ABSTRACT
Everyone agrees that intelligent, knowledgeable and engaging teachers, who are interested in children, and know how to manage classrooms and teach creatively, are crucial for good education. Furthermore, teachers increasingly have to do more than just teach: they need either to develop local curricula, or to interpret national or provincial curricula for local use, they take part in school governance, and in policy-making that bears upon subjects taught in their school, and the levels to which subjects are taught to what students and so on. Good, well-prepared teachers are necessary for these complex and important tasks. There has, however, been less agreement on how best to prepare such teachers (Yager & Penick 1990). This question has been long debated, with contributions from entrenched professional and academic interests, and with political and economic expe diency looming over most policy decisions. There is, of course, a prior question about how to recruit science teachers. Economics, cultural values, industrial matters and other extraeducational factors affect people’s desire to become a teacher. Recruitment is a pressing problem, as indicated in the American Physical Society’s warning that: “The young person, fresh out of college or graduate school, who wants to teach physics in high school or middle school may soon be extinct” (APS 1986, p. 1033).1
