Abstract:
The inservice professional development of teachers has occurred in two distinct arenas: within school systems themselves; and in higher education institutions. TeachersÕ intellectual and professional maturation has been managed in what may be argued as two quite different cultural contexts. One is concerned with the more effective delivery of its services; the other with the maintenance and integrity of a particular credential or award. Increasingly, in recent years, formal links have been established in the form of partnerships between employing authorities and universities. This has resulted in some conflation of values and purposes in ways which have not been anticipated and which deserve close and careful examination. The paper explores, first of all the challenges facing universities to resist being co-opted into becoming technical tools of employing authorities while at the same time supporting teaemploying authorities, both in the government school and non-government school sectors, have been involved in recent years in developing in-service education courses which address specific needs within the schools and which may be acceptable for accreditatlready completed a first degree. The many post graduate and associate diplomas which flourished under the binary arrangements, in the Australian context, have to a large extent now been subsumed into higherped Through External Agencies: At present, in Aust degrees offered in the post-Dawkins unified tertiary system or become part of an expanded Technical and Further Education Programme (Knight, Lingard & Bartlett, 1992).