Forty years of teacher education in Australia: 1974–2014

Abstract

In this paper, I analyse the history of teacher education in Australia from 1974 to the current policy moment in which questions are increasingly being asked about the quality of teaching and teacher education. Teacher education is, and has been, a highly scrutinised domain in Australia. Since the 1970s, we have seen more than 100 reviews of teacher education in Australia, with another one recently announced in 2014. I focus on three phases in the growth and development of teacher education in the past 40 years by considering the ways in which teacher education (and teaching) has been thought about at various points in time and analysing the related policies for funding governance and regulation. I finish by focusing on the current policy moment in Australia which is positioning teacher education as a ‘policy problem’ requiring a national solution and consider the role of research in, on and for, teacher education into the future.