The name is absent

49

and in so doing ignore what might be vital elements in
the acquisition of professional skills and knowledge.

The belief that theorising is an active process, that it is the pre-
rogative of all professional educationists not only those labelled
theorists, and that its achievement involves changes in both theory
and practice informed the thinking behind the Alternative Course.
It involved firm commitments to the common sense of both student
teachers and experienced teachers as they conducted the complex work
of teaching and involved themselves in the debates that surrounded
this central activity of education.

In the early ^,70's the notions about the interactions of theoretical
views with common sense were as likely to be seen as contamination
of the former by the latter than they were to be seen as the task
of PGCE work. To encourage a reflective stance could be seen even
by a former meb⅛e^of Alternative Course staff as limited and dangerous
stuff lacking rigour and eWfltational direction. (Pring 1980)

Explicit procedures did not exist in the sense of how to accomplish

concern that theory might be abandoned in the face of realistic and
supported access to practice and this was fuelled by interventions
such as those of Hirst himself in an influential paper on the PGCE
(Hirst 1975). This reflected the considerable doubts about the place
of theory in initial teacher education and perhaps also a belief

that with the rapid expansion of advanced work, initial training

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