346
ment in the formative years of the Alternative Course, suggests∕ξfiet
possibility of involvement in change releases energies and capacities
that otherwise remain untapped.
This is an underlying dimension of change and innovation that should
be carefully considered in teacher education. Not only might there
be benefits to students from new structures, new content and modes
of
assessment but equally
creating and modifying them over
Also there is the consideration that a non—continuous involvement
may
produce
a routinisation and a new
passivity when the grounds
for changes are no longer the subject of dialogue.
It is harder
to envisage ways
of accomplishing this than it is to realise its
importance for the plethora of joint planning and evaluating commit-
tees is a far cry from ensuring widespread involvement and res∣9ii*jti∣
bility.
Here again maybe new demands should be allowed to create
new forms such as those John Newick perceptively
explored when he
looked at the possibilities which are rooted in art
education (1983).
Gwyneth Dow (1979) in stressing the importance of student self assess-
ment showed that it provided both the necessity for and the focus
of debate about teacher education as well as of student performance
and development within it.
The ideas that
underlie self assessment and the dialogue that it
necessitates begin to chip away at the socialisation process of which
the PGCE can form an unquestioning part. By requiring students
to look at their own learning and development they are enabled to
examine the conditions which produced or failed to produce that
learning.
Such an enterprise entails
an awareness of past learning
whether in school, higher education or elsewhere.
Moving towards
assessment
is
probably critical
in involving all students in