344
components of what the young
teacher brings to teaching.
Once again
explicit requirements by way
of degree subjects may cut across qual-
other previous experience.
Previous experience alone is insufficient for it carries with it
no guarantee of its use or applicability in
new settings and it may
be this factor which encourages a low estimate of its value at least
so far as established practice is concerned. The research suggested
that a constant dialogue was required between the past and the present
and that this was not easily fitted into the increasing pressures
of the PGCE year. It is important to look at this factor for unex-
plicated past experience may constantly militate against new
111
odes
of working. The structural divisions of the PGCE both within the
training institutions and between it and the school tend to force
consideration of such issues if they arise to questions of where it
should be fitted in and how long for which is totally inappropriate
for what is proposed here.
In the Research Group such experience could become a focus because
the group was detached from the predominently ac∏-ve and present
oriented concerns of the PGCE but work on the school groups showed
that its absence or the inability to focus upon such concerns was
detrimental to other recognised pursuits of the course. Whilst
unacknowledged and unexplored, previous experiences retains a firm
grip on both present performance and future possibilities. Unless
past education is confronted, future teaching and learning runs the
risk of being left in the hands of an unexplicated commonsense that
contains too little that is progressive and much that is reactionary