Canadian Journal of Educational Administration and Policy, Issue #32, July 1, 2004. © by CJEAP and the author(s).

Systems of Educating Teachers:
Case Studies in the Governance of Initial Teacher Education

by Jon Young, University of Manitoba

Introduction

Faculties and Schools of Education have not stood apart from the upheaval that has accompanied the broader destabilization of the educational policy settlement in Canada and England discussed earlier in this issue. Changing expectations of teachers, driven primarily by a discourse of the forces of globalization, inevitably translate into a re-examination of what should constitute appropriate pre-service preparation. In this process of change Faculties of Education find themselves functioning within a complex policy arena that is bounded by the competing interests of the state, the university and the profession. While articles in the remainder of this issue explore different aspects of program development within this context, the focus of this article is on the processes of policy development and institutional governance in pre-service teacher education, and the competing efforts to exert their influence over pre-service teacher preparation among these three stakeholders.

For most of the last century, across Canada as well as in England, the legal authority for teacher certification, and for programs designed to prepare teacher for certification, has resided with the state – provincial governments in Canada and the national government in England. While this legal authority did not change when early in the second half of the twentieth century teacher education programs came to be housed on university campuses, in practice governments generally accepted the recommendations of universities without much question and so effectively authority over pre-service teacher preparation shifted to the university. The last twenty years have, however, seen significant challenges to this ability of Universities and Faculties of Education to operate essentially independently of either government direction or the involvement of teachers and their organizations in the governance of initial teacher education. This article explores the processes of organizational decision-making and governance in teacher preparation. It does so by examining teacher education policy development in three separate jurisdictions – England, Manitoba (Canada) and British Columbia (Canada) – and the different ways in which the university, the state, and the profession have exerted their influence over initial teacher education in the last twenty years.

A Conceptual Framework

Faculties of Education are organizations nested within a complex environment of competing interests, demands and expectations. This environment is conceived of here as consisting of three primary, but overlapping, spheres of policy initiation and implementation. One sphere is the public policy arena of the state - national and provincial governments, school boards and the like. Another is the university system with its preoccupations of knowledge production, preservation, dissemination and application, the latter perhaps most noticeable in the professional schools, including Faculties of Education. A third is the arena in which teachers and professional teacher organizations attempt to influence the content and structure of teacher education programs and their practical efficacy. In seeking to understand the processes by which teacher education policy is developed, this article takes up Gideonse’s (1993) notions of three different modes of governing teacher education: political modes, institutional modes, and professional modes. Each he suggests has its virtues and its shortcomings, and while none in reality exists in pure form any one at a given time in a particular place may prevail. (p.5)

Political Modes of Governance

A political mode of governance involves elected provincial/state or federal/national bodies dominating policy making in teacher education. Implicit in this mode of governance is not only a legal jurisdiction and authority but, equally importantly, a willingness and interest on behalf of public officials to exercise that authority rather than to delegate it – and the existence of the structures to enable such activity. Gideonse suggests that this mode has the benefit of reflecting the importance that the body politic attaches to the public school system and the qualifications of its teachers. Among its limitations are the potential for excluding the expertise of professionals and working against collegial processes within the teaching profession. Equally important, this mode encourages the belief that desired changes in teacher preparation can be imposed by regulation, and that "actions at the centre can somehow yield results at the periphery" (Gideonese, 1993, p.5). Cautioning against such a belief, Hawley (1990. p.137), reminds us that, "policy made is not policy implemented".

In the current context of international school reform characterized by direct and sustained governmental intervention (Levin, 2001), it is not surprising that Faculties and Schools of Education have experienced increased public scrutiny and political regulation. Gideonese refers to the political mode of governance as "by far the dominant [mode] in America" (p.5), a view shared by Hawley (1990) who notes that, "teacher education is probably the most highly regulated course of study in [USA] colleges and universities" (p.137). In Britain the central government has exercised its control over all aspects of pre-service teacher training, in part through the establishment in 1994 of the Teacher Training Agency (TTA). The TTA is an agency directly accountable to the Secretary of State and all of its Board members are government appointees. Making explicit the government’s intentions to use the TTA to radically change teacher training in the country, the Secretary of State declared on June 12^th, 1996:

While central government intervention in British teacher education/training was not unique to the 19980s and 1990s, these developments, discussed in more detail later, have substantially changed the autonomy of universities in the governance of pre-service teacher education.

Institutional Modes of Governance

Institutional modes of governance, according to Gideonse (1993), imply that governance is centred on the units responsible for the actual delivery of pre-service teacher education programs. He notes that "the obvious reality is that the institution mounting a teacher education program not only is the place where the preparation needs and conflicts have to be resolved, but also is where the specifics of aim, design, resources, logistics, schedule, and so on are all supposed to come together" (p.6). Gideonse notes that the strength of this approach is that "it is closest to where the teacher education action is" (p.6). But he also recognizes that the approach has to deal with the problems associated with large differences between institutional types and capacities, and their potential for being susceptible to the vicissitudes of highly localized - to say nothing of tunnel - vision.

