Learning to Teach

During initial training and their first few years in the classroom, many teachers, perhaps even the majority, experience difficulties in learning to teach. Managing children, developing appropriate relationships in the classroom, getting to grips with the subject matter, planning activities which involve children and help them learn, monitoring children’s understanding, becoming part of the social and institutional structure of the school, are all common sources of difficulty and anxiety (Veenman, 1984; Knowles and Cole, 1994). It is therefore somewhat surprising that within the profession itself, initial training and support for induction into the profession often appear to have been awarded scant attention or prestige.