In the inaugural piece for the UCET Teacher Education Blog – Who Cares about the IBTE? We do, and we’re going to tell you why! - Professors Stef Sullivan and Trevor Mutton pose the question of how we might use the IBTE to explore and challenge areas of work within teacher education, including the language we use in relation to Initial Teacher Education. It made us think again about the importance of language in relation to the very terms we use to describe the sector – Initial Teacher Education (ITE) and Initial Teacher Training (ITT) – titles that are often used interchangeably and synonymously when referring to the preparation of teachers in England. Yet each term is ladened with meaning and interpretation – there is a deep significance inherent in the terms which reflect alternative discourses around the knowledge, understanding and skills that are considered essential to become a teacher.

This is not a new consideration and we suspect many teacher education departments across the country have discussed which term to use and why. The use of both terms across the sector is also not surprising given that the two ‘bodies’ that impact on the sector use different terms, with the DfE adhering to ITT as seen in the ITT Criteria and of course in terms of the imposed ITTECF , whilst Ofsted refer to an ITE Inspection Framework. And whilst some providers do use the term ITT, reflecting DfE language or simply because of their own institutional traditions, they also provide education. Indeed, the emergence of the ITET acronym amongst providers attempts to reconcile the tension between education and training by combining both terms.

So, does it actually matter which term we use? Should we open up the debate and discuss this more as a sector, acknowledging that words can carry important weight and training and education cannot be considered neutral terms. We believe that this is exactly what we should do! The use of language is not trivial; when, for example, providers insist on ITE yet refer to pre-service teachers as ‘trainees,’ it reinforces the dominance of training discourse and undermines the intellectual foundations of teacher education.

Is there even a common understanding of what each term means? Teacher training might be considered to refer to the development of the practice of teaching, the ‘vocational’ or ‘technical’ aspects of teaching. Going back a few decades, O’Neill (1986, p. 260), suggested that this is ‘restricted to more specific, systematic, standardised, well identified, job related, results orientated practice …that relate to mechanical, technical and vocational aspects of the teaching process’, whilst teacher education includes the more holistic ‘intellectual, emotional, and social development of the individual’ which ‘comprises the philosophical, professional, and pedagogical components of a teacher preparation programme’. In other words, teacher education includes teacher training, whereas teacher training does not necessarily involve teacher education.

And teacher education is fundamental to what we do as teacher educators, we are not simply providing training. So, perhaps thinking about what we call ourselves is actually quite important and more so in the current context if we are to challenge the technical approach to teacher education that has been imposed on us through for example, the ITT Core Content Framework. The ITTECF carries the implicit assumption that if our pre-service teachers ‘learn that’ and ‘learn how to’ in order to meet a narrow set of standards, they will become an effective teacher – a mechanistic approach reducing teacher education to inputs and outputs, that valorises the practical elements of teaching over the intellectual and foundational concepts (Hordern and Brooks, 2023) that have previously underpinned teacher education programmes. It might be likened to a ‘paint by numbers approach’ (Taubman, 2009, p. 2) and this threatens the intellectual basis of the profession, undermining the complexities involved in becoming a teacher as ‘trainification’ (Pierljewski et, al., 2024, p.71) prioritises mastery of a body of knowledge above critical engagement or intellectual autonomy. Whilst we might not be able to change the term that the DfE uses (and universities might also have institutional complexities related to such change) we might, as a sector, strive for the consistent use of the term ITE in our language, exercising our authority as teacher educators to ‘speak for education’ (Clarke & Phelan 2017, p. 84). This would reflect the importance of education and the necessity of pre-service teachers developing deep knowledge and critically engaging with a broad range of research. It might also reflect the fact that as teacher educators we are knowledge creators and researchers and not simply the deliverers of the ITTECF and its limited base of ‘evidence’. Is this shift in language within our power?