How reforms of teacher education challenge principles of social justice

This chapter draws on the experiences of a secondary initial teacher education (ITE) director to discuss how changes in the ITE system and organisation in England in the past few decades have reflected the ongoing marketisation of education, first introduced in the 1988 Education Act, and the imposed marketised focus on competition between ITE providers and choice for ‘consumers’ – that is, ITE students and schools. He comments on how, in his view, decision-making associated with these changes contravenes what he sees as issues of social justice in the way that it has served to marginalise and silence the voices of teacher educators in higher education institutions (HEIs).