Teacher education and pedagogy

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Teacher education and pedagogyEdgar Stones aa School of Education , University of Liverpool , Abercromby Square, P.O. Box 147, Liverpool,L69 3BX, UKPublished online: 07 Jul 2006.

To cite this article: Edgar Stones (1981) Teacher education and pedagogy, Journal of Education for Teaching: Internationalresearch and pedagogy, 7:3, 217-230, DOI: 10.1080/0260747810070302

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Teacher education and pedagogyEDGAR STONESSchool of Education, University of Liverpool, Abercromby Square, P.O. Box 147,Liverpool, L69 3BX, UK

The Dons are too busy educating young men to teach them anything.'Samuel Butler

This paper discusses the neglect of the study of pedagogy in teacher education.Transmission modes of imparting theory are criticized as is the undue elevation ofatheoretical practical teaching in the preparation of teachers. The study of pedagogyas a central focus for teacher education is proposed with an emphasis on the practicalapplication of theoretical notions in general teaching skills. The effective applicationof these skills to practice is suggested as the crucial element in the study of pedagogy.Attention is drawn to the need for pedagogical theory for various academic subjects,and for the need for systematic training of supervisors of practical teaching. Examplesof the approach discussed are referred to.

The neglect of the systematic theoretical study of the practical and the profes-sional in teacher education today continues the tradition depicted by Butler acentury ago. In this paper I aim to examine some of the characteristics of thecurrent scene, try to identify the factors that make for the continuation of thisstate of affairs, and suggest some procedures that seem to me to offer thepossibility of ameliorative change.

A central problem in the UK is, undoubtedly, the low esteem of educationalstudies. Simon (1981) has commented on the attitudes of the universities but ina different way colleges and polytechnics have also contributed to the problemin the years following the James report on teacher education (DES, 1972). In thesearch for viability, modularisation has led to plastic courses of infinite adapta-bility with an all too common dominant theme; to delay commitment to teach-ing to the last minute. The emphasis is thus placed on main subject studies -beit in bachelor three- or four-year concurrent courses, or one-year Post GraduateCertificate of Education (PGCE) consecutive courses. As a consequence, theacademic subject tail is undoubtedly wagging the pedagogical dog for manyintending teachers.

The effect washes over into educational studies themselves. The variouselements in such courses are frequently tricked out in syllabuses that resemble

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218 Journal of Education for Teaching Vol. 7 No. 3

honours degree courses. I well remember engaging in an exercise in the late1960s in which staff teaching educational studies in approximately twentycolleges of education in the Birmingham Area Training Organization addressedthemselves to the problem of identifying the appropriate objectives for all theconstituent elements in education courses (Stones, 1970). The early meetings ofthe working party on educational sociology are particularly clear in my mind.We listed all the topics held to be appropriate to such a course for intendingteachers. When we contemplated the final list it did indeed resemble an outlinesyllabus for an honours degree course. When we set the list alongside the timeavailable, the grotesque nature of our list was blindingly obvious. We eventu-ally took one of the constituent elements from it and concluded that this itemought to be the overall objective for such courses. The item was one whichexamined the role of the teacher in the classroom. All other matters were to beeschewed unless they related directly to what was referred to at the time as 'theongoing teaching situation'. Other working parties had similar experiences andcame to the conclusion that a focus on the teacher's actual job of teaching wasdesirable and realistic for the various disciplines within educational studies. Ibelieve that this was a move towards the development of the study of pedagogyand I regret greatly that external constraints nipped this tender shoot in thebud.

THE WAY WE ARE NOW

One of the possible consequences of nipping a shoot in the bud is that subsidi-ary buds appear in different places. To some extent this has happened and it ispossible to descry some new growths in the development of courses andinstitutional units devoted to 'teaching studies'. This is an encouragingdevelopment but before euphoria sets in it is as well to examine the substance ofdepartments and courses with this form to see in what way they differ fromtraditional education courses and departments.

