Alternative Routes to Teaching

Introduction

Within the field of education, a variety of routes aim to train novice teachers and to induct them into the teaching profession. So-called traditional teacher education is often viewed as the standard form of pre-service teacher education and is primarily delivered through multi-year, college-recommending tertiary training programs, though even this term encompasses a diversity of programmatic forms. In contrast, in recent decades a wide variety of alternative routes and programs have emerged, largely in response to more standard forms of training that have existed since at least the twentieth century. The term given to these “new” programs – “alternative” – implies a shift away from “traditional” routes to teaching, offering something that varies in some way from what has been done in the past. It should be noted that “alternative licensure,” “alternative certification,” “alternative routes,” and “alternative teacher education” are similar but not synonymous terms. In...