50
University (Jones, i98l) and the following extracts are taken froι
that
Report.
First, there was the monolithic character of the PGCE within the Institute
- it is as if the scale of the enterprise made change appear impossible.
The working Party on the Education Course 1972-74 expressed its concern in
the face of this situation
It
to encourage a range of alternative approaches
to Initial Training
(Jones
1981 p.5).
In their suggestions for
improvement they stated:
There may be a need to re-think what is entailed
by the conception of a ’course’ within the context
of teacher education.
In the long term we can envisage
a situation in which notions of a ’core content’
to
some degree fixed
might be subsumed within a structure
enabling a variety of possible routes which teachers in
training might choose between
In the short term
the implications of this are towards the expectation of
experiment with alternatives
(Jones i98l
p.5)
From this Report emerged two further Working Parties -
the Long Term Working Party on the future of the PGCE
and the Short Term Working Party on the Education Course.
In addition
three of its members proposed an immediate
if limited experiment and in 1974-75 the Alternative
Course began.
( Jones
1981 p.5)
Known as the Experimental Course the idea of the Core Group was
seen as the organizing framework
i) to incorporate the traditionally separated concerns
of method and education work within a single
framework;
ii) to allow for this integrated framework to be
directly linked to a student's experience in school
The
scale
of
the
enterprise
( Jones
1981 p.6)
enabled the course to be established,for
consisting of 2 method groups and 3 members of staff
it existed within the
mainstream framework of the PGCE.