Attractiveness by Design and by Communication: A Desk-Based Analysis of Croatian Teacher Education Programmes

Teacher education increasingly competes for candidates, which makes programme attractiveness a question of alignment between what programmes signal publicly and what their curricula offer. This study examines that alignment in the 14 Croatian university programmes through which candidates holding a disciplinary qualification acquire pedagogical competences (the consecutive model). Using a comparative desk-based design, qualitative content analysis and structured comparison were applied to publicly available sources through two lenses: communicated attractiveness (how programmes publicly frame the teaching profession, the student experience, and the transparency of demands and support) and designed attractiveness (what the curricula and intended learning outcomes formally offer). Alignment between the two dimensions was classified into four patterns. All programmes ensured baseline procedural transparency and most made curricular substance publicly visible, with intended learning outcomes available for 11 of 14, yet the professional value of teaching was actively communicated in only 5. The most common pattern (6 of 14) was curricular strength without communicated value; high alignment characterised 5 programmes, and none over-promised relative to its curriculum. The programmes are thus limited less by what their curricula contain than by how little of it they communicate. The findings suggest that institutions could strengthen the visibility and appeal of teacher education primarily through communication, without necessarily altering programme structures.