Since 1965 pre-service teacher education programs in Manitoba, like most other jurisdictions, have been housed within universities. The movement at this time from the Normal School to the university campus brought with it a substantial advances in the professional knowledge and status of teaching (Gregor, 1993). But it also created significant and chronic tensions – analogous to those experienced in other professional faculties – as teacher educators attempt to mediate the scholarly and research expectations of the academy with the requirements of competent practice that inform participation in the teaching profession. This "theory/practice" separation has always been a significant aspect of university-based teacher preparation. To a degree it was moderated for a time by the fact that when the Normal Schools and Colleges of Education were moved into Schools of Education they often took with them the best of their faculty – ‘master teachers’ with strong connections and allegiances to the profession. Their presence in the university served to bridge some of these cultural differences, but as they retired and as the university norm of the Ph.D. as the entrance credential to the professoriate impacted on Faculties of Education, these tensions became more marked. Much has been written about these tensions between "academic respectability" and "responsiveness to life in schools" (Clark and McNergney, 1990). Teacher education programs, it seems, continually walk a fine line in integrating theory and practice in order to . They must avoid being simultaneously criticized as an "ivory tower" by the field and "Mickey Mouse" by other units in the university.

Close to the heart of university governance are notions of institutional autonomy and academic freedom. In a university context, autonomy and freedom are often interpreted as meaning mean that the content and quality of academic programs should be the responsibility of the institution and that individual faculty members should have independence in deciding how best to teach their courses and how to conduct their research. From the perspective of policy development in teacher education this can present significant challenges to the development of an institutional stance that has both broad internal support and is attentive to external constituencies inputs.

Professional Modes of Governance

In Canada, British Columbia became the first province to make its teachers self regulating when the Teacher Profession Act (1987) established the British Columbia College of Teachers. This Act in essence assigned to the College sole responsibility for governing the profession’s standards of entry, and discipline and practice, and in doing so separated these activities from other welfare and union interests pursued by the British Columbia Teachers’ Federation. In 1996 the Ontario government moved to create a similar self-regulating body with the passage of the College of Teachers Act (1996). The Ontario College of Teachers, according to its mandate, was established to regulate and govern the province’s teaching profession, with responsibility for developing standards of teaching practice, regulating teacher certification and professional development, and accrediting teacher education programs (Young and Levin, 2002, p.278.) All practicing teacher in Ontario are legally required to be members of the College which is governed by a Governing Council of 31 people, has athe majority (17) of whom are elected by members of the College and must be qualified teachers, with the remainder (14) appointed by the Minister of Education "to represent the broader public interest". In both jurisdictions these professionally controlled agencies have the mandate of setting the standards for entry into the profession, and have not been timid in exercising that authority. One of the first major activities of the OTC was to develop in 1999, with the involvement of its membership, a set of Standards of Practice for the Teaching Profession. that were approved by the Council of the Ontario College of Teachers in November 1999. Gideonse (1993) argues that this mode of governance is attractive because "it allows for the fullest expression of professional expertise and professional values" (p.6) and also because it allows teaching to mirror the practice of other high status professions.

The Case of England: Government-Driven Teacher Education Reform

By the beginning of the 1980s governance of the content and structure of initial teacher education programs in England, as in Canada, had become the almost exclusive prerogative of higher education institutions. Yet within a fifteen years period this situation was to be dramatically changed by intense, unilateral government intervention that effectively replaced university control with a system that was highly centralized in terms of government regulation and largely school-based in terms of delivery.

During this period of sustained government intervention in initial teacher training there were three main government policy concerns (Furlong, et al., 2000):

The first significant step in this transformation of the governance of initial teacher education in England came in 1984 with the establishment of a national Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education (CATE). (See Figure 1.) It was modest in its initial expectations compared to what was to follow. It required instructors responsible for pedagogy in teacher training to have "recent and relevant" school experience. It also defined, for the first time, how much time teacher trainees should spend in schools during their training. The guidelines were nonetheless a landmark event in that they represented the government’s assertion of its right to, and interest in, intervening in the detailed content and structure of initial teacher education. In this sense it "called in" higher education’s previously held autonomy in these areas.

Five years later, in 1989 Circular 24/89 (DES, 1989a) extended the reach of CATE by establishing local CATE committees – on which representation from higher education institutions involved in initial teacher education had to be a minority – to oversee all teacher-training courses. Furthermore, the circular placed emphasis on the practical aspects of teacher training in several ways:

• increasing the number of days students had to spend in schools,
• mandating a closer involvement of the profession in course planning and evaluation, student selection, and the assessment of practical work, and
• by defining a range of topics that had to be taken up within all initial teacher education programs, a forerunner of the "competencies" and "standards" that were to be put in place by the end of the 1990s.

Commenting on these developments, Furlong et al.(2000) observed:

The two key government circulars on teacher education in the 1980s (DES, 1984, 1989a) therefore seemed to have two interrelated purposes – they aimed to re-establish a national system of accountability in initial teacher education and progressively introduced a more practically focused professionalism by opening up training courses to the reality of the "market" of schools. (p.25)

At the same time that the government was exercising its influence in these areas it was also promoting the development of new, alternative routes into the profession. This had the dual purposes of attracting new populations into teaching, and challenging conventional models of teacher preparation and the autonomy of higher education institutions that provided them.

