This paper engages with comparatively recent courses of action centred around extending the levels of formal education that define recognised entry to the teaching profession. Globally a small number of countries have established the masters degree as their entry level credential required for admission to the teacher workforce. This is reflective of what could be described as an intensification of attention directed towards teacher quality, recruitment and professional development within the agenda of supranational policy institutions such as the OECD and the EU. This paper sets out to provide an analysis and exploration of a number of salient aspects arising from an emergent trend towards masters level credentials becoming established as the new leading standard for entry to the teacher workforce. In particular:

• The emergence of masters within a history characterised by an upward gradient in teacher credential requirements across wealthy developed nations.

• The confluence of circumstances and rationalities within the policy climate that have animated, across multiple education systems, the shift towards masters as the new aspirational hallmark for entry level teacher workforce qualification.

• The impetus given to masters level credentialisation of the teaching workforce by the EU’s Bologna agreement.

• The unresolved tensions within the curricula of initial and other higher level programmes of teacher education. Specifically the complex and unsettled interrelation between learning within established academic disciplines and subjects and learning across formal professional learning within higher education and forms of learning rooted in practice and subject to forms of classification outside of institutions of higher education.

Clare Brooks , Jacek Brant , Ian Abrahams & John Yandell (2012) Valuing initial teacher education at Master’s level, Teacher Development: An international journal of teachers' professional development, 16:3, 285-302 Darling-Hammond, L. 1990. Teacher professionalism: Why and how? In Schools as collaborative cultures: Creating the future now, ed. A. Lieberman, 25–50. London: The Falmer Press. Kirsi Tirri & Martin Ubani (2013) Education of Finnish student teachers for purposeful teaching, Journal of Education for Teaching: International research and pedagogy, 39:1,21-29. Jennifer Chung , Chris Atkin & Jane Moore (2012) The rise and fall of the MTL: an example of European policy borrowing, European Journal of Teacher Education, 35:3, 259-274. Jyrhämä, R., H. Kynäslahti, L. Krokfors, R. Byman, K. Maaranen, A. Toom, and P. Kansanen. 2008. The appreciation and realisation of research-based teacher education: Finnish students’ experiences of teacher education. European Journal of Teacher Education 31, no. 1: 1–16. Kynäslahti, H., P. Kansanen, R. Jyrhämä, L. Krokfors, K. Maaranen, and A. Toom. 2006. The multimode programme as a variation of research-based teacher education. Teaching and Teacher Education 22: 246–56. OECD. 2005. Teachers matter: Attracting, developing and retaining effective teachers. Paris: OECD. Ostinelli, G. 2009. Teacher education in Italy, Germany, England, Sweden and Finland. European Journal of Education 44, no. 2: 291– 308. Shulman, L.S. 1987. Knowledge and teaching: Foundations of the new reform. Harvard Educational Review 57, no. 1: 1–22. .