ABSTRACT

In the past in England and Wales, and still in Australia, only about 25 per cent of the initial teacher education course has been conducted by way of practicum in schools. The main part of the course was conducted in universities where students learnt about how to teach. They learnt amongst other subjects, the sociology, the psychology and the philosophy of education and they learnt the theory of teaching particular subjects. They were then expected to make the connection of this information that they were given at university with the classrooms in which they were practising. The supervising teachers, as has been seen in Chapter 3, saw their task as socialising the student into the profession. The teacher education areas mentioned above were dealt with only incidentally by school teachers. Traditionally, the term ‘teacher educator’ has applied only to tertiary staff.