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fro:
the willingness
of participants
to
learn
fro:
the
professional concerns of each other.
In
part this willingness develops from the
permanence and centrality
of the group in the students' PGCE experience. Groups differ both
in their ways of working and in the satisfactions they afford to
their members but the formal and informal possibilities made
avail-
able by continuity and by the location of the students in school
encourages a personally negotiated commitment. Unlike many other
structures offered in the PGCE it is hard for students to reject
it entirely. In the last extract Ml influenced by his reading of
Denis Lawton (1980) how curriculum and pedagogy are
determined
by public examinations
a view which the tutor went on to challenge.
The basis of that challenge lies in perspectives and knowledge
that Ml may not yet have. The tutor knows that an active challenge
lies within the subjects that make up the group as well as the
experience that School B
regularly makes available
Realistic access
to such knowledge and experiences makes possible an orientation
to
the future which is a
4
further characteristic of the school group.
d) Content and Agenda
This orientation itself needs to be seen in two ways. First it
relates to the life of the school group through the duration of
the PGCE and second it anticipates what students will require as
teachers having a basic concern with their professional knowledge.
The following extracts deal with this future orientation from the
gradual accumulation of knowledge about professional opinion and
the data on which it is based through the location of course work
in the framing of the
students
own professional stance.