Ideology and Reform in Teacher Education in England: Some Reflections on Cochran-Smith and Fries

Abstract

This article presents an international perspective on Cochran-Smith and Fries’ (2001) recent analysis of the ways in which two competing ideologies are currently being employed in the United States in support of teacher education reform. In England over the last 15 years, teacher education has been fundamentally reformed and the arguments of both the “deregulators” and the “professionalizers” have been important in that process. Despite surface similarities, there remain important differences between the United States and England in how these two ideologies have been advanced and in the constituencies that have supported them. Teacher educators in England have been excluded from much of the public debate and the government has taken on the arguments of the professionalizers. What a comparison between these two countries demonstrates are the complexities involved in the globalization of ideologies.