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 Peck and Theodore’s (2015) transnational notion of ‘fast policy’, we show how broader, more neoliberal policies and associated policy artefacts constitute specific, national initial teacher education policies in Norway, Netherlands and Australia. At the same time, we also indicate how more hegemonic ideas and ideals mutate as part of these policy mobilities, thereby problematizing more 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 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, context relevant approaches to teachers’ learning also exist, which can challenge performative policy conditions.