Abstract

Initial teacher education policies in Chile in recent years, despite having provided certain instruments and support strategies for training centres, have had a clear focus on establishing high pressures on teacher education, regulating training standards and putting pressure on higher education institutions to achieve them. This context is described as a situation with high consequences for higher education institutions, as it can have major repercussions in terms of finances and management autonomy in the event that accreditation of teacher education curricula is not achieved. proposals constructed in a context of standardised policies with high consequences in four public universities in the country.A multiple case study of four General Basic Education degrees was developed. The training proposal was operationalised as a set of documentary provisions that make up the curriculum, its foundations, its link with the policy and the meanings constructed by those responsible for its management. The cases were selected by purposive sampling, seeking criteria of diversity-geographical-, and similarity by contrast-public universities, more than 30 years old, accredited, and with at least Language and Mathematics majors-. Intra-and inter-case analyses were carried out.The general results indicate that public policy seems to be prescribed as a demand, requirement and expectation to be fulfilled, which generates tensions and pressures in the formative proposals of the cases. The practice subject -observational, intermediate and professional -tends to be seen as the starting point for the exercise of policy, despite the fact that a wide variety of positions and meanings around it are evident. In this context, all four cases suggest a coherence and connection between initial teacher education and professional development. Although the approaches and emphases of training are diverse, some are more focused on the territorial scope and its evolution, others on critical training and some on training about practice. The repercussions of this plurality of proposals in a context of initial teacher training that is prescribed as standardised are discussed.