Troubling some generalisations on teacher education in the English-speaking world: the case of the Republic of Ireland

Abstract

There is a great deal of talk about a crisis in teaching across the Englishspeaking world, about the quality of teachers leaving much to be desired, and about the quality of student outcomes dropping. This, in turn, has resulted in various aspects of teacher preparation coming under severe scrutiny. In general, disquiet has been voiced about the quality of those admitted to teacher preparation programmes, about the quality of the programmes themselves, and about the quality of those responsible for delivering them. Much of the literature in this regard emanates primarily from the US, and England and Wales, and to a lesser extent from Australia and New Zealand. While the criticisms voiced may well be valid for these contexts, one would still not be justified in uncritically generalising from them to the rest of the English-speaking world. We adopt such a ‘troubling’ perspective by focusing on the situation regarding secondary school teacher preparation in the Republic of Ireland. Along with being offered as a work of interest in its own right, a number of areas for consideration regarding the situation in South Africa are also outlined.

Keywords: English-speaking world; Republic of Ireland; teacher preparation; teacher professional development