Competition and Competence in Marketization of Teacher Force: Reinstitutionalization of Teacher Education in Taiwan

When the trend to diversity of teacher education in the world, the first issue is under condition of force marketization how to effectively control the quality of teachers. The desire to relax the market of teacher education and select outstanding teachers under the competitive logic did not seem to yield the effects expected as a result of the transforming social environment, especially in the context of Taiwan. in addition to dealing with the “overly prepared” nature of teacher education and the inability to control the quality of teachers purely through competitive market forces. While controlling the number of teachers, Taiwan also initiated the four-year “Enhancement Program for Teacher Education Quality” in 2006 in order to create benchmark-like role models and fulfill the goal of “adequate quantity and exquisite quality” and “retaining the good and eliminating the bad”. In the White Paper of Teacher Educationreleased in 2012, Taiwan declared again that it would adopt the standards-based teacher education (SBTE) policy. The hope was to cultivate high-qualified teachers under the marketized teacher education model where standards were adopted to control quality of teachers during their education process and to keep marketization and control at a balance to accordingly maintain existing marketized orientation of teacher education on the one hand and ensure a certain level of quality on the other hand.

In order to foster more competence of teachers in competition market force, this paper aims to apply the social closure idea introduced in class consciousness of the new Weberian theory to clarify the reinstitution of teacher education to rise teachers’ professional standing and occupational reputation. When quality of teachers reaches the required professional level and there is the additional strict control by the state over teachers’ qualification, it’s necessary to analyze the institution to understand foster more competence teacher in market force.