Learning Teaching from Teachers: Realising the Potential of School-Based Teacher Education

"The impressive strengths of this book are its breadth of scope, the depth of its grounding in the real life of schools, its clarity of structure and argument, and its far-reaching suggestions for reforming school-based teacher education.

The book also demonstrates, in every chapter, the authors' unwavering, though not uncritical, regard for the profession of teaching." - Lesley Saunders, Professional Development Today.

The move to school-based initial teacher education has opened up exciting opportunities for student teachers to learn from practising teachers' expertise.

However, making the most of these opportunities is not straightforward, since much of that expertise is embedded in practice and rarely articulated.The book: brings together a wide range of research on teachers' expertise and beginning teachers' learning; reports a research project on helping student teachers to gain access to experienced teachers' expertise; considers the wider implications of that research for the development of school-based initial teacher education; explores how school-based initial teacher education can be improved if it is professionally planned in an informed and well thought-out way; shows how curricula can be developed to help student teachers learn from experienced teachers and from everyday life in schools; makes suggestions for initiatives to improve school-based initial teacher education; and, examines the conditions that are necessary for school-based initial teacher education to realize its full potential. "Learning Teaching from Teachers" is a key text for all teacher educators, including school-based mentors.

It is also important reading for teachers involved in Masters courses in mentoring and teacher education.