Abstract:
With a view to informing understandings of quality teacher education, research through the Quality Teacher Education (QTE) Project has focused on what helps or hinders learning in teacher education. Particular attention is paid to preservice teacher education and factors which students themselves report as influencing their ability to learn how to be an effective teacher. While existing teacher education research has tended to focus on evaluating the student teacher's competency to teach as an indicator of quality teacher education, the QTE Project has emphasised the conditions and processes in preservice teacher education. Using the Critical Incident technique (Flanagan, 1954) the QTE Project examined 9 transcripts, identifying 244 critical incidents and 13 categories that describe what helps or hinders learning preservice teacher education. It is suggested that the incidents and categories have implications for policy and practices assoc iated with achieving quality in teacher education in general and preservice teacher education in particular. In response to the need to understand what processes in teacher education might support the provision of quality teacher education and thereby contribute to high quality teaching, this paper reports on the research questions: What hinders learning in preservice teacher education? What helps learning in preservice teacher education?