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It is awareness and articulation that is basic to professional know-
ledge but the essential point is that this should be seen as integral
to and emanating from experience. This is why the conventional
separation of theory and practice in teacher education is so damaging
for it locates practice and experience in the school, restricting
the training institution to varieties of and interpretations of how
best to achieve theory. Certainly student encounters with aspects
of school life are
important but they are not
the only sources of
experience. Indeed for those students who reject what they find
in school they may not be accorded a high priority in terms of posi-
tive experience. The training institution in providing experiential
encounters has within limits a high
degree of control particularly
when its concern is enabling students to consider new or ’good’ forms
of practice.
The Leicester Research showed that this opportunity was little
that the predominant model of
realised in the PGCE which suggests
teacher
education
underestimates
the value
of active experiences
and encounters.
At the same time teacher education tends to accept
what happens in
school tacitly assuming that the school experiences
cannot be shaped
to meet the needs of students.
The Leicester Research
demonstrates that subject method tutors often acknowledged and under-
stood
the pressures faced by schools but that this often appeared
to be seen as grounds for acceptance of the status quo.
Thus a
weight of passivity and sometimes of rejection underpins this view
of the
school and the student may be isolated in his or her attempts
to develop a personally and professionally meaningful experience.