ABSTRACT
This chapter, written in 1997, demonstrates that primary teacher education has been, and still is, the subject of considerable criticism in official quarters. Despite the very largely positive picture painted of the sector in OFSTED inspection reports in survey after survey, the criticism remains. Teacher education is seen to be implicated in the general underperformance of the primary sector, despite no convincing evidence from OFSTED, international studies or English research agencies to suppor t that view of underperformance. So much of the discussion about both primary education and primary teacher education is underpinned by utilitarian overtones, more redolent of the values of the nineteenth than of the twenty-first century and needing critical examination. There is also being propagated a strong belief in a consensual view of ‘good’ or ‘best’ practice, presumably as defined by the official bodies themselves, rather than by the teaching force in schools or in higher education. There is also a strong, uncritical reliance on the findings of school effectiveness research-a newly established ‘tradition’ which I believe has yet to produce findings which rise much above the commonplace. Throughout current discussion in official quarters there is an unwillingness to confront the complex, uncertain, value-laden, interpersonal nature of teaching. Despite views to the contrary, teaching is not, and cannot be, a form of applied pedagogic mechanics.