The Articled and Licensed Teacher schemes represented two such initiatives promoted by the government at the end of the 1980s. The Articled Teacher scheme officially began in September 1980 with 16 consortia and around 400 trainee teachers. It represented a new model for a school-based Post-Graduate Certificates in Education (PGCE) in which trainees took two years instead of the usual one to complete their program, and spent 80% of their time in schools as part of a program established by Local Education Authorities collaboratively with higher education institutions. Considerably more radical in design was the Licensed Teacher scheme, introduced in the same year, which allowed for trainees with a minimum of two years of higher education to be recruited directly into a school and then provided with individualized, ‘on the job’ training. Distinct from all other existing models of initial teacher training, this initiative both provided a non-graduate route into teaching and took control of initial training for these people entirely out of the hands of higher education institutions.

Moves were underway, therefore, toward a nationally mandated, centrally controlled framework for initial teacher training, one that emphasized "training" over "education" and that endorsed a program delivered more directly by the profession. These new directions came at the expense of the autonomy of the universities and Faculties of Education. They were further advanced in the 1990s with the release of Circular 9/92 (DfE, 1992), addressing secondary level initial teacher education programs and Circular 14/93 (DfE, 1993) that addressed primary programs. The circulars required greater involvement of schools in the preparation of teachers, and more critically, mandated an expanded list of required competencies for beginning teachers. Furlong et al. (2000) commented:

In an explicit attempt to tighten central control of the curriculum, the standards that newly qualified teachers need to achieve in both the areas of subject knowledge and teaching skills were expressed in a comprehensive list of "competencies". (p.69)

They noted further:

The loss of autonomy for higher education was now publicly stated;according to Circular 14/93, courses had to be designed to serve ‘the Government’s policy objectives for schools’ (DfE, 1993a). (p.71).

The 1994 Education Act saw the establishment of the Teacher Training Agency (TTA), an ‘arm’s length’ government body that took over most of the functions of the Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education (CATE) as well as the funding of all initial teacher-training in England. With three core responsibilities – teacher recruitment, funding, and accreditation – the TTA pushed ahead with the development of a detailed set of ‘competencies’ and ‘standards’ associated with Qualified Teacher Status.

By linking with the Office for Standards in Education’s (OFSTED) inspections of initial teacher training programs, furthermore, the TTA developed a strategy for tying funding decisions to institutional compliance and to their definitions of program quality. OFSTED, which has been created in 1992, published its first publicly available inspection framework for inspecting initial teacher education institutions in 1993. These frameworks, which were revised in 1996 and 1998 (OFSTED/TTA, 1996, 1998), provided a detailed and focused set of government expectations divided into three main areas: intake of teacher recruits;, training and assessment processes; and outcomes. As with the OFSTED school inspections, these inspections were considered by many in the university to be hostile, heavy-handed and intrusive, but they were nonetheless a very effective way of increasing conformity to both the spirit and letter of government regulations. If the establishment of competencies by the TTA was the first step in the establishment of government control of initial teacher training in England and OFSTED inspections the second step in monitoring compliance, the linking of funding to OFSTED results represented a third critical link in the process.

Until the mid 1990s, the content of initial teacher education had been subject to only limited government direction. The second half of the 1990s, however, saw the TTA become increasingly explicit in controlling the system. It did so, first, by developing a more complete and far reaching set of ‘standards’ associated with Qualified Teacher Status (published in draft form in Circular 10/97) (DfEE, 1997). And Secondly, it produced a National Curriculum for initial teacher training from these standards for initial teacher education. This curriculum focused on four subject areas (English, Mathematics, Science and ICT) and covered both primary and secondary teachers. Furlong et al. (2000) conclude of this era:

The Case of Manitoba: Institutionally-Driven Teacher Education Reform

Section 93 of the Canadian Constitution defines education as a provincial responsibility, and in the province of Manitoba the framework for public education is defined primarily through The Education Administration Act (1987) and The Public Schools Act (1987). The Education Administration Act states that programs taken in teacher education institutions in the province, for the purposes of teacher certification, "shall be subject to the approval of the minister" (Section 3[2]). It further assigns to the Minister of Education the responsibility for prescribing the minimum standards of academic and professional education acceptable for the certification of teachers in the province (Section 4 [1]). Regulation 515/88, Teaching Certificates and Qualifications, spells out the procedures for implementation. It states simply that a professional certificate to teach any subject from Kindergarten to Grade 12 may be issued to two kinds of individuals. The first kind is anyone who "is a graduate from a Manitoba university and holds a Bachelor of Education degree" (Section 9 (a)). The second kind is anyone who is a graduate from outside of Manitoba holding either a four-year Bachelor of Education degree or a two-year after-degree Bachelor of Education or equivalent.

On a few occasions in the last two decades Ministers have exercised their authority to influence the shape of initial teacher education in the province by communicating directly to the Presidents of the Universities and the Deans of the Faculties of Education without changing Regulation 515/88. However, for the most part the de facto authority of the universities to determine the requirements of certification through the content of their Bachelor of Education programs has remained the dominant influence in the governance of initial teacher education in the province.

