Category Archives: educational transformation

When:  12th June 2013

Time:  17:00 – 18:15

Where:  Rm 2.17, Graduate School of Education, University of Bristol

Who:  Dr Janet Orchard and Dr Hugo Whatley

Title:

Practical wisdom and the good RE teacher: possibilities for change to ITT in RE in England

Abstract

This study argues for a new approach to Secondary ITT/E in RE in England, drawing on evidence compiled from a combination of empirical and philosophical research methods.  The study describes and analyses the double bind currently facing providers of ITT in RE. The status of RE is being down graded, while the established place of ITT in the university is being challenged by reforms to the sector as a whole. Overall, allocated places have been reduced radically and several courses have already closed.

We agree that radical change is needed but question the particular direction current proposals for change are taking. We argue that the account of the good teacher assumed in policy documents, which justify those changes, is unrealistically and unhelpfully ‘thin’. We find the notion of the good subject teacher which ITT in RE providers offer (constructed from their answers to questionnaires and semi-structured interviews and checked against the perceptions of a subject-specific focus group), to be much ‘thicker’ and more helpful. We note the additional demands these higher expectations place, not only on initial teacher training but ongoing subject specific professional development, and agree with the assessment of the RE Council for England and Wales in 2011 that longstanding shortages in high quality CPD in RE have affected standards in the subject.

However, even the richer account of the good RE teacher from providers seems relatively “thin” when held against conceptions of the good teacher being articulated in an emerging literature in teacher education and the philosophy of education. Rooted in the Aristotelian tradition, this model assumes that it is “practical wisdom” which distinguishes the very best teachers from others; we sketch the good RE teacher who combines high levels of technical competence, theoretical and academic rigor, as well as the capacity to make sound moral decisions to their regular classroom practice. We conclude by outlining the kind of ITT and CPD that practically wise RE teachers need, thus demonstrating why current policy changes and even established notions of best professional practice fall short of the genuinely ‘world class’ education system English young people need.