Author:

Keywords:

teacher training, quality care

Abstract:

Quality in practice. Developing a model framework for the quality assurance of the teaching practice in teacher education. Quality assurance of teacher training is among the most prominent reforms for education today and has become a great concern nowadays. In order to enhance the quality of teacher education programmes, their continuous evaluation is essential. Quality control and quality assurance are particularly complex in one important aspect of teacher education: the teacher practice. By collaborating with, and sometimes partial outsourcing to teacher practice schools, the usual approaches of quality assurance do not map the full complexity of these field experiences. This hasn’t withhold teaching educators to undertake a lot of actions concerning evaluating, maintaining and increasing the quality of the practical training component of the programme. However, this expertise is often without systematic evaluation, contextual and shared little. In this context, a Belgian research project was set up to develop a model framework for the quality assurance of the teaching practice in teacher education. In a first phase of this research project, a researcher visited each of the collaborating initial teacher training institutes to make an inventory of existing initiatives concerning the quality control and quality assurance of the teaching practice. Next, the gathered initiatives were confronted with literature (both national and international) in order to develop a systematic framework of current quality assurance models and quality enhancing activities of the teaching practice. This framework is intended to serve as a conceptual framework for all teacher training institutes (and not just for the collaborating partners in this research project). As so, the differences between teacher training institutes are seen as an enrichment, from which other teacher educators could discover which successful quality control modes and methods could be implemented in their own education. A general SWOT-analysis of the quality assurance of the teaching practice of the initial teacher training in the Flemish part of Belgium has been made. On the basis of the analyses of this research project, conclusions on an efficient quality assurance model for the induction phase of initial teacher training will be drawn and, according to them, certain recommendations for further actions will be proposed. As a result, a main aim of this research-based approach is to produce data and inform the various parties, policy makers, education providers, teaching staff, etc., as they seek to develop their own activities to optimally serve the goals set for the quality of the teaching practice in teacher educations. This study included a mix of departments for teaching education at the higher education institutes (concurrent model), teacher training at adult education centres (consecutive model), and an academic initial teacher training at university (consecutive model).