ABSTRACT
This chapter traces the development of modular courses, and identifies particular implications for special education of the service they offer to teachers. HEIs need to adopt, within continuing professional development (CPD) programmes, a holistic approach to competence, in which, as suggested by Reynolds and Salters (1995), knowledge, understanding and the affective dimension are recognised as essential to competent performance, even though they may not be identifiable within competence-based training. Modular systems which could be expanded and changed in response to these initiatives were in fact best placed to accommodate them. Teachers working in differing establishments and with different age-ranges were often wary of one another, and sometimes questioned the virtues of working together. Many had a respect for their own specialism which contrasted with the distrust they offered to others. Modularisation was not, at first, welcomed by all HEI tutors or by all universities.
