Can Teacher Education Contribute to the “Settlement” of Education Debt?

There is a global consensus that teacher education must be improved and resources and obstacles to developing teacher education need to be elaborated if it is to meet the challenges of the twenty-first century (Darling-Hammond, Journal of Teacher Education, 61, 1–2, 2010; Korthagen, Teaching and Teacher Education, 26, 2010). Considerable variations exist in the implementation, pedagogy, and structure of teacher education worldwide, with differences also in the level of involvement of national governments. Yet, despite these differences, the field of teacher education has consistently been an object of political debate. However, questions arise as to whether teachers are being educated for a knowledge-based global society, or whether teacher education in its current form is an outmoded relic from a long-departed industrial era (Odell & Klecka, Journal of Teacher Education, 62(4), 2011). One prevailing global trend has been the enactment of neoliberal economic policies and the adoption of New Public Management (NPM) principles. This has led to increased global competition, market-oriented reforms, and restructuring programmes that have forced educational organizations to adopt new, strategy-oriented, managerial models (Ball, New policy networks and the neoliberal imaginary. Routledge, 2012). On a global level, developing teacher education and altering well-established teacher education programmes appear to be a slow and difficult process. In this chapter I use the idea of “education debt” developed by Ladson-Billings, Educational Researcher, 35(7) (2016) (discussed later) as a framework for reviewing teacher education programmes at an institution in South Africa to provide a reflective view on the shifts and changes in teacher education that were presented as innovation in policy and practice. I will review programmes in terms of policy and practice by way of document analyses of programme architecture and personal reflections of practice within the programmes. Data will include personal journals and an analysis of programme development and structure in terms of the teacher education debt framework mentioned earlier. Initial results seem to indicate that teacher education programmes are still dominated by hegemonic discourses related to teacher education based on Western approaches to the field. Shifts observed include demographic changes in student and staff populations, inclusion of schools from varying contexts in practicum processes but with consistent dominance of programme development linked to hegemonic policy-driven approaches and unidirectional knowledge “delivery”. An important outcome related to this research is acknowledging the teacher education debt as discussed. This we believe creates a different starting point for innovation in teacher education than merely seeking to make the existing system more efficient and effective. We further hope to provide insights from institutional levels to highlight how cultural diversity and inclusion of minoritized communities can go to repaying the educational debt incurred in teacher education generally.