ABSTRACT
The aim of this book is to encourage, and to contribute to, serious and constructive thinking about initial teacher education in schools. None of the authors contributing to this book suggests that school-based initial teacher education is sufficient on its own; indeed, some argue strongly against this. But the premises of the book as a whole are that moves towards school-based initial teacher education have to be accepted, that there are indeed good arguments for welcoming such moves and, especially, that school-based initial teacher education therefore requires serious, critical, scholarly and constructive attention. For too long, although not at all by accident, the bombastic, ignorant and negative arguments of the extreme right have been allowed to set the agenda. Anti-intellectual, ill-informed and destructive, they do not merit reasoned debate, but only contempt. The serious arguments for school-based initial teacher education are much more constructive ones, based on experience within teacher education, research into the processes of teachers' learning and socialization, and a developing understanding of the multi-faceted nature of experienced teachers' expertise. The time for a more constructive, serious and critical agenda is overdue: there is an urgent need for scholarly debate to contribute to practical decision-making.
