The body that represents Scotland’s university schools of education has rebranded itself in an attempt to highlight the wider work they carry out beyond initial teacher education.
The Scottish Teacher Education Committee is becoming the Scottish Council of Deans of Education in a move intended to reflect the amount of research being carried out, at a time when there are concerns about the lack of research-informed policy-making in education.
Here, we explore the issues behind the body’s decision to rebrand.
Why the name change?
The Scottish Teacher Education Committee hasn’t changed its name since teacher education became the preserve of universities, as opposed to teacher training colleges, beginning in the 1990s. Morag Redford, chair of the group, said: “Schools of education in universities provide teacher education, but also carry out research and have a broader remit than the original committee was established to deal with. We wanted to make sure the breadth of what happens in schools of education was recognised.”
‘It’s time to give hunch-based decision-making a cold shoulder’
So is university education research really that underappreciated ?
There is mounting opinion that Scotland doesn’t make enough use of education research when forming policy, and that government should take the work of Scotland’s academic researchers more into account.
The 2015 review of the Curriculum for Excellence, carried out by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, concluded that Scotland needs to “strengthen evaluation and research”. And the Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE) has long complained that no system has been set up for evaluating the success of CfE.
Last month, Keir Bloomer, the convener of the RSE education committee, told MSPs: “Successive governments have claimed success in relation to Curriculum for Excellence, but those claims are based on no evidence whatsoever.”
Surely the introduction of the new testing regime in primary and secondary schools will be evidence-based?
Journalist and lecturer James McEnaney has highlighted the limited written evidence sought by the Scottish government prior to it reintroducing national testing, with only two experts consulted: Louise Hayward, a professor of curriculum assessment and pedagogy at the University of Glasgow, along with Sue Ellis, a professor at the school of education at the University of Strathclyde.
And this year, Rowena Arshad, head of the University of Edinburgh’s Moray House School of Education, made a plea for evidence-based policy-making, saying that it was “time to give hunch-based decisionmaking the cold shoulder”. She reminded politicians and policy-makers that they had “an enviable wealth of expertise and research residing in the country’s universities”.
‘There is an enviable wealth of expertise and research in our universities’
Didn’t the government recently appoint an international council of education advisers?
Yes. But just two Scotland-based experts, Graham Donaldson and Chris Chapman, are on the council - and they both come from the University of Glasgow.
The only education expert sitting on the National Improvement Framework group was Professor Hayward, also based at Glasgow, and Professor Chapman is senior adviser to the Scottish Attainment Challenge.
What key role does the government think the newly named Council of Deans of Education has to play at the moment?
Last month, the organisation presented education secretary John Swinney with a total of 22 proposals for new routes into teaching, after he wrote to the body asking it to come up with suggestions to tackle staff shortages, particularly in subject areas such as science, technology, engineering and maths.
Another hot topic, meanwhile, is how to fix the Student Placement System after more than 100 teaching students were left without schools to go to last month.
@Emma_Seith
