Quality Assurance in Teacher Education

As a new framework for quality assurance in teacher education emerges, internal and external constituencies with an interest in teacher education quality are making burdensome demands on the sector. The constituencies include OFSTED, Government agencies concerned with accreditation and funding, the HE institutions, the teaching profession and student teachers. The result is a series of potentially conflicting pressures and a heavy cycle of inspection and report writing. There is a danger that tutors involved in the process will become sceptical about it, falling back on compliant responses in order to satisfy demands at a surface level. Examines quality assurance in teacher education, reports the way in which one group of teacher education tutors conceptualizes the idea of quality in practice and identifies those characteristics of a quality assurance system which should retain the confidence of staff.