Diversity in teacher education: perspectives on a school-led system

The Diversity in Teacher Education (DiTE) research programme is the first attempt to chronicle the origins, character and effects of different ways of training teachers in England since the influential Modes of Teacher Education project in the 1990s. Informed by DiTE’s large-scale quantitative research and its smaller-scale qualitative studies that reveal the experiences of teachers, teacher educators and programme leaders in higher education institutions (HEIs) and schools, the book provides a detailed analysis of growing complexity in the English system of teacher education. In doing so it leads to some clear findings: that responsibility for teacher education has moved away from HEIs, and that greater government involvement has encouraged schools (and groups of schools) to become major players. Meanwhile, beneficial partnerships between HEIs and schools (and between schools) have emerged, although tension and instability can result where all partners are not equal, difficulties that are both created and augmented by the new context of complex provision