Student Teaching in England: Results of a Recent Survey

Abstract

Student teaching problems are unchanging, persistent and uni versal. Student teaching itself is an idealistic attempt to realize insti tutional cooperation between semi-impregnable organizations hav ing different goals: one dealing with the education of adults who need to practice (and learn from their own imperfect behavior); the other dealing with children and youth and thus having to guarantee the public some degree of mastered learnings on the part of all teaching staff. While we could have chosen an ex ample from the Third World or from a Communist Country, this article from England will suffice. The problems are insolvable. Once the future teacher is defined as a "college student" and the practitioner as a "school teacher" the organization die has been cast and the episode will be played out —across cultures and across time, with insignificant variations. See "23 Reasons Universities Can't Educate Teachers," M. Haberman, JTE, Spring '71).