ABSTRACT
This chapter considers how the earliest ideas about education came to influence present-day practices in teacher training. The idea of education as ‘education for education’s sake’ to enhance personal development has largely been overtaken by a view of education as a tool to assist economic growth in society and to provide students with the means to acquire jobs. A model of training had been developed in England which relied on a kind of apprenticeship model in a ‘normal’ school in which pupil teachers worked under the guidance of experienced teachers before going on to work in other schools. The 1902 Education Act set up local education authorities which were allowed to support training colleges in order to supplement the universities which trained aspiring teachers. The white paper, ‘Education Reconstruction’, welcomed the fact that the recruitment and training of teachers was being dealt with in the McNair Report.