In managing the interface between the government and Faculties of Education, the provincial government has relied on two main agencies – the Council on Post-Secondary Education and the Board of Teacher Education and Certification. First established in 1965, membership of the Board of Teacher Education and Certification (BOTEC) is made up of representatives of the major education partners in the province, with the higher education institutions involved in initial teacher education having the largest representation but not a clear majority on the Board.(1) Its terms of reference assign this body the responsibility of proposing to the Minister guidelines, policy and regulations relating to: teacher education in Manitoba; the certification of teachers; the assessment of the credentials and functions of other ancillary and instructional services; and, the evaluation of credentials for salary purposes (Manitoba Education and Training, 1990). This was a mechanism that, while dominated by the universities, allowed for the building of a consensus within the educational establishment and it worked effectively as such through much of the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s. In the second half of the 1990s when relations between the government and many of its educational partners became particularly conflicted the Board became much less influential, met less often, and exerted less influence on government decision-making.

Aside from BOTEC however, the governance of initial teacher education continued to be exercised primarily through the governance structures of individual universities. In practice these consisted of the Faculty Councils of the Faculties of Education and the University Senates and their various sub-committees. The most substantial changes to teacher education, therefore, continued to be driven by the universities.

Program Change at the University of Manitoba

During the second part of the 1980s the Faculty of Education at the University of Manitoba, like all other Faculties, was held accountable to the university by an internal and external program review process. Reports of the external reviews of the Faculty as a whole and of individual Departments at that time confirmed a belief already widely held in the Faculty that it was time to rethink the whole Bachelor of Education program. An initial response by the Dean was to commission a senior faculty member to write a synthesis and commentary on the recommendations of all of the reports for Faculty Council (Osborne, 1989). In preparing his commentary, Osborne reviewed the academic literature on teacher education, and consulted widely with the Manitoba Teachers’ Society, other Faculties of Education in the province, and Senior Administrators at the University of Manitoba. Reiterating the need for the Dean to initiate a comprehensive revision of initial teacher education he noted, "we have lost most of our sense of programme" (p.4.), and clearly suggesting where responsibility for the program lay he continued:

It is the Faculty’s problem, our problem…. Only we can tackle it, with the help of colleagues in schools and elsewhere in the university. But the task is primarily ours. (p.4)

Acting upon this report, in January 1990 the Dean established an internal Taskforce on Initial Teacher Education Programs (TITEP) consisting of the Dean and four other senior faculty members. The terms of reference of the taskforce were to: "develop the goals, content and methods of delivering initial teacher education program(s) in the Faculty of Education, and, to develop all necessary admission and program regulations to ensure the good operation of the program(s)" (Faculty of Education, June 1993).

The establishment of the TITEP committee initiated a prolonged discussion and, debate within the Faculty of Education and with its traditional professional partners over the future shape of initial teacher education at the University of Manitoba, and, as a consequence, in the other Faculties of Education in the province. In formulating its recommendations for a new Bachelor of Education program the Task Force, like Osborne, undertook an extensive review of the academic literature on teacher education and drew heavily on the work of Shulman (1997), Goodlad (1990), and Schon (1983, 1987). The new program was organized around Shulman’s characterization of the knowledge base for teaching, namely; subject matter or content knowledge; general pedagogical knowledge; knowledge of the curriculum – its content and justification; knowledge of learners; knowledge of educational contexts; knowledge of educational aims and purposes; and, discipline-anchored pedagogical content knowledge, the special concern of a Faculty of Education. Goodlad’s work on Partnership Schools (1990) was also influential in shaping the TITEP proposals, as was Donald Schon’s articulation of the importance of developing in beginning teachers the skills and dispositions of reflective practice.

Guided by this academic literature TITEP published a Statement of Issues discussion paper in the spring of 1990, and consulted with faculty members and held a series of public meetings before publishing an Interim Report in October 1991. This report was followed by another round of public consultations prior to the presentation of The Report of the Task Force on Initial Teacher Education Programs (TITIP) to Faculty Council in June 1992 and a Final Report a year later in June 1993.

After considerable debate the Final Report of TITEP recommended a number of fundamental changes to the Bachelor of Education program at the University of Manitoba. Four of these were especially important.

i. A move away from a four-year Bachelor of Education program that admitted students directly from high school, and toward an entirely after-degree program;

ii. An extension of the length of the Bachelor of Education program to two years (or at least 60 credit hours);

iii. A restructuring of the program into Early, Middle and Senior Years streams that required students to specialize in only one of these streams,(2) and

iv. An expansion and reconstruction of the school-based component of the program.

Summarizing the main pedagogical thrusts of the proposed new program the Final Report claimed that:

In contrast with the existing four-years and post-degree program, the pedagogical component of the teacher education program recommended by the Task Force has these important features: an expansion of "core" content, notably that devoted to teaching strategies and to learning, development and evaluation; an expansion of time and sustained attention to curriculum studies in both years; enhanced preparation for diversity within the classroom, notably with a formal concern for multicultural education, special education and forms of differentiated instruction; a new emphasis on the use of information technology in the classroom; a more concerted orchestration of teaching studies and practical experiences based on laboratory microteaching and lengthened field placement; a revised academic schedule and timetable reflective of the school system calendar; and a reconstituted vehicle for Faculty-Field collaboration and program delivery – Partner Schools, the most ambitious feature of a model of teacher education and school improvement envisioned in the extensive work of John Goodlad (1990). (University of Manitoba, Faculty of Education, 1993, p. ii)

These recommendations were approved by the Faculty Council of the Faculty of Education in June 1993.

The process of implementing the TITEP recommendations was significantly influenced, however, by two major developments that took place within a year of this Faculty Council approval. The first was the appointment of a new Dean in the Faculty of Education effective September, 1993. The second was the release in the summer of 1994 of two policy documents by the provincial government Renewing Education: New Directions – The Blueprint (Manitoba Education and Training, 1994a), and Renewing Education: New Directions – The Action Plan (Manitoba Education and Training, 1994b). The tenure of the new Dean saw both an opportunity to re-open some of the internal debates that had been a part of the TITEP process, as well as an ongoing development of the proposed TITEP template in each of the three Early, Middle and Senior Years streams. The release of the New Directions documents signaled the beginning of a period of sustained government intervention in public education where the reform of teacher education (both pre-service and in-service) was one of six "new directions" identified as priorities for the government (Henley and Young, 2002; Levin, 2002).

In beginning its process of teacher education reform, the government looked to the Board of Teacher Education and Certification (BOTEC) to play an important advisory role. In October 1994 the Deputy Minister of Education presented a draft document entitled, A Framework for Teacher Education Review (Carlyle, 1994) to BOTEC for its response. Reiterating the government’s view that changes in teacher education were central its broader school reform agenda, the document stated:

… educational renewal will call for new skills, new competencies and and expanded knowledge base on the part of teachers. Based upon many public consultations and studies it is recognized that existing teacher education programs do not fully address these skills and competencies. Teacher education reform, therefore, is an essential component of educational renewal. (p.1).

In addition to laying out a general set of skills and competencies that beginning teachers should have, the Framework document proposed actions that it considered necessary to the improvement of teacher education in the province. It proposed, for example, that the practicum be extended, and that the province introduce a two-year internship prior to permanent certification. It also proposed establishing consistency among pre-service programs across the province on such matters as program length and the scheduling of practica. And it encouraged BOTEC to determine appropriate levels of enrollment in Faculties of Education. Furthermore, it asked BOTEC to consider the appropriateness of differentiated certification (meaning specialized certifications focused on distinct areas of teaching or grade level), to assess the merits of periodic mandatory re-certification, and to review the existing salary classification process.

Given only a short period of time to respond to these proposals, BOTEC focused its attention on issues of program length and structure and in September 1995 recommended to the Minister of Education that:

1. all initial teacher education programs in the province be a minimum of 150 credit hours in length with a minimum of 60 credit hours in professional studies;
2. that programs can be delivered either sequentially or in an integrated model; and,
3. that the expanded pre-service teacher education programs be followed by an induction process in the initial year of employment (Board of Teacher Education and Certification, 1995).

Presented with these recommendations and with a proposed new two-year after-degree Bachelor of Education, the Minister of Education appointed a Dr. Bernard Shapiro, President of McGill University as a one-person Commission to review the structure, length, size and configuration of teacher education programs in Manitoba (Shapiro, 1996). Dr. Shapiro conducted a series of consultation visits to Manitoba early in 1996, and in July 1996 submitted a report entitled, Manitoba Teacher Education Programmes: An Option for the Future. Dr. Shapiro observed that in his view, "despite the ‘blizzard’ of reform talk, little had in fact either been decided or done" (p.3). He therefore recommended that the government either act with respect to teacher education in light of its best judgment or move the teacher education policy off the agenda (p.4). He also recommended some significant shifting of programs between the universities, and, notably, the creation of a new self-contained Bachelor of Education program at the University of Winnipeg. Shapiro endorsed the BOTEC proposal that pre-service programs be a minimum of 60-credit hours of professional educational work, and recommended that both sequential and integrated programs be accepted for certification.(3) Finally, his report recommended that certification be grade-level specific (elementary and secondary) and that beginning teachers be hired only in those areas for which they hold specific certification (p.13).

The release of the Shapiro Report triggered another round of responses from the educational partners in the province. In the fall of 1998, in a letter to the Presidents of Manitoba Post-Secondary Institutions, the Deputy Minister finally conveyed the government’s position on new certification requirements. Effective May 2003,(4) the province would require that new teachers have:

* a minimum of 150 credit hours of post-secondary coursework, of which at least 60 credit hours are in educational studies,

*two degrees including a Bachelor of Education, arrived at either sequentially or concurrently,

* a minimum of 30 credit hours or 24 weeks of supervised in-school experience,

* at least 30 credit hours of successfully study in a major teachable area and 18 credit hours in a minor teachable area.(5)

The letter concluded,

These changes in certification are the outgrowth of Action 15 of Renewing Education: New Directions. The Action Plan, which indicates that "teachers must possess knowledge of the disciplines they teach regardless of the grade level of their students. If teachers are to help students develop a foundation of concepts and knowledge within these disciplines, they must have a thorough understanding of them" (Carlyle, 1998, pp. 2-3).

With these regulations confirmed by government the University of Manitoba’s new Bachelor of Education program was finally approved by the University Senate in December 1998, the first students admitted into the new program in September 1999, and its first graduates awarded their Bachelor of Education degree in May, 2001.