In a relatively unsystematic sampling of courses in British institutions Ihave found a spectrum ranging from one or two examples closely related toactual teaching to many that suffered from the conceptual constipation weidentified in the Colleges Research Group. In my own field one detects theanxious striving for academic respectability in the syllabuses that attempt tocover the whole spectrum of what is currently fashionable in the psychologicalcanon. Conventionally this trend involves a rapid gallop through the gurus. Asthe year advances Piaget gives way to Bruner, Bruner to Bernstein. One asksthe question: 'If Eysenck comes can Freud be far behind?'

And the subjects: memory, motivation, creativity, personality, stretch outto the crack of doom despite the pitiful amount of time devoted to them. Inmore than one PGCE course I have found 'learning theory' encapsulated in onebrief moment of the students' contact time, with the pious declaration that linkswill be made with practical teaching throughout. At the other extreme is the

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October 1981 Teacher education and pedagogy 219

course on 'intelligence', a musty relic of days gone by which kept the studentsoccupied for three hours a week for two whole terms (i.e. two-thirds of theyear). How relevant can you get?

Not very is the inevitable conclusion if one examines the links betweenthese theory courses and practical teaching. There is precious little evidence inmost descriptions of practical teaching as it is now of any attention to pedagog-ics, and the direct linking of theoretical discussion and actual practice is oftenvestigial. The schedules used by many British institutions to evaluate studentpractice teaching rarely pay specific attention to teaching skills or children'slearning. However, there has been movement in the last decade with therecognition that some form of analytical guide can help to evaluate teaching.(Ironically some of these schedules bear an uncomfortable resemblance to one Icame across recently which was in use by inspectors of schools (HMI) in the1880s.) (Stones, 1978).

I would argue that the disjunction between the theory and practice is adirect consequence of the neglect of the study of pedagogy. This neglect of thescience of teaching, that is the process aspect of teaching, and the emphasis onthe academic content side, leads to the transmission mode of teaching andlearning. In this mode information is dispensed in lectures, seminars or byother media. In their turn teachers employ similar methods. There is ampleevidence from studies of learning and teaching that this kind of teaching leadsto rote learning with little transfer to other situations. The knowledge is inert.And yet this is the staple mode of teaching in schools and colleges throughoutthe land. Small wonder that an Inspector of Schools writing on the implicationsof the National Secondary Survey for Teacher Training (UK), spoke of 'overdirected teaching . . . emphasising factual recall rather than understanding',and of 'pupils passively assimilating facts' (Arnold, 1980). His call for theencouragement of student teachers to develop as theorists in their own right isone that current course content and teaching approaches in most traininginstitutions with their emphasis on transmission of content, cannot begin toanswer.

There is another important difficulty hampering the development of atheory to enable teachers to be theorists in their own right, capable of selfappraisal. It is the almost mystical belief in the efficacy of current practice as it isfound in schools; as though observing it will make master teachers of ourstudents, and analysing it will yield a quintessential body of principles to guideus in our training. These attitudes will be found among the organized teacherswho regularly, at conferences, call for a greater involvement of trainee teachersin school-based practice, and by many researchers who observe teaching theway it is now and then attempt to codify their observations and derive guidesfor action from this synthesis.

I should like to consider some important specific problems attached to thisapproach. One is related to the common finding that young teachers rapidly

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become less radical or innovatory when they begin teaching and their attitudesbecome more conservative than when they were in college. In view of this itseems rather naive to expect them to become more sophisticated pedagogicallyonce they have left the training institutions. It must be conceded that thetraining institutions have a very difficult job in the brief time they have thestudent teachers. The students have, after all, at least eleven years of first-handexperience of teaching before they go to start training and those experiences havea powerful formative influence that their brief encounter with other ideas andattitudes is unlikely to change.

