Problematising sustainable futures for state level systemic change in teacher education

High quality educational experience for all remains a goal of global policy strategies to achieve sustainable futures post 2015 (UN.GA Report, 2014). Change at school level relies on relational change in quality provision in... [ view full abstract ]

High quality educational experience for all remains a goal of global policy strategies to achieve sustainable futures post 2015 (UN.GA Report, 2014). Change at school level relies on relational change in quality provision in teacher education yet transformative action at scale continues to be elusive (UN.GA Report, 2014). Few accounts are available that model and exemplify the means for pedagogic change for teacher educators and teachers and the ways of achieving that, working within the policies and structures of complex education systems. The paper argues an integrated participatory approach is essential for transformative action at national and sub-national scale which reconceptualises understandings of: ‘local’, ‘context’, ‘openness’ and ‘sustainable futures’. The paper offers a model of innovative systemic change for teacher education that recognises and exploits relations among cultural values and associated policy structures and institutions and their dialectical relations with the world of practice (Lave,1988) wherein teacher educators, teachers and their learners interact (Murphy and Wolfenden, 2013). The TESS India Teacher Development project (www.tess-india.edu.in ) is used to exemplify the model and to offer new understandings of ‘openness’ which allows pedagogic integrity to be maintained through the processes and mediation of cultural authentication and use. A case of one of the seven Indian states of the TESS-India project is used to illuminate some of the key actors, structures and ways of working. The trajectory of change embedded in the model offers a view of sustainable futures that necessarily embraces inter-level, dialectical transformation in order to achieve individual transformation.