The details of this new program, and the ensuing struggles of the Early, Middle and Senior years program streams to implement (and alter) it, are beyond the scope of this article. What is critical to the arguments of the article is to note that, in the case of Manitoba, substantial change in the length, conceptualization, and format of initial teacher education in the province during the late 1980s and 1990s while mandated by the government were nonetheless driven primarily by the Faculties of Education.

The Case of British Columbia:
Professional Involvement in Teacher Education Reform

British Columbia is Canada’s most western province with a population of some four million people. In 2003, eight different institutions offered initial teacher education programs. Four of these were public universities – the University of British Columbia, Simon Fraser University, the University of Victoria, and the University of Northern British Columbia. One was a private university – Trinity Western University - and three were University-Colleges – Malaspina, Okanagan, and Kamloops. Collectively they graduated some 1400 teachers per year.

As noted earlier, for thirty years following the closing of Normal Schools in British Columbia in the 1950s, the universities in the province consolidated their de facto control over all aspects of initial teacher education, regardless of the fact that the provincial government retained the legal authority for certification. But this situation changed substantially in 1987 when the Social Credit government introduced the Teacher Profession Act that established the British Columbia College of Teachers – a body, unique in North America at the time, that placed control of teacher certification, discipline and professional development in the hands of the profession.

Although calls for the teaching profession to be self-regulating had been made by the British Columbia Teachers’ Federation, and others, prior to this (British Columbia Teachers’ Federation, 1974), the 1987 legislation was introduced without consultation with either teacher organizations or the universities, and was seen by many as primarily an attempt to weaken the influence of the powerful British Columbia Teachers’ Federation (Sheehan,1995, Ungerleider, 2003). The legislation setting up the College established a Governing Council of 20 people, 15 of whom were required to be teachers, elected by teachers in 15 zones across the province. Of the remaining five, two were appointed by Cabinet, two by the Minister of Education, and, one was appointed by the Minister of Education on the recommendation of the Deans of the Faculties of Education in the province.

Commenting on the uniqueness of the College, Bowman, Ellis, Smart and Wiens (1994) observed:

The College has the usual powers of licensing bodies in that it issues and withdraws certificates and can discipline its members. The legislative object of the College, in part, requires the Council to establish, having regard to the public interest, standards for the education of its members and applicants for membership. Its uniqueness stems from being a body controlled by the profession, having statutory authority to approve teacher education programs at Faculties of Education which lead to certification and to co-operate with those faculties in the design and evaluation of their programmes. The implications of this legislative authority came as a surprise to the first college council and certainly to the universities. (p.11).

Charged with this responsibility for approving all teacher education programs in the province and yet without having had the opportunity to develop criteria for approval, the College gave interim approval to the three existing initial teacher education programs at the University of British Columbia, Simon Fraser University, and the University of Victoria, and in 1989 initiated a review of all three programs. This review included a review of the literature on teacher education leading to a paper published by the College in June 1990 entitled, Issues in Teacher Education (Bowman, 1990), which in turn formed the basis of a forum for interested parties. In 1990 each Faculty of Education conducted an internal review at the request of the College, while the College conducted a survey of its membership. In 1991, the College established a three-person external review team that included Michael Fullan, Dean of the Faculty of Education at the University of Toronto, a practicing B.C. elementary teacher, and the Chair of the College Council. All of this information provided the basis for the final report prepared for the College in 1991 (Bowman, 1991).

Based on the recommendations of the report the Council adopted a bylaw that enabled it to approve the three teacher education programs on a continuing basis subject to an ongoing collaborative review process, and laid out the criteria by which both existing and new programs would be assessed. The criteria contained descriptions of the basic level of service, the content and the nature of the program of studies. The latter included the academic context, the selection and admission of candidates, the undergraduate studies, the professional preparation courses, the integration of theory and practice, the length and quality of the practicum, and the process for continuing internal review (Bowman et al., 1994). The review of programs at all three teacher education institutions was successfully completed by the British Columbia College of Teachers and resulted in the ongoing approval of each university’s initial teacher education programs, but it also served to highlight a number of areas of contention that would continue to inform the activities of the College.

Trinity Western University and the Issue of "Community Standards"

Trinity Western University (TWU) in Langley British Columbia is a small, private university affiliated with the Evangelical Free Church of Canada, that since 1985 had operated a teacher education program in association with Simon Fraser University. Students in the program wishing to teach in the public school system were required to take one year of their five-year program taking courses under the auspices of Simon Fraser University. Students attending the university are not required to be evangelical Christians but there are required to sign a Community Standards document that requires that they "refrain from practices that are biblically condemned … [including] … sexual sins including premarital sex, adultery, homosexual behavior and the viewing of pornography" (Ursel, 2002, p. 392).

In 1994 the University applied to the British Columbia College of Teachers for full certification. In line with normal College practice, a Program Review Team was established which conducted site visits and carried out a full review of the program before recommending that the program be approved for a five year period subject to certain conditions. However, when this recommendation was taken to the BCCT Council approval was denied. Central to the Council’s decision was the view that by labeling "homosexual behavior " as "sinful" the Trinity Western University community standards document discriminates on the basis of sexual orientation and it was therefore not in the public interest to accredit the program.

