develop a full understanding of the education research culture across Armenia but also to explore the value systems which underpin it. Based on an analysis of education research cultures in countries with similar influences from post-soviet education and research legacies, we wanted to understand what teachers, schools and education academics valued about their research culture and what they perceived research to be for within the wider education ecosystem, with particular reference to teacher education. We then contrasted these views with the widely accepted parameters of what makes for a success “performance” in ranking systems (such as the QS World Ranking). Our aim was not to develop a deficit narrative of what the system in Armenia lacked, but to build on the aspects of the research culture that spoke to the education community in Armenia. In the paper, we present our analysis, our findings and our research strategy: a research plan that combines enhancing methodological expertise across the education ecosystem, along with targeted interventions on those areas for research that stakeholders agreed matters.

Marginson, S. (2022) ‘What drives global science? The four competing narratives.’ In Studies in Higher Education 47(8), pp. 1566-1584 Pontika, N,. Klebel, T., Correia, A., Metzler, H., Knoth, P., and Ross-Hellauer, T. (2022) ‘Indicators of research quality, quantity, openness and responsibility in institutional review, promotion and tenure policies across seven countries.’ In Quantitative Science Studies 3(4), pp. 888–911

The role of education research in relation to policy and practice is contested (Aldridge et al., 2018). Its potential aims range from that of informing practice through joint research by practitioners and researchers (Wyse et al., 2020), to that of developing evidence to measure impact and inform policy (Wiseman, 2010). Regardless of purpose, research quality is valued while the indicators of quality are defined differently across the board. As part of the Academic City project, along with other objectives, the Armenian Government aims to improve the quality of education research to inform policy changes and evaluation and for practitioner improvement. The (Teacher) Education Work theme of that project’s Education Cluster aims to accomplish that aim through the approaches presented by Brooks and Turvey and Kyureghyan. To enable that work, we explored the state of academic publications in Armenia about education. This resulted in a unique review of educational research of one country. The aim of this review was to describe the current research trends about education in Armenia, and to explore links between research done and ongoing policy changes, if any. The review included any research published that corresponded to the following criteria:  published between 2005-2025  published in Armenian journals included in the list of the Republic of Armenia State Scientific Committee: note that these overwhelmingly comprised of in-house university publications,  published either by an Armenian author(s) or by non-Armenian author(s) exploring an Armenia-specific topic  research on K-12 or higher education in Armenia, or context-independent research on education  published in Armenian, English or Russian. The search led to over 2,100 papers that were then analysed based on research type, topic, research methodology, data collection tools, sample size, and funder, where available. Methodologically, the analysis shows that many papers omitted an outline of their chosen methods and how they secured the rigour of their research. This could be seen through an absence of stated and used methodology except for a few examples of empirical research based on simple surveys. The analysis also shows a disconnect from contemporary international literature and with ongoing policy changes in the country. This paper will present the research undertaken, its methodology and the main findings in the context of ongoing policy changes and the Academic City project.

Aldridge, D., Biesta, G., Filippakou, O. and Wainwright, E. (2018) ‘Why the nature of educational research should remain contested: A statement from the new editors of the British Educational Research Journal.’ In British Educational Research Journal 44(1), pp. 1-4 Wiseman, A. (2010) ‘The uses of evidence for educational policymaking: global contexts and international trends.’ In Review of Research in Education 34(1), pp 1-24 Wyse, D., Brown, C., Oliver, S. and Poblete, X. (2021) ‘Education research and educational practice: The qualities of a close relationship.’ In British Educational Research Journal 47(6), pp. 1466-1489