Another very important observation is that teachers are not always con-cerned with children's learning (Clark & Yinger, 1979). Whether this is a causeor a consequence of the neglect of what one would have thought to be a notunimportant aspect of teaching by the training institutions, is problematic. Themain preoccupation of teachers seems to be following the plan of the lessonthey have in mind. In the main this plan will be concerned with the content tobe covered rather than with pedagogical matters. As long as the contentcoverage is going to plan, there is no problem. Should it go astray the teachertends to take action to restore equilibrium and to get the lesson back on the rails.Covering the content and following the teacher's plan may or may not lead topupil learning but it seems to be the most important thing in most cases(Shavelson, 1980). However, the teacher is less free to decide the course of alesson than is sometimes thought. Even experienced teachers with no man-agement problems are controlled by their pupils in various ways that militateagainst learning. Teachers are managed by their pupils far more than is gener-ally realized. Various investigations have identified a number of strategies thatpupils adopt to minimize cognitive strain and to routinize classroom activity sothat little learning is actually taking place, the pupils are deploying existingskills to give the appearance of new learning activities. Thus when we look in aclassroom we may not be seeing learning at all, merely the appearance oflearning (Doyle, 1979).

Not that most measures of learning currently in use give us much ideaabout the efficacy of teaching. In the main, tests and exams are rarely more thanmeasures of verbal learning that depend mainly on memorization and providelittle evidence of understanding or competence beyond that of regurgitatingwhat has previously been memorized. I have already mentioned the HMIreport, but this is just one of many such investigations. There is a significantreview of research into teaching that illustrates the problems that can flow fromthe use of such types of tests as measures of learning. In his review of classroomstudies Rosenshine (1971) reported correlations between low-level questioningand pupil learning. The more drill type questions asked by teachers the betterthe learning. Probing questions often advocated by microteaching afficionadoswere less efficacious. Are they misguided? The simple but very importantanswer is that they are not because the criterial tests of pupil learning were

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simple tests of memory, in other words, they were perfectly normal classroomtests. The encouragement of probing questions takes us into another kind oflearning where the emphasis is on understanding (Gall, 1973). This point isimportant not only because it illustrates the dangers of making non-analyticalconnexions between process and product in teaching but also because it exemp-lifies another facet of the problem of teaching related to what is thought to be'mastery' of content, that is, the ability to recall verbally, and not to learning as aprocess.

One other important point flows from the neglect of pedagogy in teachereducation. Teachers are frequently unconscious of the nature of their activitiesin the classroom. I have observed this with many experienced teachers wherethere is very frequently a mismatch between the perceptions of what they did ina particular lesson and what they actually did as evidenced by videorecordingsand the views of observers. For example, it is typical of teachers to over-estimate the amount of encouragement (reinforcement) they give to pupils,and they very frequently wrongly estimate pupils' entry competence for newlearning tasks. Other workers have made similar observations (McNair, 1978).Evidence from psychological literature suggests that it is difficult for people tolearn from experience in complex situations such as the classroom. However,with appropriate training the picture is different and teachers can be helped toimprove their pedagogical activity (Shavelson, 1980).

WHAT CAN BE DONE?

I suggest that many if not all the problems I have been discussing can be tackledand eventually solved by making a study of pedagogy the heart of teachertraining. Theory and practice should be a seamless garment so that it is difficultto see where one begins and the other ends. Although I am sure severaleducational disciplines are relevant, I believe that the psychological aspect ofpedagogy is particularly important and offers special promise for making thelink between theory and practice. But not the type of psychology that I referredto earlier. The focus must be on teaching and the gurus are only appealed towhen they have something to say that can help understanding and improveteaching. But the emphasis is not ondoing Piaget or Skinner or whoever, but onthe concepts and principles that have been shown to offer some hope of helpingpupils to learn and to enjoy learning.

Further, the study of psychopedagogy is task oriented and not merelyconcerned with content transmission. The tasks I refer to are twofold: there isthe task the learner faces - that of acquiring new concepts, skills and under-standings - and there is the task the teacher faces - that of so arranging thelearning environment of the pupils that they will acquire those skills, conceptsand understandings in a meaningful rather than superficial way. Teachertrainers have a particularly complex task, that of arranging the learning envi-

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ronment of trainee teachers so that they will acquire the skills and conceptsappropriate to teaching, that is, practising what they preach.

