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The research presented suggests the possibility within the school
groups of students ".....experiencing jointly with others the possi-
bility that we could develop” (I98θ P15). Alongside the learning
of students has to be set the learning of tutors and this is essential
in their work with students as individuals or in their groups.
In the following section the students’ own past experience will be
dealt with but here the emphasis
is upon encounters which are a part
of the PGCE year itself.
Along with the structure of the PGCE, its
pedagogy
content
and forms of
assessment there is all the variety
of the school experience. But within the training institution the
idea of students being defined
as active learners requires further
comment. Students often referred to experiences where they felt
that they were learning, for example, when they were put into the
situation of learners both as failures or successes. Or again when
through participation in writing or through close consideration of
concrete examples often with experienced practitioners they became
aware of sorting something out for themselves. Here what is stressed
are
intuitive
moves
towards a position that
feels’ right or away
from one that
feels
wrong and it is often fro:
Il
tentative moves and
explorations that more fully fledged commitments and positions will
occur. If such learning is admitted as basic in professional develop-
ment then the training institution can seek to provide for it within
its own courses. As with the tutorial relationship referred to above
provision is only one
aspect which may be critical but without the
space to reflect and question
understand and integrate it remains
outside the articulate awareness of the practitioner.