| Abstract: | The paper briefly reviews the growing concern in both North America and Europe over the quality of the teaching force. The Scottish approach to the development of guidelines and mandatory conditions for new courses of initial teacher education is described and the strategies adopted by one College of education to involve practising teachers in the preparation, implementation and evaluation of courses designed to meet these criteria are described. It is argued that partnership between College and schools can lead to improvements in the quality of courses but that a necessary condition is, if these are to be both intellectually stimulating and lead to Professional competence, the adoption by all those involved of an agreed conceptual model of the teaching process and an appropriate commitment of resources to the activity. |
