The international implications of policy change for teacher education are illuminated in this paper which will share analysis of the design, planning, teaching of, and responses to, a post- graduate module for pre-service primary school teachers. At the University of Brighton, we have developed a pedagogical model of professional learning that exploits the personalisation and connectivity that professional blogs can yield, to construct a meaningful narrative of professional development that blends university and school-based learning. This paper will consider the developing role and contribution of higher education to the education of student teachers through analysis of their and their tutors’ experiences of this module, as they struggle to conform to required, practical change in a creative and productive way.

This research was designed to closely consider the development of emerging teacher identities and how these can be captured by narratives of professional learning. Our aim has also been to examine the quality of the contribution that professional blogs can make in this development, in order to explore and analyse their credibility as a vehicle for the process of professional learning and growth. The paradoxical trend towards increasing ‘personalisation’ and ‘connectivity’ through the web and mobile devices (Traxler, 2010) challenges the parallel growth of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and their alleged potential to ‘revolutionise’ the knowledge economy through their supposed scaling-up of education in terms of access and reach (Barber, Donelly and Rizvi, 2013). Concerns about quality and low student completion rates illustrate the on-going problematic area of these latest regenerations of online learning. This paper is in antithesis to productivity-driven approaches to education seeing the potential of the internet and digital technologies in developing practices of personalisation and connectivity to construct new knowledge and develop professional identities.

Our wider aim is to contribute to the discussion about the ways in which change in teacher education in a range of countries, including France (Le Café Pédagogique, 2011), Sweden (Goodson and Lindbald, 2010) and Finland (Kansanen, 2010) is being communicated, implemented or imposed and to consider how university departments of education are responding to these changes. Our contribution to this discussion is framed by the recent reforms in policy and funding in England, where the political aspiration has been to shift control of ‘teacher training’ away from universities and into schools (DfE, 2010; McNamara et al, 2014).

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