Focusing on process in this way transforms the nature of teaching. Teachingbecomes more problematic than when it takes the transmission mode (asgiven). To illustrate my point I should like to refer to my first encounter with agroup of graduates starting teacher training. I had asked them all to comeprepared to explain briefly how they would set about teaching something tosomeone. They had a completely free choice. The first exposition typifies thegeneral character of the contributions. This student teacher was aiming to teachthe pupils how to locate a place in an atlas using the index. His prescription wasthat he would first tell them this, then he would tell them that, then the other.End of lesson. For this student there was no problem other than deciding whatto tell them. It was perhaps a caricature of the transmission mode of teachingbut an all too common one as the students knew from their experiences aspupils in school and as undergraduates.

How would the approach that I espouse differ from this? Briefly it acknow-ledges the fact that there is a learning and teaching problem; that it is necessaryto analyse the nature of the task, to get clarity about objectives, to determineexplicitly beginning competence in the pupils and the end competence aspiredto. None of this is new, but it is honoured more in the breach than theobservance. The next point is particularly neglected but is crucial: we do havesome information from psychology and skill training that can be helpful ingetting pupils from a state of incompetence to a state of mastery and we shouldcall on this information whenever possible.

In the case in point the type of thing that one would draw attention to arequestions such as the assumptions being made about the entry competence ofthe pupils. Are they able to use an index? Are they familiar with the use ofco-ordinates? Is the student teacher dear about the way in which learning is tobe evaluated? Is it to be by asking the pupils questions? Should these be writtenor oral? Or are they to be asked to locate places in that or other atlases?Concerning the task itself, if the pupils have the entry competences referred tothen the task is relatively simple, it is just a question of asking them to applytwo already existing skills to a new situation. Perhaps all that would be neces-sary would be to remind them of the use of an index and co-ordinates. If thepupils have neither of the two skills then a very important question arises: is itmore appropriate to attempt to teach them the two skills in this very specificcontext to solve the very specific problem or would it be better to teach them theskills for general application? If the latter then the proposed lesson is called intoquestion. In this case the use of the index in the atlas would be used as just oneexemplar in the teaching of the general principles of index usage and the use ofco-ordinates to locate places in an atlas would be just one exemplar in teachingthe principles of the use of co-ordinates. In the teaching of the skills of using anindex and using co-ordinates, notions from the psychology of concept learning

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would be relevant and would enable the teacher to make sure that the pupilswould acquire skills of general application so that a lesson solely on the use ofan index in an atlas could well be unnecessary, since all the pupils would haveto do to find a place would be to deploy existing general skills.

To my mind the teaching of skills of general application is crucial in anyattempt to get away from the content-bound transmission mode that oftenleads to meaningless learning. In the approach I advocate, the aim of teachingin any field would be the development of such general skills. There is little or nopoint in other types of learning unless they contribute to general skills. In fact,the only justification for rote learning is when it is useful in an instrumentalcapacity for general and transferable capabilities.

I am of course using the word 'skills' to refer to cognitive capabilities as wellas psychomotor skills. In the case of finding a place in an atlas, the skillsdeployed would be those of using an index and using co-ordinates, compe-tence would be assessed by presenting the pupils with a completely new task ofthe same general type, not by asking them how to do it or by giving them a quizon what they had been told. In the case of teaching children how to use an indexor co-ordinates the skills to be deployed by the teacher would be those of usingthe principles of pedagogy to analyse the nature of the children's learning task,that is, to identify the types of learning involved, and planning and executingprocedures that would get pupils from an entry state of naivety to an end stateof competence. The facets of skill training I have already referred to would alsobe involved. The important point is that only by analysing the learning taskfrom a basis of understanding of what I refer to as 'psychopedagogy' wouldstudents be able to identify the types of learning involved, and on this basistake appropriate action. If they have no knowledge of the principles of feed-back, reinforcement, or concept formation they will be incapable of making theanalysis of the teaching and the learning tasks.

