Abstract
In recent years teacher education colleges have started to offer more alternative routes to teaching in secondary education. The development is a response to teacher shortages
but also to a change in thinking about teaching as a profession, professional learning and the school as site of learning. Three alternative routes were studied. The characteristics of the new students and the way teacher colleges adapt their programmes to these new students are discussed. The alternative teacher education programmes realise characteristics of ‘work-based learning’ to a certain extent, but not yet fully. Alternative routes are a promising development in teacher education, opening new opportunities to enter teaching, and marking a change in the role of schools as important environment of teachers’ professional learning.
