The name is absent

299

that process realise

the possibility

for

themselves of

a theoretical

approach to practice.

c) Reflection on own subject

For some

students the opportunity to work in depth is taken up in

relation to their own subject.

This was the case with SS2 for whom

becoming a Social

Studies

teacher

eant finding some

resolution to

the problem she wrote about during her first week in the Institute.

..... Deep down, despite my social understanding and
ideology, I think I really only understand traditional
teaching∕learning situations. It is completely
natural to me, and enjoyable, to lecture to a nice
quiet class; and I donʌt fully grasp why it isn’t
natural to pupils to learn in this way. I sense the
resistance to it, I know it is not a profitable method
and produces a passive relationship to knowledge and
to received authority of all kinds. Nevertheless,
I still need to feel my own way into behaving differ-
ently. (First Thoughts on Becoming a Social Studies
Teacher Oct 1981)

Often the

students perceive critical problems, delineate their dimen-

sions and consider how to address them later in the course and

sometimes as a consequence of experience and consideration of subject
areas other than their own. Here an RE student looks at religions
and moral teaching in School A comparing two planning documents -
one an RE syllabus, the other a social education syllabus.

School A 21.5.82

P12∕13 mi mi

..... So as you can see, if you're developing

children to have

moral virtues or ideas fro:

III

a course with these kinds

of aims when they

leave school in the V year - if they've taken
in any of their religious studies course in
actual fact they will have had a very factual

teaching and in my

in some

senses I'm not