The Uses of Literacy in Teacher Education

Alasdair MacIntyre identifies two interconnected problems for present day thinking about the nature of educational provision. The first concerns the very possibility of general educatedness in the social and cultural circumstances of modernity; the second concerns the narrow and specialist route down which professional training has proceeded in contemporary post-industrial societies. This paper explores the implications of MacIntyre's views and argues for a radical reappraisal of current conceptions of teacher education and training.