ABSTRACT
In the United Kingdom in recent years, ‘theory’ has been in danger of becoming a dirty word in relation to teacher education. The initiative in debate over the future of teacher education has been taken by right-wing populists such as O’Hear (1988), the Hillgate Group (1989), and Lawlor (1990) who have caricatured the kind of theory taught in teacher education programmes and have questioned the need for any theoretical content in these programmes. Practical competence in teaching is what is needed, they suggest, and such competence can best be acquired through practice in school-based training.
