Initial Teacher Education (ITE) in Wales has undergone substantial reform in recent years, reflecting a similar trend internationally (Menter, 2019). These reforms have been driven by concerns around the ranking of individual countries in international tests such as the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and the argument that any improvement is dependent on enhancing teacher quality. This in turn depends on improving the effectiveness of teacher education programmes and schools’ capacity to provide the learning environments new teachers need (Milton et al. 2020). The result has often been reform focussed on different interpretations of neoliberal policies and practices (Tatto, 2015), but in Wales there has been an attempt to address this somewhat differently (Mutton & Burn, 2020). 

Whilst this might seem a relatively parochial piece of policy implementation it has much wider significance beyond Wales. First, because the reforms in Wales are part of a much wider international context in which teacher education reform is seen as being essential in delivering better quality teaching and, by implication, better quality outcomes for pupils in schools. Governments across the world often cite poor performance in international tests as providing the imperative for proposed teacher education reform and look to the solutions offered by intergovernmental organisations (Rautalin et al., 2019). What has happened in Wales needs to be contextualised within these wider global trends. Second, the reform in Wales is worthy of international attention because of the complexity of the ambition for research and enquiry informed teacher education alongside a backdrop of the attempt to implement extensive educational reform across all levels of the system.  

The influential report Teaching Tomorrow’s Teachers (Furlong, 2015), focused extensively on the new Welsh model for ITE informed by this vision. It embodies not only consideration of the way in which beginning teachers are given the opportunity to draw on and interrogate different forms of professional knowledge, but also the aspiration for them to develop ‘research literacy’ that can inform and improve classroom practice (BERA-RSA, 2014). 

The paper draws on a theoretical framework of how teachers learn informed particularly by the model of research-informed clinical practice in teacher education (Burn & Mutton, 2015) the development of teachers as adaptive expertise (Berliner, 2004). The Cardiff Partnership for ITE is used as a case study and explores the opportunities, experiences, complexities and challenges inherent in enacting this model, with a particular focus on the development of professional expertise and judgement. This is essential because so many key decisions in teaching are impossible to predict or make routine. We will examine the extent to which the model of research-informed clinical-practice adopted by the Partnership shapes the way in which the beginning teachers within the programme develop as professionals, and develop the habits of mind by which they become more ‘expert’ in terms of the clinical judgements that they are required to make (Kriewaldt & Turnidge, 2013). Drawing on empirical data, we will build a picture of the factors that are perceived to influence the development of this expertise. It will also explore the complex challenges of equipping beginning teachers to manage both the day-to-day routines of the classroom and simultaneously to think deeply and critically about their practice.

The research question we address is ‘What are the perceptions of stakeholders in the Cardiff Partnership for ITE of the factors that influence the development of adaptive expertise in beginning teachers?’. This paper draws on data collected from a pragmatic qualitative study. The data were gathered through one-day case-making workshops (Morgan & Milton, 2022) and online semi-structured interviews. Participants were recruited to the study through the Cardiff Partnership for ITE. Ethical approval was granted from the University in line with BERA guidance. For the case-making workshops the participants comprised 24 beginning (student) teachers with experience of the Cardiff Partnership for ITE clinical practice model. All beginning teachers on the one-year Post Graduate Certificate of Education (PGCE) primary and secondary programmes were invited to an information briefing session and given the opportunity to participate in the case-making workshops. The case-making day was orchestrated to allow the students space to discuss their experiences of the programme honestly in a full and frank way. This way of working and the associated ethical considerations were made clear from the start and students were asked to share experiences, orally and in writing, that had provoked deep thinking. Participants spent time working in triads to consider key episodes from their experience iteratively and in greater depth and then these were documented as written narratives. For the students involved organising and interrogating their experiences and developing written narratives was intended to be a useful way to give meaning to their professional lives and learning (Cortazzi, 2001). These narratives were analysed to identify illustrative experiences and key themes. Semi-structured interviews (n=68) were conducted with a purposive sample of key stakeholders (senior leaders in governance roles; school-based and university-based teacher educators and beginning teachers across a range of Cardiff Partnership for ITE programmes). The interview schedules contained both common questions and some specific to each stakeholder group. The development of these schedules was informed by understanding of the literature on teacher education and working roles and expertise from within the Cardiff Partnership for ITE in relation to how the roles had been developed and were expected to be enacted in practice. Interview data were transcribed and analysed abductively both taking account of the research questions and focus, and the unexpected insights that emerged through the process of analysis. This led to the identification and establishment of well-defined themes through an iterative process (Clarke & Braun, 2017).

Findings indicate there is tremendous support for the Cardiff Partnership for ITE vision of this way of working and a genuine appreciation that it can support all teachers to develop their professional expertise and judgement. Opportunities are highlighted where this way of working has supported both beginning teachers and teacher educators to consider their practice both deep and critically, and how it has helped inform their contingent action with learners as they develop their adaptive expertise. However, our data also highlight the challenges of enacting this paradigm shift in terms of the conceptualisation of ITE programmes against a backdrop of the wider extensive and ambitious policy reform, implemented at pace across the wider education sector in Wales. It explores the lived reality of the day-to-day experiences of beginning teachers and those that support them. The data show that the national vision for ITE reform in Wales has yet to be fully understood and realised within the context of this backdrop. This has led to variability in beginning (student) teachers’ experiences of this approach and the efficacy of this to support the development of their professional judgement and expertise. This is largely due to different interpretations and understandings in practice of the research-informed clinical practice model. While there are examples of where shared and effective understandings have moved practice and learning forward positively, there remains fairly limited evidence of the extent to which the research-informed clinical practice model has been adopted as common practice for students and all stakeholders across the Partnership. We examine the effects that wider drivers and constraints may be having on the ambitions which the Partnership has for its student teachers and its associated stakeholders. We discuss the implications of these findings for teacher education programmes, the learning of beginning teachers and also for ITE policy reform.

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