When Worlds Collide--Examining the Challenges Faced by Teacher Education Programmes Combining Professional Vocational Competence with Academic Study, Lessons from Further Education to Higher Education

Overview & Synopsis

This paper examines the challenges faced by higher education institutions in designing, teaching and quality assuring programmes of study which, of necessity, must combine the gaining of professional vocational competence with academic study. The paper gives recognition to the policy framework in which these programmes fit--with particular reference to teacher education. It presents the challenges at each stage, from ensuring that curriculum design meets the needs of the profession, to the quality assurance mechanisms which ensure standards and compliance. Initially the paper draws on published research to examine how and why these policy decisions have been taken in much of the developed world. The paper goes on to present a new perspective, however, by comparing current teacher education mechanisms with those that have developed in the past twenty years in further education, looking at the parallels and addressing how far we can learn from the experiences of further education colleagues to ensure that we manage to combine the two different worlds of academia and vocational training without compromising either. It suggests ways in which higher education institutions can learn from further education to tackle the challenges to ensure that concentration on training students to be good teachers is done without compromising personal growth and intellectual development, and examines how far it is possible to meet the demands of higher education quality controls which are applied with differential emphases.