Integrating Initial Teacher Education and Induction in Scotland

Abstract

Within the Scottish education system, initial teacher education (ITE) is based within universities, who work closely in partnership with schools and teachers across Scotland to offer the practicum element of the first stage of teacher education. Beginning teachers will typically undertake a Professional Graduate or Postgraduate Diploma in Education comprising 18 weeks of on-campus study and 18 weeks of practicum. Other distinguishing features of teacher education in Scotland include the ambition for a Masters-level teaching profession, and the Teacher Induction Scheme which guarantees a year of work post qualification to allow beginning teachers to reach the General Teaching Council for Scotland’s Standard for Full Registration. In the last decade, there has been a diversification of approaches to the partnership aspect of university initial teacher education (ITE) in Scotland from this standard 36-week model. Emerging through the ‘Teaching Scotland’s Future’ report in 2011, concerns over shortages in particular geographical locations, including teacher supply beyond the densely populated ‘central belt’ region of Scotland, and subjects led to Scottish Government support for more diverse approaches within university ITE. In this chapter we explore in depth an innovative school-university partnership model, integrating the first two stages of the beginning teacher’s career in Scotland, discussing the benefits and tensions for teacher educators in university and those in school contexts. The approach taken by one university teacher education provider, the University of Dundee, and its local authority partners, responded to local supply challenges by innovating an ‘alternative route’ into teaching. In Scotland, there are 32 local authorities; these are local government bodies with responsibility for providing services including education. In the school-university partnership described within this chapter, the University of Dundee worked with four of the 32 local authorities, each of which had responsibility for between six and 18 secondary schools.