A Quantitative Comparison of Teacher Education: students’ experiences at two colleges in England and the Republic of Ireland

SUMMARY This paper examines and compares some aspects of the academic and social experiences of first-year teacher education students at two colleges, one in England and the other in the Republic of Ireland. It describes the transition from second level (and, for some, the transition from further education) to third level education and offers an account of the integration of first-year students into the academic and social system of their institution. In comparing the experiences of students in both colleges, we use inferential statistics, thus assuming the legitimacy of inferring differences in the populations from which the samples come. Although we have no reason to believe that the students and colleges in our study are untypical of teacher education students and their respective colleges more generally in England and Ireland, we acknowledge the need for tentativeness in making the leap to the broader population and for further research to explore the national and international comparisons using a wider range of students and colleges.