However, having done the analysis, let us say satisfactorily, the studentstill has to demonstrate competence in his own ability to deploy generalpedagogical skills in teaching effectively. As with the pupils he teaches the acidtest of his learning is whether he can apply the principles he has learned inpractice, in the student teacher's case to practical teaching. This is the pointwhere theory and practice coalesce.

Let me attempt to illustrate the point by reference to the way I try to operatemyself. First I should make it dear that I do rely on the work of psychologiststheorizing about instruction to provide a baseline of knowledge for beginningstudents, but as an entry requirement, not something to be tested at the end ofthe course. Recommended reading gives a preliminary notion of what I take tobe key issues relating to learning in human beings. It may well be that thispreliminary reading is meaningful and the students may acquire through thisreading new bodies of concepts and principles. Tested on a traditional Britishthree-hour examination paper most of them would probably get the standard

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40 per cent pass mark since they have had many years practice and success inplaying that particular game.

I do not, in fact, assume that the learning is in all respects meaningful ifonly because many of the conceptswill be quite new to many of the studentsand therefore not related to existing knowledge. I attempt to ensure that thelearning is not just verbalising, by sessions in which the principles are discus-sed in relation to actual teaching problems. This is stage one and I consider thatthe meaningful acquisition of concepts and principles is the simplest skill I haveto teach.

The second stage is the application of these principles and concepts in theappraisal of pieces of teaching, actual or recorded. I want to stress moststrongly that when the students watch teaching at this stage they are not justobserving to see what the teacher does, they are doing that but they are alsoappraising the teacher's activity in the light of pedagogical principles. Thusthey are just as likely to comment on what the teacher did not do as they are tocomment on what he did do. The comments they make will not be of the typethat one finds on schedules for assessing teaching since for the most part thoseare rarely concerned with pedagogical matters. They will instead be concernedwith those teacher activities that help or hinder pupils' learning. By sampling avariety of exemplars of teaching of different subjects to pupils of different ageswe aim to evaluate the applicability of various psychopedagogical notions topractice, and in the process enlarge and deepen our understanding of thoseprinciples and the practice to which they may be related (Smith, 1969).

The next and most important stage is the actual application of the newskills. Having acquired an understanding of pedagogical concepts anddeployed them in evaluating the teaching of others, the time comes to use theinsights gained through these activities in one's own practical teaching. Thisdemands analysis of the tasks involved, planning the type of pedagogicalmoves, then implementing and evaluating them. The criterion of success is thechildren's learning which in most cases should be meaningful. The final phaseis the consideration of one's own performance and evaluating it in the light ofthe principles one was working to, to see to what extent what was planned wasachieved and what can be done to improve future teaching.

Thus, what I am advocating is the development of systematic bases for theidentification and acquisition of the skills of teaching that can be self-correctingand dynamic. The skills are not coffee-table products but drawn from experi-mental work appropriate to human learning and tested in actual teaching; andthe teachers are doing the testing. If there is no pay-off in terms of children'slearning when the procedures are followed then we need to examine both thetheory and our practical application to ascertain the validity of both.

So far I have said nothing about specific subject or content fields. How-ever, I take the view that focusing on the process of teaching rather than on thecontent makes the problem of subject method much more tractable. I suggest

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that there are general teaching skills that cut across subject boundaries and areapplicable to all fields of knowledge. There may be some skills that are subjectspecific but I suspect that they are few and in general assimilable to the generalbody of skills if subjected to close analysis. I think there is far more mileage intaking this view of teaching skills than the one that sees each subject as havingits own body of specific skills which are the province of the subject specialists.

