257
students immediate capacity on leaving the course to match their
professional concern with appropriate practice. One lesson that
can be drawn from this is the necessity for students to be clearly
9
aware of their directions. ɪn this regard the school group tutor
and the visiting tutor need to listen to students to get a sense
of the developing personal and professional direction of which class-
room performance is only one part. The school group with its proximity
to practice and yet its commitment to reflection and theorising is
the place where this voice can most clearly be heard. Beyond the
talking and the listening the professional direction requires a place
at the levels of both theory and practice. The course work although
it played no active part in either of the sessions dealt with here
is available for both staff and students. In the course work tent-
ative propositions may be developed and strongly formulated and issues
may be addressed in their relevance to practice. This is possible
because tutors have access to the generality of their students’ work.
7.2 The nature of pedagogy
It has been stressed that both school and Institute provide the student
with active encounters which may be the base for future learning.
In the previous section
pupils and curriculum all
it was seen that encounters with staff,
their mark on the students but without
reflection
their meaning
and
relevance
might remain personal. An
aim of the
course is to produce
over time
a more
informed
educational
discourse and practice and this
involves working with contradictions.
The Research Group suggested that their experiences of higher education
did not provide ways of working that tried to relate the theoretical