The name is absent

Subject Method Groups in the PGCE

differentiations took place in relation to the distinctive subject
groupings. The research showed how subject cultures are associated
with distinctive attitudes in relation to education’ as well as
to ’reported behaviours within the classroom’ (1973 Ch7 P27). It
is on these findings that Lacey bases his conclusion that the process
of becoming a teacher is a ’multi-stranded process in which subject
sub-cultures insulate the various strands from one another’ (1973

Ch7 P27). The subject background of students affects not only
attitudes, but also classroom behaviour.

He is affected in a number of conscious and
unconscious ways by a process of specialisation
that began five or even seven years earlier and
may even at that stage have been based on special
pre-dispositions and abilities that he already
possessed. The effect is to equip him with a
knowledge of special meanings (language), special
preoccupations (view of the world), analytical and
conceptual frameworks and ways of posing questions
and directions in which to look for answers (a
methodology). The power of this special approach
is balanced by a weakness in the interpretation
of the approaches of others. (1973 Ch4 P13)

When this is combined with the fact that the central experiences

of the PGCE year are subject centred, whether in the classroom or
in the training institutions, it can be seen that the implications
of what Lacey calls the emerging ’subject teacher perspective' are
enormous .

Lacey rightly cautions that subject does not carry with it an
'irremedial set of perceptions' (1973 Ch7 P25). Rather it carries
a built in set of meanings and ways of behaving and for the

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