Preparing to Teach: Learning from Experience

This book gives student-teachers the chance to learn from the experiences of students who have just completed a course in preparing to teach. They offer all manner of insights, from the amusing to the cautionary to the thought-provoking. Course tutors provide additional commentary, identifying key themes and structuring chapters and the whole book to mirror the process of learning to teach.

Each chapter takes a different facet of learning to teach, and issues covered include:

• observing experienced teachers
• interaction with pupils
• discussions with mentors and new colleagues
• exploring the concept of ‘subject knowledge’
• what this means in practice.

Later chapters consider the many frameworks in which student-teachers will find themselves working, the Qualifying to Teach Standards included, but also acknowledging tacit frameworks such as the ‘hidden’ curriculum.

Students who are thinking of learning to teach, applying for a course or just starting one, will find voices here that give them a sense of how it feels to work through that process. The book is a companion; its tone friendly, conversational, and relaxed. Even at the most testing times in a course, you can turn to Preparing to Teach: Learning from Experience and find voices that say ‘yes, I’ve felt like that too’.

Jeff Battersby, John Gordon