Geography teacher educators (GTEs) do important work. They have roles in recruiting, teaching and assessing beginning teachers, in mentor education, and in supervising practitioner enquiries and research. GTEs engage with academic debate while navigating complex relationships between research, policy and practice, and supporting their students to do so too. They may also contribute to what the Universities Council for the Education of Teachers (UCET, 2020) term the intellectual base of teacher education through research, and – where democratic structures are in place – support policy development. Agency is of the upmost importance to this work as GTEs engage with, and are responsive to, student needs and interests, the impacts of policy on education and society, (issues in) the world and research.

While agency is a contested term (Priestley at al., 2015), we use it to refer to people’s intentions in making decisions/acting, but also in their capabilities and power to act within wider social, political and economic structures (Giddens, 1986). Contributing to debates in geography (teacher) education in England has become more urgent due to the rapidly evolving policy context in initial teacher education. The Department for Education (DfE) has become increasingly prescriptive in its guidelines for teacher education, without consistently explaining how or why it focuses on specific ideas of professional knowledge for teachers (Hordern & Brooks, 2023). This raises important questions about the intellectual basis of such decisions, and what might be termed ‘epistemological privilege’ (Holt et al., 2019) in education policymaking in the present time-space. Put simply, epistemology is the study of the nature of knowledge, and questions of epistemological privilege consider the relationships between who knows about issues and ‘who has the right to be listened to and forge agendas’ (Holt et al., 2019, p. 391).

‘We argue that considering the relationships between research and agency is important both in critically reflecting on educators’ agency in decision-making about what, and how, they teach and also in considering their agency to contribute to debates in, and about, the geography (teacher) education.’

Drawing on a small-scale project which investigated GTEs’ experiences of, and perspectives on, education for sustainability (EfS), we argue that considering the relationships between research and agency is important both in critically reflecting on educators’ agency in decision-making about what, and how, they teach and also in considering their agency to contribute to debates in, and about, the geography (teacher) education. While we consider the experiences of and perspectives on EfS in a separate paper (Hammond et al., 2024), in this blog post we focus upon data which gives broader insight into the nature of the GTE community. We undertook a survey and received 30 full responses; of these, 18 participants worked in a school, 8 in a university, 2 were self-employed, 1 had no affiliation and 1 worked for an education charity. When asked whether they received any research or scholarship time as part of their job, 8 participants expressed they had research/scholarship time, 21 stated they had no time given, and 1 participant chose not to answer. Six of the eight participants with research or scholarship time worked in a university, 1 was self-employed and 1 expressed they had no affiliation. Just 4 participants had over 10% research time, reflecting a relatively small proportion of colleagues who are contractually supported to engage in research and, we might infer, contribute to debates.

While this data is not representative of all GTEs, given the large numbers of ITE providers in England that includes both schools and universities – 226 in 2022–23 (EPI, 2022) – we think this raises several important questions. First, who in the GTE community is supported to engage in, and with, research, and what impacts does this have on geography teacher education? Second, what infrastructure is there to support the research literacy and development of the GTE community? Third, are GTEs supported through infrastructure to contribute to debate about education policy, and if so, how? Finally, what are the impacts on beginning geography teachers who do not have a research-engaged tutor/mentor? Engagement with these questions is needed to facilitate critical consideration of if, and how, research is nurtured or constrained in geography (teacher) education, and indeed teacher education more broadly. Moreover, as a wider teacher education community, we might reflect on the extent to which any reduction in teacher educator capacity to engage with research might reinforce the (in)advertent impacts of epistemological privilege in education policymaking in England on students, educators, teaching and learning, and academic debate.

References

Education Policy Institute [EPI]. (2022). The reaccreditation of ITT providers: Implications for STEM subjects. The reaccreditation of ITT providers: Implications for STEM subjects. https://epi.org.uk/publications-and-research/the-reaccreditation-of-itt-providers-implications-for-stem-subjects/#:~:text=In%202022%2F23%20there%20are,not%20provide%20ITT%20last%20year.

Giddens, A. A. (1986). The constitution of society: Outline of the theory of structuration. Polity Press.

Hammond, L., Fargher, M., & Walshe, N. (2024). Geography teacher educators’ perspectives on Education for Sustainability: Identity and agency in a period of rapid education policy change in England [Manuscript submitted for publication].

Holt, L., Jeffries, J., Hall, E., & Power, A. (2019). Geographies of co‐production: Learning from inclusive research approaches at the margins. Area, 51(3), 390–395. https://doi.org/10.1111/area.12532

Hordern, J., & Brooks, C. (2023). The core content framework and the ‘new science’ of educational research. Oxford Review of Education, 49(6), 800–818. https://doi.org/10.1080/03054985.2023.2182768

Priestley, M., Biesta, G., & Robinson, S. (2015). Teacher agency: An ecological approach. Bloomsbury academic.

Universities Council for the Education of Teachers [UCET]. (2020). Intellectual base of teacher education report. https://www.ucet.ac.uk/11675/intellectual-base-of-teacher-education-report-updated-february-2020#:~:text=UCET%20%E2%80%93%20the%20intellectual%20base%20of%20teacher%20education&text=This%20document%20sets%20out%20UCET’s,to%20the%20professional%20knowledge%20base