ABSTRACT
In the approach to the millennium, educational progress will undoubtedly be checked, not least by a flight of teachers from the profession, if we do not return to some stability, common-sense judgements, and decent human relationships. A continuing thread in educational thought over the centuries has been an agreement that the prime factor in achieving good practice is teacher quality. Those defeatists about the impact of the National Curriculum must presumably have an image of a teaching force made up of rule-following, narrow craft operators. An inevitable and largely constructive element in the changing context of education is the unprecedented growth in information technology. There are the reasons for under-achievement of the 1980s in the field of education. For example, many of the geographical educationists appointed in the 1960s and 1970s were later diverted into administrative functions in their departments, and also to other areas of research, which perhaps enjoyed a greater intellectual respectability than applied classroom research in subjects.
