The current wave of educational reform in Trinidad and Tobago follows the pattern in the West, at least in its rhetoric. Excellence, total quality management, quality assurance, school improvement, are buzz phrases associated with the larger concept of national unity and total quality nation. This paper argues that achieving the educational utopias and panaceas implied by these value laden terms demands a real­istic appraisal of the education system, and more specifically teacher education. The Education Policy Paper: 1993-2003 (Ministry of Education 1993), is used as the source document. Brief historical references are given, and more specifically, post-independence teacher education is examined. The paper analyses the current purposes of teacher education in Trinidad and Tobago, using an educational liberationist ideo­logical framework and the dynamics of a liberalizing world to develop a model for realizing teacher education goals. The paper analyses the existing mechanistic bureaucracy's failure, and contends that only a restructured professional structure can ensure reform.
Within this new professional governance structure delinked from the Ministry of Education, the teachers colleges must optimize teacher performance. An autonomous Joint Board of Teacher Education (JBTE), with members mainly from institutions involved in teacher education, would receive feedback on professional development activities, and in return would guide, support, and generally oversee and keep the teachers college system continually updated. The JBTE would also incorporate inputs from other non-education stakeholders, who ideally would be less swayed by pluralist or bureaucratic interests, and would be recruited and selected for the Board mainly because of their support of the imperative of professionalizing education.