ABSTRACT
A book, like a child’s composition, must have a focus, and it is time to review and integrate the contents of this one. Students in training are learning to diagnose the needs of children in schools, to communicate knowledge and skills and to evaluate the effects of this communication by assessing their pupils’ progress. We who are training these students have the same responsibility towards them as they have towards the children they teach. Diagnosis, training and assessment have to be carried out almost concurrently in one crowded year of postgraduate professional training in a University Department or in two even more crowded years of combined academic and professional training in a College. Very early in the course it becomes evident that the problems of voice, classroom personality and handling of subject matter cannot really be separated. All these factors are present in every lesson, whether it is concerned with Science, Geography, History, a foreign language, English literature or the use of the mother tongue in speech and writing. The personality of the student and his ability to handle human relationships in the classroom are under the microscope all through the year and if at the end of it he is more aware both of his own failings and of his own potentialities the effects of his training may be lasting. The active teacher is no mere instructor. He continues to experiment with new ideas and to learn from every class he encounters long after he has emerged from the training department as a qualified teacher.
