This book highlights the difficulties that women working as managers and leaders in initial teacher education face. Teacher education is at the forefront of education reforms and yet little is known about the professional lives of those who work within it. Whereas many women are moving into positions of authority in teacher training, some existing women managers are being marginalized within new internally differentiated layers of managerial structures. Yet other female managers, mainly new appointees, seem to endorse the discourses associated with new managerialist practices. Simultaneously some women who manage in teacher training are engaged in a struggle for survival individually and professionally. In the main, men seem to be missing from authority positions and will conclude that, in the current climate, the management of teacher training is ‘no job for a man’.

Barbara Thompson is Principal Lecturer in the Institute of Education at the University of Chichester, UK. She was Programme Leader for Chichester’s PGCE (Postgraduate Certificate in Education) Primary Programme and later the MA (Education) Programme. Barbara publishes in the field of gender and has a PhD in Gender, Management and Leadership in Initial Teacher Education.