There are serious problems for the teacher who looks for guidance to thepedagogy of different subjects. I and many teachers working with me haveexamined the literature on subject teaching in the search for guidance onspecific pedagogies. The news I bring as a result of this search is that there isn'tany. Examine the texbooks related to the teaching of various school subjectsand you will find very little that will guide you in the theory of the teaching ofthe subject. Some books actually approach the problem and introduce some ofthe ideas about such things as concepts and their acquisition, (e.g. Marsden,1976) but there is rarely any guide to the application of these notions to practice.Many books comprise, in the main, tips for teachers that have no relation totheory and have no explanatory or generalizable power. Many school text-books exemplify most blatantly the lack of understanding of pedagogy andtheir unquestioned acceptance of a transmission mode of learning with little, ifany, attempt to teach for transfer.

You will not be surprised when I also assert that the teacher trainer who is aspecialist in one of the subjects will be unwise to depend upon the educationalstudies department for help. They are too busy transmitting information aboutthe sayings of the educational sages to address themselves to the question. Andyet there is great promise in a rapprochement between the two camps. Thecommon focus on the problems of teaching something to someone in the mosteffective way demands intellectual and pedagogical skills of the highest orderand holds the potential for joint activities that could be much more satisfyingthan most current approaches, and which would be much more effective inteacher training.

What I am talking about is an approach that sees teaching as a form ofinvestigation or experimentation. It is a problem-solving activity. It could beregarded as a form of action research. When it is done systematically andrigorously it could add to our information about human learning and teaching.In work that I have been doing with teachers we have examined the teaching ofvarious subjects and found the approach most promising. It has facilitated linksbetween teachers in school and in the university and colleges in joint explora-tions of the pedagogy of different subjects. The idea of the teacher as aresearcher is currently fashionable. The study of pedagogy focuses his atten-tion on the most important aspect of his job and that of teacher trainers.

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SUPERVISION

Current approaches to the supervision of student teachers on teaching practiceepitomize our present attitudes, towards pedagogy and help perpetuate thedichotomies between theory and practice, between main subjects and educa-tional studies, and between both and teaching practice. In most training institu-tions in the UK supervisors are recruited ubiquitously on the assumption thatonce appointed to the staff in whatever field, one is qualified to supervisestudents on teaching practice. With few exceptions (Stones, 1977; Stenhouse,1981) little attention is paid to systematic training in supervision skills so thatmy experience as neophyte supervisor is probably still the staple. Shortly afterjoining the staff of a teacher training college I was told which schools andstudents I should visit and in a few days I was on my way. No matter what one'sarea of expertise all are eligible to act as supervisors and the only form ofinduction one is likely to get is in the administrative aspects of the job. Much thesame can be said about many other countries except that the problem has beentackled in some parts of the USA, for example, Boyan and Copeland (1973),Goldhammer, et al. (1980), Acheson and Gall (1980) and there is an extensiveliterature in that country on the subject.

And yet in the act of supervising practical teaching pedagogical theory,practical teaching and the study of the main subject come together. Supervi-sion, if it is to be effective, demands highly skilled people aware of the princi-ples of learning, sensitive to problems of interpersonal relationships in thesupervisory interview and able to apply understandings about human learningin the supervision of student teachers. In other words we need a reconceptual-ization of the role of the supervisor. I prefer the word counselling to supervi-sion but without the connotations of therapy. I see this counselling as a form ofteaching where the principles preached by tutors are applied by them inteaching their students to teach. Atheoretical approaches employing pedagogi-cal folklore and attending to the cosmetics of teaching are not enough. Theremust be an attempt to make use of principles of learning that carry promise ofgeneral application. In this approach there is room for subject specialists andeducational studies staff but there is a desperate need for both to bring to bearsystematic bodies of pedagogical principles. Their aim should be to avoid onthe one hand the atheoretical 'sitting with Nellie' approach which rejects theoryaltogether, and on the other hand, to avoid the recherche offerings fromeducational studies that do not relate to the actual practice of teaching. If thiscan be done I am sure that the time will come when the widespread rejection oftheory will be replaced by its widespread acceptance as furthering theimprovement of teaching and thereby enhancing learning in schools.

A STRAW IN THE WIND?

