Internationally, there has been considerable political activity around the question of how to better prepare teachers. For example, in England, the government has focused on increasing the amount of ‘teacher training’ that is undertaken in schools so they can focus on ‘core teaching skills’ (Carter, 2015). In Australia the focus is now on how to better prepare ‘classroom ready’ teachers (TEMAG, 2014). In this paper, we take Australia as an example to illustrate the policy debates about teacher pre-service preparation. The recent Teacher Education Ministerial Advisory Group (2014) report Action Now: Classroom ready teachers provides a range of key recommendations to ensure that newly graduated teachers have the necessary knowledge, skills and dispositions to deliver quality teaching and learning for all students. To this end, the Federal Government has committed $16.9 million to the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL) to make sure that ‘teachers are better trained’ (Pyne, 7 May, 2014). This involves a focus on accountability, accreditation, regulation, selection, assessment, content and evidence about what works. This paper argues that whilst such approaches may be useful at one level, at least managerially, they are insufficient because they ultimately lead to a narrowly conceived technicist and back-to-basics approach to teacher education. In addressing this problem, the chapter identifies some major gaps and silences in current policy debates especially as it relates to the complexity of teaching and the broader philosophical, moral, contextual and political purposes of teaching (Kincheloe, Slattery, & Steinberg, 2000; Thomas & Shubert, 2001).