Trinity Western University applied for a judicial review of the Council’s decision. The review judge overturned the Council decision. He found that the BCCT had produced no evidence to support the concern that TWU graduates would act in a discriminatory manner because of the promises made in signing the community standards document. He further required that the College approve the TWU program subject to the conditions originally set down by the College’s Program Approval Team. This decision was upheld by the B.C. Court of Appeal and by the Supreme Court of Canada. The Supreme Court saw its decision as reconciling the religious freedoms of individuals wishing to attend Trinity Western University with the equality concerns of students in B.C.’s public school system. The court therefore ruled that it was within the jurisdiction of the BCCT to examine discriminatory practices in teacher training programs and that it did not err in considering equality concerns pursuant to its public interest jurisdiction (Ursel, 2002, p. 398). Nonetheless, in balancing the religious rights of TWU students and students in the public schools, the court ruled that "…the proper place to draw the line in cases like the one at bar is generally between belief and conduct." It found that the BCCT in its decision had not produced compelling argument that anything in the code of conduct indicated that TWU graduates would treat homosexual students unfairly or disrespectfully or evidence that TWU graduates had been guilty of such misconduct.

The University of British Columbia and the Issue of Institutional Autonomy

In May 1999 the Faculty of Education at the University of British Columbia submitted a proposal for a revised Bachelor of Education to the British Columbia College of Teachers for approval. Following an in-depth review by the College’s Program Approval Team the College Council identified a series of issues and concerns that it required the Faculty of Education to address as conditions of approval. When the Faculty of Education rejected the conditions as constituting an unacceptable and unwarranted intrusion into the autonomy of the university, the College Council on May 11^th, 2000 denied approval for the new program. Included in the grounds for denial were the following concerns:

1. that supervision ratios for the practica were inadequate;
2. that there was insufficient breadth in teaching methodologies in the curriculum areas in the elementary program; and
3. that there was inadequate communication and consultation with the sessional faculty advisors, who carry out most of the supervision of student teaching, in the design and implementation of the proposed program (BCCT, Fall, 2000, p.2).

The University of British Columbia sought a judicial review of the decision, arguing that the College’s recommendations overstepped their mandate and intruded upon the management, and control of the University of British Columbia as laid out in the University Act". The judicial review supported the UBC position that while the College had the authority to consider whether graduates of the UBC program were properly trained and qualified for the purposes of certification, UBC had the jurisdiction to decide how its programs were implemented. (BCCT, Fall, 2001, p.2). The B.C. College of Teachers appealed this decision to the British Columbia Supreme Court and in May 2002 the court ruled in favour of the appeal. (British Columbia Court of Appeal, May 15^th, 2002). In the ruling the court recognized that while the university has the right and power to grant degrees as it sees fit, the college has the right and power to determine what constitutes acceptable qualifications. In the words of Madam Justice Southin:

Under the powers given the College, it may, but need not approve for certification purposes a program of the Faculty of Education of the University of British Columbia, or any other school of education…. Nothing in either Act prevents the University from doing as it thinks fit in the education of its students. The problem for the University, I suppose, is that students will not wish to avail themselves of a degree program which has not previously been approved by the College. (British Columbia Court of Appeal, (2002 para. 37, as c). Cited in BCCT, Summer, 2002, p.4)

Justice Southin recognized the potential challenge to the province of this dispute between the largest Faculty of Education in the province and the College of Teachers stemming from the provisions of the Teaching Profession Act and the University Act. She therefore ruled that if the two parties could not work out their differences, then the matter was for the provincial legislature to address rather than the courts. She concluded:

Shortly put, it is my opinion that the powers and privileges which the Legislature has conferred on these bodies – they are wholly creatures of the Legislature and what it has given it may take away – are such that if they cannot agree on how teachers are to be educated and if the responsible Ministers of the Crown cannot bring them together, the Legislature will have to make such statutory amendments as are appropriate to bring to an end the skirmishing between them. In other words the present differences are not justifiable. (British Columbia Court of Appeal, (2002, para 9, as c). Cited in BCCT, Summer, 2002, p.4)

In May, 2003 the Government introduced the Teaching Profession Amendment Act that attempted to clarify the role of the College and the role of post-secondary institutions in approving teacher education programs, "by giving the college the authority to set standards for teacher certification, but not to approve how teacher education programs are administered or taught" (British Columbia, 2003). This part of the Act has yet to be promulgated.

Proposals to Reduce the Teachers’ Majority on the BCCT Governing Council

The British Columbia College of Teachers and the Issue of Membership

A further element of the Teaching Profession Amendment Act (2003) was to substantially restructure the College’s governing council taking control of the College away from teachers. Instead of making up 15 of the 20 members of Council, elected teachers under the new legislation would fill only eight of the twenty seats on the Council. These changes were justified by the government as being necessary in the interests of public accountability and the public interest. Once again the government argued that the public interest (versus the interests of teachers) was not well served if only teachers nominated and endorsed by the British Columbia Teachers’ Federation were elected or acclaimed to the College Governing Council (British Columbia, 2003, p.6962; BCCT News Release, November 19, 2003).