I should like to conclude with a reference to what might be seen as a straw in the

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wind, and when I say this I have in mind a comment by a friend who pointedout that given the right wind conditions a straw could split an oak gatepost. Itcomes from a report made by a college introducing a four year honoursBachelor of Education course (B.Ed.) and agonising about the most appropriateway of articulating this course. The problem was that of providing a course thatwas professional and of honours standard. They considered they had failed inachieving a genuine synthesis between educational theory and practice in theirordinary B.Ed, course and had explored a variety of possible approaches toovercoming this problem in their proposed honours course without success.Then they took an approach based on the arguments advanced in a paper onpsychopedagogy (Stones, 1978). The approach helped them to resolve theproblem of the synthesis between theory and practice in such a way that it alsowent a long way towards solving many other problems too. Briefly these were(a) that students from different age ranges of training could work togetherbecause they were treating educational theory as systematic enquiry into teach-ing so that they focused on pedagogical processes; (b) the structural schismbetween educational theory and professional teaching studies was bridged; (c)the systematic structuring of the pedagogical episodes using pedagogicalschedules enabled students to take considerable responsibility for their ownlearning; (d) the approach made demands of an advanced level on the studentsthat were without doubt of honours standard; and (e) the approach providedthe key mechanism which established links between the various elements ofthe course. In the students' extended study in particular, they carried out alarge scale psychopedagogical exercise in their own elective area. The finalcomment in the report was that it was not by chance that the psychopedagogi-cal approach transformed the nature of the college problem and that it would beof utility in other training institutions.

The course is now in progress and inevitably problems are appearing. Thetwo main ones relate to the different expectations of staff and students. Theyare ones I have experienced myself. On the staff side external influences, andconventional views on the nature of theory constrain new developments. Onthe students' side there is the very serious problem of students who have hadlittle or no experience of learning and teaching other than the transmissionmode. They suffer severe withdrawal symptoms when expected to takeresponsibility for their own learning.

I am sure that many readers will have had personal experience of theseproblems, they are not unique to this course and do not spring from the actualnature of the innovation. The course proceeds along the general lines referredto which seem to be fulfilling the expectations of the teaching staff and arousingthe enthusiasm of the students.

This example of institutional innovation parallels the work of individualteachers operating with a pedagogical orientation. The validity of the generalconception will be given its most stringent test when its efficacy in resolving the

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problems of course design is assessed in practice. In the case of individualteachers the success is measured in terms of children's learning. A number ofteachers working individually or in small groups have been exploring thisapproach in the Liverpool area'for the last few years. They have attempted toapply principles, in the way I have suggested, to practical teaching in a varietyof subjects and to a variety of pupils of different ages. Our experiences so farencourage us in the view that there are general skills of teaching that areapplicable in very different teaching situations. The theoretical notions thatunderpin these pedagogical explorations draw on experimental work mainly inthe field of psychology and training, but it is not a one-way process; we arefinding things out about how they apply to actual classrooms. The theory wemake use of is by no means inert and self-contained. It demands hard thinkingand application but I am sure I speak for all the teachers involved when I saythat this approach offers genuine promise for the development of pedagogyand thereby for the improvement of teacher preparation.

STRUCTURES AND SUBSTANCE

The discussion in this paper has been concerned with teacher education inBritain as it is now. I would argue, however, that the issues raised are notmatters of mere parochial concern and this view is supported by various articlesconcerned with teacher education in other countries that have appeared andare appearing in the pages of this journal. Britain is better off than many placesin having an institutionalized structure for teacher education, but it is much onpar with most other countries when it comes to the conceptualization andimplementation of systematic pedagogy to the actual preparation of teachers.The drastic changes in the organizational structure of teacher training in Britainover the last decade have had no positive effect on the nature of the preparationoffered. Indeed, I have been suggesting above that the changes may have haddeleterious effects on the nature of pedagogical offerings provided. This isparticularly evidenced, in my view, in the shift from integrated three or four-year bachelors courses of teacher preparation to modular 'patchworks'designed to delay professional commitment to the eleventh hour in the absurdthirty-odd weeks of professional training of the PGCE that follows a bachelor'sdegree in Britain. Courses such as these signal the contempt in which pedagog-ical studies are held and probably explains their continued neglect.

