ABSTRACT
Introduction Since the Conservatives came to power in 1979, initial teacher training in the UK has been subject to government intervention to a degree which would have been inconceivable during the 1960s or 1970s (Gilroy, 1992; Wilkin, 1992a). One consequence of this may be that the cultural dynamic of training has become obscured. The profession has become so preoccupied with responding to political initiatives that it is failing to acknowledge that teacher training is both a cultural activity in its own right (with its own integrated system of values, norms, goals, expectations, patterns of behaviour) and that like all social institutions it is also influenced by cultural features of the wider society in which it is located. The government of the day is only one potential source of pressure for change in training. A far more powerful force for change in the past has been the profession's own critical appraisal of its current practices and the conclusions reached by its members in deliberation and debate; and it is the thesis of this chapter that in the future a major influence for change in the curriculum and practices of training will be those several cultural trends in society which together constitute 'postmodernism'. This conclusion follows from a consideration of the way in which developments in training over the past two or three decades which are usually attributed either to the evolution of the internal professional culture of training or more latterly to government intervention, can be reinterpreted in postmodern terms.
