Teacher education in the South – Systems; current developments; issues and emergent themes

I would like to thank the organisers of this conference for inviting me to present a paper on Teacher Education in the South and I look forward to a critical and constructive discussion on the issue of teacher education – north and south – during the next two days. This conference is timely, scheduled as it is at a time when the two Teacher Education Review Groups in the South are coming to the end of their deliberations and are shortly expected to publish their reports. From my point of view, I am in one way fortunate and in another way unfortunate, that this is the third major conference on teacher education in the south since the beginning of this academic year. The first was organised by the Irish Federation of University Teachers in Trinity College in October last, the second by the Educational Studies Association of Ireland in Rathmines in November. Many of the issues which I will raise to-day have already been aired at those conferences.