ABSTRACT
There is currently an emphasis on practical competence in teaching, an assumption that it is achieved best through school-based training, and a questioning of the need for any kind of theoretical input into this (e.g. Lawlor, 1990). McIntyre (1992) is adamant that this is a ‘remarkably primitive view of teacher education’ and ‘frightening for serious educators’, but he also argues that it is time to reconsider the nature and the place of theory in training courses. Alexander (1984b) suggested that theory should ‘incorporate (i) speculative theory, (ii) the findings of empirical research, (iii) the craft knowledge of practising teachers’. He also stated that ‘none should be presented as having prescriptive implications for practice’. McIntyre (1992) argues that this kind of notion of ‘theory as intellectual process’, which he states has informed an increasing number of British teacher education courses, is inadequate; what should be offered is theoretical knowledge which may be tentative and to be questioned, but which is also specifically believed ‘to be of practical value’ and usefully assimilated into the professional development of student-teachers.