This legislative move by the government to take away from teachers the self-regulating hallmark of a profession sparked a revolt by teachers in the province, a majority of whom indicated that they would not pay their annual fee to the College if they no longer controlled it. Since membership of the College is a legal requirement for teaching in the public school system in the province this action both put the teachers’ jobs on the line and threatened the operation of the whole school system. In December, 2003, the Minister of Education backed down from the legislation and announced that she would allow the College Council structure to revert to the situation of 12 elected educators and eight government appointees (Steffenhagen, December 11^th, 2003).

Discussion

The third quarter of the twentieth century, during which time pre-service teacher education was consolidated under university jurisdiction in both Canada and England, was a period of time when public education came to assume a central role in the political economy of all Western industrialized countries. Viewed as both a key investment in the promotion of economic growth and a mechanism for promoting social justice, education contributed to an unprecedented sense of economic growth and social progress that Brown, Halsey, Lauder and Wells (1997) refer to as a "hallmark of the era" (p.1). At the beginning of the period against this optimistic backdrop of increased confidence in, participation in, and government investment in, public education, the movement of teacher preparation into the university both reflected and contributed to the increased status of teaching as an occupation and to its professional aspirations. Not unrelated to these developments was the increased status afforded to "educational theory" and the belief that research conducted by university faculty, once delivered to teachers, would provide a panacea for informing effective classroom practice.

The effect of these forces was to create, for the moment, an educational consensus that saw governments aligning their teacher certification requirements with the degree and PGCE requirements of the universities, and teachers’ and teacher organizations generally accepting their restricted roles in exerting a direct influence over the governance of pre-service preparation. As this article has demonstrated, this moment of university authority over both the training of teachers and de facto their initial certification was to prove relatively short-lived.

Within the university, Faculties of Education were engaged in the process of establishing themselves, often uneasily, within the academic hierarchy and traditions of the institution. In as much as this hierarchy emphasized scholarship over teaching, it pulled Education faculty away from schools and teachers – exaggerating the "theory/practice" divide – at the very time that university preparation was enhancing the professional status of teaching and the professional knowledge base of teachers.

For the most part, Faculties of Education – except where there has been forceful government direction - have shown little interest in working closely with the profession. Goodlad (1995) suggests that,

In relations involving school and university personnel, the former have been virtually subservient. At best, when universities have occasionally sought to work with schools, their stance commonly has been one of noblesse oblige. (p.12)

The resulting tensions that stem from the differences of values and processes of the school system and the university (Goodland, 1995, p.13) and the tendency of each to work alone is well illustrated in the history of the British Columbia College of Teachers and, in particular, with its the College’s relations with the province’s largest university, The University of British Columbia.

Nor is it surprising that when the 1980s and 1990s saw a shift in government confidence in public education and a period of sustained government intervention in public education, that university authority and autonomy in pre-service teacher education would come under pressure. If governments were going to assume a far more active role in seeking to bring about rapid change in schools they could hardly ignore the preparation of the teachers on whom the new changes would depend. The history of government intervention in England provides a powerful illustration of the state reclaiming, and vigorously asserting, its authority over all aspects of pre-service (and in-service) teacher preparation with quite limited attention to the interests of either the universities or the teaching profession. Of interest here is not so much that the state had the legal jurisdiction and political will to exercise, rather than delegate, this authority, but, instead, the way in which the necessary structures and processes were put in place to rapidly and directly translate political will into changed practices in teacher training programs. The Teacher Training Agency to set policy and defined in detail the content and outcomes of pre-service programs, the Office for Standards in Education to inspected and reported on Schools of Education in terms of their compliance with these requirements, and a system of student quotas and funding tied to enrollments, provided a context in which a high level of institutional compliance was possible despitein the face of opposition from the universities.

With the exception of a relatively small number of programs in England such as the former Licensed Teacher scheme and, some Graduate Teacher Programmes pre-service teacher preparation and certification remains a shared responsibility of the government, the profession and the institutions of university/higher education institutions. This article has attempted to demonstrate that in In the last two decades the levels of involvement of each of these players has varied considerably across different jurisdictions, reflecting quite different models of teacher education governance in each case. Such differences created considerable tensions in the exercise of policy making in teacher education, but it is still an open question as to how much these differences can be shown to produce substantially different sets of teacher skills, forces, orientations and professional identity within these respective populations.

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End Notes

(1) BOTEC membership originally included representation from the following: the higher education institutions in the province involved in initial teacher education (9 members), the government (2 members), the Manitoba Teachers’ Society (4 members), the Manitoba Association of School Trustees (3 members), and the Manitoba Association of School Superintendents (1 member). In 2002 the Board was restructured and renamed the Teacher Education and Certification Council.

(2) Certification in Manitoba was not, and still is not, grade level specific. Professional certification permits a teacher to teach at any grade level or subject area.

(3) Shapiro’s position was that a two-year after degree program was the most desirable long-term model for the province but not one that was currently viable for all institutions.

(4) This implementation date allowed for students admitted under the existing regulations to graduate within a reasonable time.

(5) This 30/18 requirement has been subsequently modified to 18/12 for teacher candidates preparing in either Early Years and Middle Years streams as the result of pressure from Faculties of Education staff who argued for the benefits of breadth of preparation.