ABSTRACT
During the 1990s there has been a well documented shift in Government policy in initial teacher education (ITE). This has been towards the ever closer specification of competences (DFE, 1992, 1993) and eventually standards for the award of qualified teacher status (QTS) (DfEE, 1997). Underlying this shift is an assumption that the specification of precise actions which a student teacher needs to demonstrate before they are judged to be competent will lead to higher standards being attained by new teachers. It is assumed too that the atomization of the craft of teaching into minute elements will make it easy to judge whether or not an intending new teacher has the range of skills required. Can teaching be equated with technical skill or is it much more involved? This chapter argues that the complexity of the acquisition of technical skill is frequently underestimated in ITE and as such the achievement of the standards for QTS (ibid) should be seen as professionally challenging. It argues that a major focus on the acquisition of technical skills is not in itself to be equated with a model of teacher education which is intellectually superficial.
