‘Recent, Relevant Experience’: How CATE Legitimates Narrowly Defined Concepts Of Teacher Education (Boxall & Burrage, 1989)

September 9, 2019

tags: CATE: Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education, Education, England & Wales, PGCE, Primary education, Professional experience, Secondary education, Teacher training, University of Liverpool, Waltraud Boxall

Some thirty years ago now, there was considerable concern about what curriculum should be offered in the professional training of teachers. How to define educational ‘problems’ and identify ‘solutions’ is probably a matter of eternal debate.

Indeed, these concerns continue to demand attention even now, so perhaps this is a good time to share the paper which Waltraud Boxall and I published in the Journal of Further and Higher Education (Volume 13, Number 3) way back in Autumn 1989?

In a paper published in 2006 William Taylor describes CATE in this way:

The Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education (CATE) was set up in 1984 to offer advice to the Secretary of State on the approval of courses of initial teacher training. Such accreditation must be distinguished from academic validation, which is the responsibility of universities and the Council for National Academic Awards (CNAA). Initial training courses must now satisfy published criteria as to qualifications for entry, length, balance of content, professional experience, and curriculum coverage. In particular, undergraduate courses must include at least two years of subject study at a level appropriate to higher education. Staff concerned with pedagogy are also required to have recent and successful experience of school teaching.

The paper written by Waltraud Boxall and myself is reproduced below: