This thesis attempts to describe and explain the national policy issues in teacher education in Scotland between 1959 and 1981. It concentrates on the main structural issues of the expansion and contraction of the teacher education system and its relations with the rest of higher education. These issues are set within the context of debates about policy-making. The thesis takes as its theoretical framework a 'process model' of policy-making derived from Hogwood's 'From Crisis to Complacency'. Within that framework, it particularly explores how far the concept of a 'policy community' was applicable to teacher education in Scotland. In addition to using these theoretical insights, it also uses comparisons and contrasts with developments in England and Wales to explain those in Scotland. The thesis draws on a variety of sources: published material; the archives of the Joint Committee of Colleges of Education, of the General Teaching Council and of individual colleges; the Scottish Education Department files in West Register House (the author was granted privileged access to those still closed under the 30 years rule); and interviews with a number of the significant policy-makers. The argument of the thesis is that, for most of the period, there was a close-knit policy community for teacher education in Scotland, within which most policy decisions were reached after consultation by a process of 'bureaucratic accommodation'. It analyses the roles within the policy community of the main participating groups : the Scottish Education Department, the Scottish Council for the Training of Teachers (1959-67), the General Teaching Council (after 1967), the Committee of Principals, the Educational Institute of Scotland and the universities. It shows how the relationships between these groups changed over time and in respect to different issues. It then suggests that the process of bureaucratic accommodation does not work when issues are politically controversial and, therefore, that the problem of contracting the teacher education system could not be resolved within the normal boundaries and by the normal procedures of the policy community. It also notes that contraction in Scotland did not, as in England and Wales, lead to the virtual disappearance of separate institutions for teacher education, and suggests reasons why the Scottish colleges were not merged with other institutions in this period
