There has been some good discussion on twitter recently about the nature of teacher development and the importance of subject-specific training and CPD. This post by Matt Burnage is a great contribution with some excellent suggestions at the end. This post by Jonnie Grande is a really good provocation.
(Honest admission: I find any twitter debates hard to sustain – so much to say, all too easily oversimplified, too many parallel threads sprawling out over many hours – I usually mute them after a few exchanges, overwhelmed by the notifications. I’d rather talk it through or write it down properly and leave others to it.. However here I fear I’ve just splurged too many thoughts and not been very coherent… Having nearly abandoned it, I decided to hit publish and see what happens… )
From my point of view, some of the discussion on this conflates the issues around initial teacher training with those related to continuing professional development. I think they need different treatment. I also feel that seeking some ultimate truth such as ‘curriculum trumps pedagogy’ or the reverse position is unhelpfully reductive because there are too many variables and contexts to capture within any such claim. And, as ever, we have to distinguish primary and secondary phases because the very concept of specialism is different between them. I’m no expert on primary ITT so most of my comments are about secondary.
