Abstract
This paper is loosely based on the new text of which I am co-author (Kerry and Wilding 2004). Herein lies the first deliberate mistake! The title of the book does not match this paper. There is a reason for this: the publishers felt that our proposed title did not mesh sufficiently closely with government* dogma about teachers and teaching, and altered our version in the interest of increased potential sales! Nevertheless, in the paper I will continue to refer to Master Teachers (a phrase that, of course, encapsulates both genders).
In the paper I shall say nothing ‘cultured’ or ‘intellectual’. What I hope to do is to analyse some issues from the perspective of practical teaching in real classrooms, which is the purpose of the book.
In the Whether a competence model of teacher education can ever be really effective Whether strict curriculum control in schools (National Curriculum) is possible, for example in the aftermath of the world wide web Whether similar straight-jacketing of the curriculum of teacher education, leading to the loss of studies such as the sociology of education, has had a detrimental effect on teacher understanding Whether the government control of qualifications is really desirable Whether pedagogy by good intention or the largely unsupported assertion of what makes ‘good practice’ is a satisfactory substitute for teacher investigation and action research into classroom practice What effects these narrow approaches to marketism in education, initial and in-service training of teachers, professional self-development, accountability and performance management will have on the long-term effectiveness of teachers.
What we have tried to do is to present an alternative scenario which uses the sustainable elements of current UK political policy, but adds to that package what is missing both from the valuable past and from the potential future.
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