A recent American publication that came to hand after this paper waswritten indicates that the issues discussed above are of concern also to manyAmerican educationists (Smith, 1980). This monograph considers in detail theweaknesses of current approaches to teacher training and the neglect of pedag-ogy. Not only that, it also suggests practical programmes for an institute ofpedagogy. It takes a very similar approach to the one suggested above and therecommendations argue for a paring down of much superfluous matter notdirectly concerned with teaching. As an example in the field of pedagogical

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psychology, on the basis of an introductory course in general psychology, aclinical study of pedagogical psychology should be built that focuses on 'thegeneric concepts and principles underlying the domains of training, observa-tion, diagnosis, planning, management of conduct, grouping, instruction,communication and evaluation' (p. 41). This work raises crucial issues for thefuture development of teacher education: issues of far more importance thanthe administrative problems of restructuring. Bureaucratic and political shuffl-ing of structures may or may not produce conditions favouring improvement,but the reappraisal by the profession along the lines of this powerful argumentfor a radical realignment of professional thinking to focus on pedagogy can onlydo good.

REFERENCES

ACHESON, K.A. & GALL, M.D. (1980) Techniques in the Clinical Supervision of Teachers (Harlow:Longman).

ARNOLD, R. (1980) The national secondary survey: implications for teacher training. Paperpresented to the conference of the Universities Council for the Education of Teachers (UK)(mimeo). See also Department of Education and Science (1981) Teacher Training and theSecondary School (London: HMSO).

BOYAN, N.J. &COPELAND, W.D. (1973) The instructional supervision training program. GraduateSchool of Education, University of California, Santa Barbara (mimeo).

CLARK, C.M. & YINGER, R.J. (1979) Teachers' thinking'. In P.L. Peterson and H.J. Walberg, (eds)Research on Teaching (Berkeley: McCutchan).

DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION AND SCIENCE (1972) Teacher Education and Training (London: HMSO).DOYLE, W. (1979) The tasks of teaching and learning in classrooms. Paper presented to the

Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association (mimeo).GALL, M.D. (1973) The Problem of 'Student Achievement' in Research on Teacher Effects. Report A73-2.

Far West Laboratory for Educational Research and Development, San Francisco (mimeo).GOLDHAMMER, R. ANDERSON, R . H . & KRAGEWSKI, R.J. (1980) Clinical Supervision, (New York:

Holt, Rinehart & Winston).MCNAIR, K. (1978) Capturing inflight decisions: thoughts while teaching. Educational Research

Quarterly, 3, 4, 26-42.MARSDEN, W. E. (1976) Evaluating the Geography Curriculum (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd).ROSENSHINE, B. (1971) Teaching Behaviours and Student Achievement (Windsor: NFER).SHAVELSON, R. J. (1980) Research on teachers' pedagogical thoughts, judgements, decisions and

behaviour. National Institute of Education (USA) (mimeo).SMITH, B.O. (1969) Teachers for the Real World, (AACTE).SMITH, B.O. (1980) A Design For a School of Pedagogy. Publication no. E-80-42000 (Washington: US

Dept of Education).SIMON, B. (1981) Pedagogy, the years of shame: an historical view. Paper on the neglect of

pedagogy in English education presented to CRITE (UK) January (unpublished).STENHOUSE, L. (1981) Applying Research to Education: One Experience, Northern Ireland Council for

Educational Research information bulletin 15.STONES, E. (1970) Cooperative research in colleges of education: progress and prospects. Research

into Higher Education (Guildford: SRHE).STONES, E. (1977) Meta-metateaching. Brit. J. Teacher Education, 3, 2, 97-110.

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STONES, E. (1978) Psychopedagogy: theory and practice in teaching. Brit. J. Educational Research,4, 2, 1-19.

STONES, E. (1979) Psychopedagogy: Psychological Theory and the Practice of Teaching (London:Methuen).

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Teacher education and pedagogy