84
knowledge .
Further it should be grounded
in an understanding of the
developing professional self
as well as of the individual children
who the student works with in classrooms.
It is against this back-
ground that understanding ones subject
evaluating the latest teaching
methods and
becoming familiar
with the day-to-day
running of schools
should take place.
These are all activities which the students at
the end of
their course
see as
important but which too frequently
are presented as separate elements linked neither amongst themselves,
with the school, nor within an overall awareness of their relationship
to the students.
The research recommendations on the future role
of the university
tutor appear to miss out ways of working in these
areas .
Subsequent developments of the course, however, reported in
the Sussex University Occasional Paper (Lacey and Lamont 1978) suggest
that
the university seminars themselves could bear upon action taken
by the students within the schools.
This is the beginning of the
exploration of the possibility of a theoretically
informed practice
which has to be located within the pattern of relationships estab-
lished by the course.
Throughout the course this relational element
had been seen as critical
posing a challenge to the conventions of
course planning. They emphasise how far such conventions influenced
the selection and organisation of content leading to a narrow focus
on ’what’ or 'how' to cover the areas of technical knowledge seen
as appropriate to initial training courses. After the period of the
research Lacey and Lamont (1978) report how official requests for
reviews of provision in initial teacher
education once more pulled
them towards the established conventions of course planning and
presentation.