Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

The Leverhulme Primary Project reported here provides for the first time evidence on what is actually happening in teacher education today and on how novice teachers learn their craft. The book looks in detail at the experience of all the student teachers on one post graduate primary teacher training course and of those responsible for them in their university and in schools. It tracks them as they work to acquire the appropriate subject and pedagogical knowledge and as their own beliefs about teaching develop during the course. A final section follows some of the students through their fist year as qualified teachers. Teacher education is going through a peiod of radical change and more peole than ever before now have some responsibility, whether in higher education or in school for the training of teachers. None of them can afford to ignore the fresh insights into how teachers are made contained in this book.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Foreword (p. xi)
• Acknowledgements (p. xiii)
• Chapter 1 Knowledge Bases for Learning to Teach (p. 1)
• Chapter 2 Performance in Subject-Matter Knowledge in Science (p. 18)
• Chapter 3 Performance in Subject-Matter Knowledge in Mathematics (p. 36)
• Chapter 4 Student-Teachers' Knowledge and Beliefs about Language (p. 51)
• Chapter 5 General Beliefs about Teaching and Learning (p. 73)
• Chapter 6 Learning to Teach- The Impact of Curriculum Courses (p. 88)
• Chapter 7 Theory into Practice (p. 105)
• Chapter 8 The Purpose and Impact of School-Based Work: The Supervisor's Role (p. 120)
• Chapter 9 The Purpose and Impact of School-Based Work: The Class-Teacher's Role (p. 135)
• Chapter 10 Knowledge Bases and Teaching Performance (p. 149)
• Chapter 11 Case Studies in Learning to Teach (p. 165)
• Chapter 12 The First Year of Teaching (p. 191)
• Chapter 13 Learning to Teach (p. 212)
• Appendix (p. 221)
• References (p. 229)
• Index (p. 237)

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

Based on a three-year data gathering activity, this is a serious attempt, by a handful of British educators, to better understand and analyze the "quality of teacher education" and "identify patterns and trends" in the British approach to education. Her Majesty's Inspectorate (HMI) is the influential force for Britain's professional judgments concerning teacher education. HMI's late 1980's criticism of educational programs is directed toward the lack of "strong leadership and clear goals." Subject areas were not providing the skills needed for dealing with the "wide diversity of pupils' needs." US reform efforts are cited by the authors, along with discussions of content within a few subject areas for comparison, such as the supervisor's and the teacher's roles. The editors' chapter, "Learning to Teach," is a concise British perspective of how teaching should be perceived based on data observed by the authors and on theory relevant to these perceptions. This volume is worth reading to better view and understand the British teacher education experience. Graduate students and faculty and library collections in comparative education.