Teacher induction: personal intelligence and the mentoring relationship

This article is aimed at probationer teachers in Scotland, their induction supporters, and all those with a responsibility for their support and professional development. It argues that the induction process is not merely a mechanistic one, supported only by systems in schools, local authorities and the General Teaching Council for Scotland (GTCS), but a more complex process where the relationship between the new teacher and the supporter is central to its success. In particular, the characteristics and skills of the induction supporter in relation to giving feedback are influential. This applies to feedback in all its forms – formative and summative, formal and informal. The ability of the probationer to handle that feedback and to be proactive in the process is also important

Teaching human rights? 'All hell will break loose!'

Human rights education is a prominent concern of a number of international organisations and has been dominant on the United Nations’ agenda for the past 20 years. The UN Decade for Human Rights Education (1995–2004) has been followed by the World Programme for Human Rights Education (2005–ongoing) and the recently adopted UN Declaration on Human Rights Education and Training. This article shares findings from a project that aimed to gauge the knowledge of human rights education of students undertaking initial teacher education and childhood practice programmes at one university in Scotland. Students were invited to share their experiences of and attitudes towards human rights education. While some students were confident in their approach to human rights education, others identified barriers, including their own knowledge and the structures acting upon them as teachers. Initial conclusions suggest that education students feel ill-equipped to engage with human rights education and that this issue must be addressed in initial teacher education courses

COVID-19 Guidance : Student Teacher Professional Placements in Scotland

In the context of a severely interrupted year for students undertaking initial teacher education (ITE) programmes, this guidance sets out the procedures to ensure that student teachers are supported to complete their initial teacher education programme, allowing a recommendation to be made to the General Teaching Council for Scotland that the Standard for Provisional Registration (SPR) has been met and evidenced, and the student teacher can progress into probation. This guidance has been agreed by all bodies set out above and has been shared with key partners including the Scottish Government’s Covid-19 Education Recovery Group (CERG)

COVID-19 Guidance Student FAQ : Student Teacher Professional Placements in Scotland

This document is intended to answer questions which student teachers in Scotland may have about their placements during session 2020/21 in the context of Covid-19 following the publication of the national COVID-19 Guidance | Student Teacher Professional Placements in Scotland. Please note that university and local authority partnerships will now plan to put the 19 February 2021 guidance into practice and universities will advise their students of specific arrangements at the earliest opportunity; time will be required, however

COVID-19 Guidance on Student Teacher Professional Placements for Teacher Education Institutions in Scotland - August to December 2020

Initial discussion took place within the Education Recovery Group (ERG) Workstream 7 (Workforce Planning) on which ADES, GTC Scotland, and SCDE, were all represented. ERG Workstream 7 was coordinated by Scottish Government, Education Scotland, and COSLA, and had membership (in addition to the aforementioned) from: Co-Chair Teacher Workforce Planning Advisory Group; Educational Institute of Scotland; National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers (NASUWT); National Parent Forum of Scotland (NPFS); School Leaders Scotland (SLS); Scottish Catholic Education Services (SCES); Scottish Secondary Teachers’ Association (SSTA); and Voice. Shared agreement was reached between these organisations on the following points: ● Placements are to be planned to take place from October 2020; ● All reconfigured placements are to be managed through SPS; ● [That there would be a] careful consideration by each TEI and GTC Scotland as to which student placements take place for undergraduate years 1, 2 and 3 in session 2020/21; ● GTCS Council is to approve an Addendum to respond to the exceptional circumstances of COVID-19: the acceptable parameters for adjustment for ITE programmes; ● TEIs are to approve changes to placement patterns and associated assessments through quality assurance processes

From teaching physics to teaching children : beginning teachers learning from pupils

This paper discusses the development of beginning physics teachers' pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) in the context of teaching basic electricity during a one-year Professional Graduate Diploma in Education course (PGDE) and beyond. This longitudinal study used repeated semi-structured interviews over a period of four-and-a-half years. The interview schedule followed a line of development through the secondary school electrical syllabus in Scotland. Fifteen student teachers were interviewed during the PGDE year. Six of them were followed up at the end of the Induction Year (their first year as a newly qualified teacher), and again two-and-a-half years later. Thematic analysis of the interviews showed that before the beginning teachers had taught any classes, their initial focus was on how to transform their own subject matter knowledge (SMK) about electricity into forms that were accessible to pupils. As the beginning teachers gained experience working with classes, they gave vivid descriptions of interacting with particular pupils when teaching electricity which showed the development of their pedagogical knowledge. This played a significant role in the teachers' change of focus from teaching physics to teaching children as they transformed their SMK into forms that were accessible to pupils and developed their general pedagogical knowledge

Redefining what It means to be a teacher through professional standards:Implications for continuing teacher education

This article connects with an international debate around the place of professional standards in educational policy targeted at enhancing teacher quality, with associated implications for continuing teacher education. Scotland provides a fertile context for discussion, having developed sets of professional standards in response to a recent national review of career-long teacher education. That review called for a reprofessionalisation of the teaching profession and the revision of the standards was an element of this process. Scotland is utilised as a lens through which one country’s response to international trends is viewed, with a focus on ‘teacher leadership’ and ‘practitioner enquiry’ as policy endorsed sets of practices. The analysis demonstrates the complex and contested nature of these terms and the tensions posed between the need to meet professional standards as part of teacher education and aspirational dimensions of the current policy project of reprofessionalisation. The article concludes by considering the implications for continuing teacher education

Social justice and leadership development

The revised professional standards for the teaching profession in Scotland are underpinned by a set of values which includes a detailed articulation of social justice for education covering rights, diversity and sustainability. There is a future orientation in these standards that privileges the contribution of teachers and leaders to realizing a wider social aspiration for social justice. This expectation on leaders to contribute to this wider aspiration for social justice raises questions about the practice of leaders and their development. This article considers the implications of the articulation of social justice in the professional standards for career-long leadership development. The article explores some of the issues related to social justice and the role of leadership in school. The article then focuses on the context of Scottish education, looking firstly at the professional standards and secondly at the issues related to social justice leadership. From this discussion the implications for career-long leadership development are considered. The article concludes with a framework for social justice leadership development identifying key aspects of values, knowledge and understanding, inclusive practice, policy, issues of equity and equality that can be developed progressively across a leadership development continuum

From accountability to digital data: the rise and rise of educational governance

Research interest in educational governance has increased in recent years with the rise to prominence of transnational organisations such as the OECD and the importance attached to international comparison of educational systems. However, rarely do educational researchers consider the historical antecedents that have attended these developments. Yet to more fully appreciate where we are now it is necessary to examine the national and global events that have shaped the current policy context. This paper presents a review of educational governance in the UK from the 1970s seeing in this a trajectory from the emergence of accountability to today’s overriding concern with digital data. In doing this, the paper aims to go beyond providing a historical account, rather its purpose is to shed light on educational change; and further, to analyse the contribution of educational research to an understanding of events as they have unfolded over the past five decades. While it is necessarily rooted within the particular historical context of the UK it can be read as an analysis of the factors influencing educational change in the context of globalised policy spaces more broadly. A recurrent theme is the appearance of the ‘unanticipated consequence’, one of the most important issues the social sciences has to contend with. Thus a tentative theory of ironic reversal as a source of policy failure emerges which is not only of relevance to educational policy but of wider significance