The policies and politics of teachers’ initial learning: the complexity of national initial teacher education policies

Abstract

This paper analyses the nature and complexity that characterize the broader policy and political conditions of teachers’ initial learning within and across three different national settings. Drawing upon the transnational notion of ‘fast policy’, we show how neoliberal policies and associated policy artefacts constitute specific, national initial teacher education policies in Norway, Australia and the Netherlands. At the same time, we also indicate how hegemonic ideas and ideals mutate as part of these policy mobilities, thereby problematizing performative policy discourses. We do so by identifying and reflecting on how the ‘markers’ of fast policy are developed and how they are simultaneously challenged by alternative more collective, context-responsive conceptions of professional learning. In this way, we indicate how even as neoliberal instantiations of fast policy mobility unfold within specific national contexts, more collective, context-relevant approaches to teachers’ learning also exist, which can challenge performative policy conditions.