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pressures do not create a propitious climate for the establishment
of partnership.
Training institutions are not unaffected by changes in schools but
recognition of problems bears no necessary relation to their reso-
lution, and courses at all levels in teacher education often appear
to trail hesitantly in
the wake of far reaching changes in schools
that could have profound implications for their content
organisation
and assessment.
During recent years university staff have observed
the fate of innovation
in the
colleges
and
may
have
justifiably
drawn the conclusion that quality
is no guarantee of permanence
or even survival.
Teacher education in university departments has
had its share of the cuts imposed upon the universities.
It has
lost staff and courses in the contraction consequent upon the projected
needs for teachers. These are factors which do not support innovation
and change but it
is within this
that
the
new partnership
has to be forged.
Its nature and its success will depend not only
upon the
commitment
of those involved
but with their knowledge
of new forms of practice.
The commitment is both personal and general.
For teacher educators and for teachers to work together in educating
beginning teachers is
to be involved in their own learning and that
is to serve the more general purposes
of education as an active,
creative and unfinished process.
That is a continuing possibility
for all
centres of learning that enables those within them to move
beyond the limitations of the present.
Such learning will not be achieved by the
requirements of the White
Paper
(1983) which advocate an increased role in initial education
for practising teachers as well as a requirement for recent
classroom