Student teachers learning through inquiry: international perspectives

There is currently a tension around the professional status of teachers that centres on the place of knowledge within their expertise. This tension is most apparent in nations, including the USA and England, where Neoliberalism has strongly influenced educational systems so that they are driven by parent choice, measurement of success by test and examination results, school league tables, high stakes inspection systems and performativity of individual teachers. This tension around professional knowledge and the status of professionals is found across a wide range of professionals and is a feature of social and historical change related perhaps as much to technology and the knowledge-based economy as it is to the rise of Neoliberalism. In this period of challenge professionalism is positioned by Freidson (2004) as an ideal type that is involved in a power struggle with the other two logics of rational-legal bureaucracy, and a free market model. Across most nations of the world there is strong political desire to improve education systems and an acknowledgement that high quality teachers are central to that project. There is also a broad assumption that, despite the vagaries of individual ministers for education, the development of the education system should be based on research evidence. The tension around research evidence arises as to the role of individual teachers and teaching teams within this grand project of improving educational systems. It may be expressed by considering a choice between ‘teachers as technicians who must deliver evidence-based practice’ and ‘teachers as professionals who must lead the development of research-informed practice through practitioner inquiry’.