Achieving High Quality School Experience in Initial Teacher Education: How distance Learning and Traditional Programmes are Converging

Teacher quality remains a key international challenge. School experience is a well established element of initial teacher education (ITE) programmes. As the experiential site for drawing together theory and practice, school experience is acknowledged as essential to the development of effective practitioners and to demonstrate the professional standards required for qualified status. However, given the diversity of schools, assuring the quality of school experience is one of the key challenges in ITE. The development of open and distance learning (ODL) ITE programmes has introduced new methodologies, primarily linked to technology enhanced learning, which may offer new solutions to this quality challenge. A review of international ITE research literature suggests that a range of ODL approaches are being adopted in traditional ITE, linked to quality enhancement and personalisation of trainee teacher development. The potential of these approaches to improve the quality of ITE is discussed.