‘Clinical’ approaches to teacher preparation are gaining prominence as reform of teacher education places greater emphasis on the school as the prime site of professional learning. In ‘clinical models’ the school becomes central to the educational experience that teachers in preparation will gain and around which programmes of academic study are designed. This implies the need to reconceptualise the role of the teacher educator, as noted in the 2011 report on teacher education in Scotland, Teaching Scotland’s Future (Scottish Government, 2011), to see all teachers as teacher educators. It also requires the renegotiation of partnerships and relationships through which models of teacher preparation are mediated and effected.

Transitions to new models of teacher preparation are not without challenge, with conceptual as well as physical barriers. What is the evidence that such approaches provide enhanced learning experiences for students, teachers and schools?  How are partnerships altered and relationships changed and which processes achieve this effectively? What are the implications for teacher education beyond the initial phase? In part one of this double symposium research relating to new approaches that have been developed in Scotland, Georgia, USA and Australia will be presented.  

In Paper 1, research relating the ‘Glasgow West Teacher Education Initiative’ will be discussed. The aim of this initiative was to ‘co-construct and implement a new collaborative school (and community) based partnership approach ’ (Menter et al, 2011).  Paper 2 reports on research relating to new approaches to initial teacher education in Georgia, USA, where innovations such Professional Development Schools and 'Professor in Residence' have changed the relationship not only with partner schools and the university but with the wider community. The approach adopted at the University of Melbourne, reported in Paper 3, has also resulted in change to the dynamic of the school-university partnership and the research indicates that teachers using a specific form of evidence-based, diagnostic, interventionist teaching have a positive effect on student learning outcomes.

The papers presented in the second part of symposium will explore conceptual, theoretical and policy related questions generated by the approaches outlined in part one. Paper 4 provides a conceptual analysis of the professional learning and practice underpinning  ‘clinical’ approaches and questions some of the dualities which historically have underpinned teacher education. The paper argues that constructing teaching as a clinical practice is an opportunity to challenge some of the dualities and dominant orthodoxies. 

Paper 5 looks at policy and systemic implications of new models of teacher education, exploring it in the context of current debate about the professional continuum and career long teacher education. The paper suggests that as such models develop, the engagement of higher education with the teaching profession needs to be reconceptualised to move beyond service level models of delivery and inputs that are episodic and fragmented to reciprocal partnerships and relationships of learning communities and organisations.  The final paper, Paper 6, offers a conceptual analysis of the models outlined, questioning the extent to which they reflect a reimagining of teacher education with the potential to transform it.