This paper provides an analysis of teacher education policy across the UK and its closest European partner, Ireland and considers the extent to which it enables the enactment of teacher agency to support an enhanced teacher professionalism. Anderson (2010:541) defines agency as the teacher’s ‘capacity to make choices, take principled action, and enact change’. Biesta and Tedder (2006) adopt an ecological approach, suggesting that professional action is defined by the context within which the teacher finds themselves. Similarly, Molla and Nolan (2020) suggest that professional practice emerges from an interplay between systemic expectations, contexts and personal dispositions. To understand the link between agency and professionalism therefore, consideration must be given to the connections between the different variables which influence teachers’ lives.

Moving along a continuum from reflective, to prescriptive professionalism, the paper begins with a consideration of the contextual and policy variables in Ireland, North and South. In both jurisdictions, there is a strong regulatory requirement for entry to, and accreditation of teacher education programmes. In Ireland, the Teaching Council (TC) is responsible for the registration of teachers and the promotion of high standards in teaching. The TC’s Policy on the Continuum of Teacher Education (2011)has been implemented through Cosán: Framework for Teachers’ Learning (2016a), Droichead: The Integrated Professional Induction Framework (2017)and Céim: Standards for Initial Teacher Education (2020), with professionalism as one of the guiding principles for each framework. Similarly, in Northern Ireland, the General Teaching Council (GTCNI) oversees the registration and professional development of teachers through its competence framework, Teaching: The Reflective Profession (GTCNI, 2007). More recently, there is also Learning Leaders: A Strategy for Teacher Professional Learning (DENI, 2016) which focuses on the promotion of leadership at all levels. Both jurisdictions also place a strong emphasis on the importance of ethics, values, and dispositions, and provide guidance and support to teachers in these areas.

Secondly, the paper explores how policy ideas travel across the organisational boundaries between the two devolved jurisdictions of Scotland and Wales. In particular, the paper focuses on curriculum reform and how government-appointed advisors act as intermediaries in the design and enactment of policy ideas (Hulme et al., 2020). Key policy documents from Scotland and Wales, including:  Successful Futures (Donaldson, 2023); and Teaching Scotland’s Future (Donaldson, 2010) are analysed through the concepts of ‘spaces and time’ (McCann and Ward, 2013:10) to examine how such trans-national policy making is then experienced by teachers and teacher educators in the local context (Stone, 2004).

Finally, the paper turns to England where, there is considerable emphasis on policy initiatives associated with marketisation and a culture of entrepreneurialism; standards-based and outcomes-defined policy reforms and developments, underpinned by managerialist ideologies. Coupled with this, there has been increased technologies of governance, leading to ever tightening regulatory control and surveillance driven by a focus on accountability and professional standards alongside the provision of centralised curricula. A Market Review of Initial Teacher Training (DfE 2021) and the introduction of a Core Content Framework (DfE, 2019) has seen pre-service teacher education become narrowed, premised on ‘permitted’ pedagogies, practice, curriculum content, and the expectation of standardisation regarding what beginning teachers need to know and be able to do.  This reductive form of teacher preparation leads to what we might call ‘pedagogies of the same, rather than pedagogies of difference’ (Lingard, 2007:248); neglecting the role that teachers, schools and universities play in designing assessments and curricula in response to student needs, and in respect of professional knowledge and expertise.

Firstly, we identified key policy documents (as outlined above) from each jurisdiction which had direct relevance to teacher professional learning and development. The overarching methodological approach to analysis we adopted was a reflective and hermeneutical one. This was appropriate given that each of the researchers works in the field of teacher education at all levels and has a reflexive relationship with practicing teachers as well as a range of other key stakeholders involved in teacher professional learning. As researchers and practitioners, we are sensitive to the context within which the respective policies are developed and implemented, and we fully understand the specificities, subtleties and nuances of the particular jurisdictions which are the focus of the paper. In terms of an analytical framework which would have relevance across each jurisdiction, we referred to Ozga, (2000: 95) who suggests that policy texts may be analysed in terms of the messages they convey regarding: the source of the policy, in terms of whose interests it serves and its relationship to global, national and local imperatives; the scope of the policy as to how it frames the issues and relationships embedded within it; and finally, the pattern of the policy and how it can alter stakeholder relationships and necessitate institutional and/or systemic change. Given that the issues of source, scope and pattern directly relate to the issue of teacher agency and the promotion of professionalism, which is the focus of this paper, this model provided a useful framework upon which to begin to identify themes and build an analysis of the relevant policy documents. Ryan and Bernard (2003) suggest that an emphasis on repetition, preferably across data sources, is probably one of the most important criteria to identify patterns in data which in turn may be regarded as themes. In addition to repetition, they suggest that identified themes must always resonate closely with the focus of the research and the question it is addressing. So with that in mind, and keeping the focus of teacher agency at the forefront, we also employed Molla and Nolan’s (2020) five facets of teacher professional agency to consider the extent to which policy discourses and trajectories in each jurisdiction promoted or enabled teachers to develop inquisitive (opportunities for professional learning), deliberative (focussed on personal mission and purpose), recognitive (to enhance professional recognition and status), responsive (focussed on issues of social justice) and moral (ethical and values-based) agency.

This study suggests that across the UK and Ireland, there is a discourse continuum on teacher education which moves from a reflective professionalism in Ireland, North and South, where there is a strong emphasis on the importance of values and ethics; through to a monitored professionalism in Scotland and Wales, reflecting a concern for stronger, centralised control; to a prescriptive professionalism in England where centralisation and control have become the hallmarks of teacher education policy. Regarding teacher agency, across Ireland the discourse supports deliberative, recognitive, responsive and moral teacher agency but is perhaps lacking in developing inquisitive agency. In Northern Ireland, this is exacerbated due to the lack of local government and ensuant inertia in policy implementation. In Scotland and Wales, a similarity of approach has been taken to policy development and implementation, but whilst the dimensions to professionalism and agency apparent in Ireland have been equally promoted, there is a tension between a desire for subsidiarity coupled with that for centralisation. In England, there is an assumption by government that ITE can be de-contextualised, and open to increasingly generic training provision. The emphasis on prescriptive and generic training materials comes at the expense of contextually based and diverse professional learning, and in the absence of more tailored experiences teacher agency seems to be becoming diminished at all levels. The paper supports a deeper understanding of the importance of relationships in the policy formation process and the consequences of this upon what Ozga (2000:44) describes as the ‘struggle for teacher autonomy and responsibility in a ‘social justice’ project, set against the modernising, economising project for teachers that seeks to guarantee their efficiency by enhancing their flexibility and encouraging them to accept standardised forms of practice’.

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