ABSTRACT
Teacher education is changing; it is evolving. The complexities of teaching have always presented a challenge as to how best beginning teachers can be guided, educated and trained in acquiring the skills necessary to provide quality educational experiences for the children in their classes. The current wave of change has focused on an analysis of teacher competencies as a means of seeking to address the needs of student teachers as individual learners and to enhance the quality of teaching generally. The move to school-based teacher education in England is competencies-driven, as is shown in the DfE circulars that list competencies for beginning teachers (see Chapter 1). The similar move in Australia has as one of its precursors, lists of teaching competencies for beginning teachers. There are some who resist the competency base of school-based teacher education, yet the assessment and progress documents of the four case studies in the book use them to their own ends. As long as the complexities of the teaching task are not lost in the imposed uniformity of a list of competencies, such lists can provide a useful focus on the elements of teaching.
