This year I retired from my role in teacher education and research, seven years after becoming a professor, and 30 years after mentoring my first student teacher. In the English context I was not alone. As the new Department for Education (DfE) requirements for Initial Teacher Training (ITT) led to formerly accredited ITT providers losing their status, and with many universities making redundancies, alongside a wave of retirements, there has been a net loss of experienced teacher educators. Wood and Quickfall (2024) concluded that the long-term sustainability of the teacher education profession is at risk, demonstrating that the resources available to support wellbeing and workload of teacher educators are declining, while the expectations and challenges of the role are growing.

In addition, there are cracks in the teacher recruitment and retention pipeline, which is part of a global phenomenon. Based on their analysis of a combination of data sources, however, Gorard and colleagues (2023) conclude that job status and working conditions are significant. They also cite 2018 TALIS data which indicate that teachers in England are the least happy in their work and least likely to think that they were valued by society, policymakers and the media, in international comparisons.

‘The long-term sustainability of the teacher education profession is at risk … There are cracks in the teacher recruitment and retention pipeline, which is part of a global phenomenon.’

The new UK Labour government made a manifesto commitment to recruit 6,500 additional teachers in England. This target faces challenges, including those embedded in ITT requirements. However, there are some indications of welcome policy changes, such as the easing of what school leaders’ union ASCL considered to be an unrealistic expectation related to mentor training (Cumiskey, 2024a). The DfE announcement of ‘further flexibilities regarding the quantification of the initial mentor training times’ recognises that pressures must not risk the sustainability of mentoring and teacher education (see Cumiskey, 2024b).

The DfE’s ITT accreditation means new providers, such as the National Institute of Teaching, are taking their turn in teacher training. They are part of the ‘new educational establishment’ (Benn, 2024) created under the Conservative and coalition governments of 2010–2024. However, given the challenges, I surmise it is not simply enough to hand over the baton to a new generation of teacher educators. The Teacher Education Exchange proposed key design principles for transforming teachers’ professional education: planning for a life-long teaching profession; putting schools and teachers at the heart of their communities; seeing education as cultural and societal development; and providing a continuum of professional learning (Ellis et al., 2017). These are appropriate aims for a more sustainable future, but are largely out of reach of the individual teacher educators and mentors.

I believe we need to consider what changes can emerge through the ways that individuals in the sector relate with, and work with, one another by choice – finding the opportunities to build professional and relational agency for teacher educators, mentors and their student teachers. Mentor training, for example, is not just a matter for ‘quantification’. In 2009, Margaret J. Wheatley wrote about ‘turning to one another’ through conversations that can restore hope. She cautions that:

‘We’ve taken the essential elements of being human – our spirits, our imagination, our need for meaning and for relationships – and dismissed them as unimportant. We’ve found it more convenient to treat humans as machines, replaceable parts in the economics of production.’ (Wheatley, 2009, p. 77)

We should not shy away from how true this might be across education. Society, children and young people, and teachers would benefit from a turn towards a more compassionate, compelling and irresistible profession. As a researcher and practitioner who focused on coaching and mentoring, I believe, like Wheatley, in the power of conversation to do this. She states that: ‘Conversation wakes us up. … We become people who work to change our situation’ (Wheatley, 2009, p. 162). From a distance now, I would love to know that I am missing out on those very conversations that could create the ‘new turn’ in teacher education.

References

Benn, M. (2024). Inside the ‘New Educational Establishment’. In V. Ellis (Ed.), Teacher Education in Crisis. Bloomsbury.

Cumiskey, L. (2024a, September 28). New teacher training mentor rules ‘threaten recruitment’. Schools Week. https://schoolsweek.co.uk/new-teacher-training-mentor-rules-threaten-recruitment/

Cumiskey, L. (2024b, November 13). ‘Excessive’ 20 hours mentor training requirement scrapped. Schools Week. https://schoolsweek.co.uk/excessive-20-hours-mentor-training-requirement-scrapped/#:~:text=Mentors%20must%20train%20for%20up,their%20mentees%20from%20this…

Ellis, V., Frederick, K., Gibbons, S., Heilbronn, R., Maguire, M., Messer, A., Spendlove, D., & Turvey, K. (2017). Teacher Development 3.0: How we can transform the professional education of teachers. Teacher Education Exchange. https://research.brighton.ac.uk/files/482814/teacherdevelopmentthreepointzero.pdf

Gorard, S., Ledger, M., See, B. H., & Morris, R. (2024). What are the key predictors of international teacher shortages? Research Papers in Education. Advance online publication.  https://doi.org/10.1080/02671522.2024.2414427

Wheatley, M.J. (2009). Turning to each other: Simple conversations to restore hope to the future  (2nd edn). Berrett-Koehler Publishers.

Wood, P., & Quickfall, A. (2024). Was 2021–2022 an annus horribilis for teacher educators? Reflections on a survey of teacher educators. British Educational Research Journal, 50, 2172–2197. https://doi.org/10.1002/berj.4017