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Initial Teacher Education: The Opportunities and Problems Inherent in Partnership Working

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The Palgrave Handbook of Teacher Education Research
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Abstract

The term “partnership,” in the context of initial teacher education (ITE), is used “to carry certain theories about the nature of learning to become a teacher” (Brisard et al, Models of partnership in programmes of initial teacher education. Full report of a systematic literature review commissioned by the General Teaching Council for Scotland, GTCS Research, Research Publication No. 2. General Teaching Council for Scotland, Edinburgh, p 5, 2005). While effective partnership working has long been recognized as a key component of teacher education programs internationally, the precise relationship between center-based teacher education and the nature of the practicum experience, inherent in all forms of ITE partnerships, may vary, depending on differing conceptualizations not only of what preservice teachers need to know and be able to do, but also of the processes by which their professional learning takes place (Burn et al, Beginning teachers’ learning: making experience count. Critical Publishing, Northwich, 2015). This chapter seeks to illustrate some of these inherent tensions which are manifest both in the organizational aspects of partnership and in the models of teacher education pedagogy that underpin them and how these tensions reflect the perennial problem of the integration of theory and practice.

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Correspondence to Trevor Mutton .

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Mutton, T. (2023). Initial Teacher Education: The Opportunities and Problems Inherent in Partnership Working. In: Menter, I. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Teacher Education Research . Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-16193-3_8

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