Over the period 1997-2010 there has been a strong political focus in the United Kingdom on achieving ‘social inclusion’ and on using education as one of the main vehicles for doing so. Despite of the strong critiques on the ways in which this political goal was pursued (Raffo & Gunter 2008, Lupton et.al. 2009) one of its major achievements was the more or less successful ‘mainstreaming’ of an ‘inclusion’ agenda in most areas of education policy. Since the change of government in 2010, the new Conservative-Liberal coalition has retained at least a rhetorical commitment to ’social justice’. In continuation with earlier policies, social inclusion in education is placed within a context of continuously reduced resources in the education system, and an emphasis on schools achieving high performance standards. But, the new government also returned to older, more selective forms of curriculum and assessment, and a reassertion of themes of ‘nation’ and ‘national identity’ that draw on conservative and Anglo/Euro-centric norms. School autonomy is further enhanced, and so is the creation and encouragement of new forms of schools to achieve diversity in the education market. In this context, teacher education programs have been expected to prepare future teachers to work in highly differentiated school environments, where the pressures of the market place (through competition with other schools, student choice, publication of examination results, etc.) are combined with the pressures for the achievement of ‘inclusion’ as well as high academic standards.

This paper will present preliminary results from research in one Teacher Education program in a university in England within the UK.  The focus of the research was on the ways in which the program prepares student-teachers for inclusive practice in teaching science (in the English context this includes Physics, Chemistry, Biology and Geology), within an aggressively marketised education system.

Theoretically we draw on two areas to interpret and illuminate different aspects of the research, (a) Institutional mediation of government policy in teacher education (Garner 2000, Menter et.al. 2004), and (b) Theories of inclusion, critical pedagogy, differentiation and mixed ability teaching (Allan 2004, Hallam & Ireson 2007, Harvey at.al. 2010). We focus on: (i) The institutional response of one medium-sized PGCE course, based in a Midlands University in England, in 2012, (ii) The perceptions and practices of teacher education staff (University based), and (iii) The perceptions and experiences of teacher education science students during their training year (2012). In particular, our research questions are the following:

RQ1: How does the policy framework shape the institutional provision of Science Teacher Education in the particular institution? And, how do Teacher Educators understand and teach ‘inclusion’ through the yearly program?

RQ2: What are the conceptions of ‘science’ and ‘science teaching’ that underpin the Science Teacher Education students’ views on pedagogy?

RQ3: How do Science Teacher Education students understand the concept of ‘inclusion’ and what discourses do they use to connect inclusion to science teaching?

RQ4: What are the main challenges that students and teacher educators face and how do they cope with these?

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