Experiences of a Research-Based Approach to Teacher Education: Suggestions for Future Policies

Overview & Synopsis

There is an ongoing discussion about teacher education today: its organisation, its academic status and the competence that results from different programmes. There is no one best way to organise teacher education. Rather, the appropriateness of organisation is related to the desired aims. In this article, we discuss one way to organise and implement academic education for class teachers, namely, a research-based approach, which has been used in Finland for the last 30 years. We elaborate on a theoretical framework for research-based teacher education and present empirical evidence for ways of implementing teacher education programmes, experiences and evaluations. Based on this evidence, we consider the present state of teacher education and suggest guidelines for the future. Research-based teacher education in Finland has been underway long enough to examine its results and its effectiveness in educating class teachers today. Together with our own research findings, the high-level performance of Finnish pupils in international examinations suggests that teacher education in Finland has been on the right course. We recommend that departments of teacher education should be established within universities and that teachers should obtain Master's degrees. Such steps will ensure that a higher conceptual level is adopted and that research is part of teacher education. Although our context is teacher education in Finland, the viewpoints expressed may be valuable for teachers, teacher educators and researchers on teacher education in a broader European context.