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experiences for education staff concerned with pedagogy. (1983)
Taylor summarises
the present position
..... the requirement for recent classroom experience
increases and resonates with the experience of many
of those involved in teacher education - university
tutors, school teachers and students and the rhetoric
rapidly becoming official policy makes little
acknowledgment of its limitations or its consequences.
External pressures and institutional
commitments both
impinge
on
patterns of staffing and as Taylor observes
we must avoid the simple assumption that each
and
or
every member of staff in a College, Faculty
Department of Education must have had recent
classroom experience ..... and the fact that not
every excellent classroom teacher is by definition
an excellent teacher educator (or vice versa) must
temper our recognition of the priority of recent
classroom experience. (1983)
What is essential for teacher educators is a sound professional
identity grounded within relevant knowledge and experience but the
conditions in the university under which teacher education occurs
ensures neither of these and indeed too often works against their
construction. Once again Taylor indicates the direction of concern.
Fragmentation might be less of a problem if those
working with intending teachers within multi-purpose
institutions had a clear professional identity and
saw status and promotion deriving from their commit-
ment to the education of teachers, rather than their
expertise and standing in one of the social sciences
relevant to Education, or in a teaching subject,
but this involves potential costs in isolation from
the rest of the institution’s work. (1983)
This
isolation may not only be the foregoing of active and continuous
participation in other important areas of the institution’s work
to new and potentially threat-
but that which derives from commitment
ening forms of curriculum pedagogy
and
assessment
Institutions
of higher education come reluctantly
innovation and may utilise