Toward a New Standard of Dissensus: Notes on De-standardising Teacher Education

In a range of international contexts, professional standards have been developed and adopted as vehicles for codifying and governing the work of teachers. The putative rationale for developing professional standards is that they provide a shared language for talking about teachers, teaching, and learning and thus serve as a common reference point for pedagogical, professional and promotion-related conversations. At the same time, critical questions have been raised about the potential of standards as vehicles, not just for professional development, but for monitoring and controlling teachers. Concerns have also been raised regarding the degree to which standards inhibit professional autonomy and creativity. In this chapter, we ‘propose’, ironically and paradoxically, a standard of dissensus for teacher education, recognising that the Global Education Reform Movement (GERM) has imposed a seductive consensus around shared professional standards as an unquestioned common ‘good’. It is such ‘goodness’ we want to problematise and discuss in this chapter. Standards are often linked to testing and curriculum as well as to regulation of teachers’ work in many jurisdictions around the globe. As members of ITERC, we are broadly interested in thinking about how teacher educators might build a non-self-congratulatory solidarity that appreciates a standard of dissensus ‘from below’ in order to arrest and challenge the progress and influence of GERM. To that end, we want to offer some thoughtful notes that may serve as a starting point for a reconfiguration of the contemporary (im)possibilities in education.