Will the UK Government’s Initial Teacher Training Market Review Report provide the catalyst for a renewed values-based dialectic in teacher education?

Abstract

ABSTRACT The context for this study is the recommendation of the UK Government’s Initial Teacher training (ITT) Market Review (2021) to require all, including historic English university partnerships, to apply for re-accreditation. There follows a detailed examination of current policy documents, culminating in the ITT Market Review, which demonstrates a clash of ideological values between current neo-liberal instrumentalism, aimed at aligning teacher education with school improvement and historic narratives which embed teacher education within the civic, social democratic values of the university. It is argued that such a clash of ideological values may provide hope for re-generating a Gramscian values-based dialectic in current teacher education which can contribute to the development of the moral and political values of trainee teachers. Application of the Gramscian Dialectic and Historical Consciousness to a textual analysis of the University of Manchester's archival teacher training documentation reveals a dialectic over the period 1963–1975 between the university delegacy's social democratic values and new managerialist values. The textual analyses of the current Manchester Ofsted report and current primary training documentation suggest that, just as the narrative of that 1963–1975 dialectic informs the development of student–teachers’ moral and political values of the time, so too does it continue to inform the professional values and practice of current trainees underpinning their outstanding inclusive practice. The study concludes with a fundamental question about narrative and its implications for the development of the moral and political values of trainees in new teaching alliances.