The name is absent

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singularly Innappropriate if account is taken of the fact that the
constellation of skills, attitudes and values that informs a teacher’s
professional persona is both individual and creative and itself
changing and developing. What the students require is the oppor-
tunity to learn from all their encounters in school the particular
skills, attitudes and values that will form the basis for their
beginnings as teachers.

Learning

implies

the

kind of evaluation that goes beyond what

may be conventionally construed as success or failure, either of which

tend to be seen as relatively fixed. Students need to examine both

in relation to themselves, fellow students, teachers and the

school more generally. Increasingly the research suggested that under-

standing and realistic responses to success or failure required

broad understanding. The social, economic and political context

within which teachers teach and pupils learn are factors with an

increasing degree of immediacy and this was often clear to students

as they detailed their encounters. What is implied here is that

the encounters

that

up the

student’s school

experience will

play a vital role in shaping the kind of teacher

the student will

become. Further,that this experience is shaped by a variety of local

and wider factors that students

themselves

need to appreciate in

order to work effectively as teachers. So work which begins close

to personal experience and encounters whether in the school or in
the training institution tries to move beyond that point both in
terms of understanding and of incorporating that experience in the

student’s professional persona.

It accepts that unless teacher

education

can begin

from

this

point it runs the

constant risk of

being pulled back to it in the

sense that when

experience runs

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