Caveats for change: exploring pre-service teachers’ concerns regarding change

Notable within the rhetoric of recent global reform trends is the (re)positioning of teachers from peripheral to critical stakeholders in educational change processes. Responding to this imperative, programmes of Initial Teacher Education (ITE) are now frequently tasked with promoting teacher agency as a core dimension of teaching. Yet, much evidence points to a persistent tension between renewed visions for teacher engagement and agency as part of global curriculum reform processes and the associated enactment of such visions. While teachers’ concerns related to individual reforms are increasingly detailed, less attention is paid to teachers’ views regarding change as a process. Premised on the conviction that better understanding and attention to teachers’ concerns related to change, holds the potential to support more authentic, impactful and sustainable reform developments, this paper explores the reflections of 53 Irish pre-service teachers on their openness to change and examines the caveats they attach to their engagement in and with change. Reflexive thematic analysis identified a range of caveats pre-service teachers attach to their engagement in and with change. Consideration of these caveats by policy makers and initial teacher education providers may support teachers to engage more deeply with change.