Pre-service training

I have just been reading Jessica Shiller's blog about pre-service training. She is discussing teacher training in America however a lot of what she has written is very applicable to us here in New Zealand. We had Teacher Training Colleges which have now been merged into the universities here. The one I teach at merged 3 years ago so we are still in the process of redesigning or changing a lot of the courses in our degree. We are also struggling with the best way to prepare our teachers for the classrooms.

I think this is particularly important as our classrooms and schools are also changing at a rapid pace (here in NZ we have Mission Heights with some particularly innovative practices). Teachers need to be flexible and open to new learning themselves - teachers are now 'life long learners' rather than expect to go and do the course and be an 'expert teacher'.

I agree with Jessica's comments particularly the last paragraph as this is also applicable to us here in NZ:

"whether teacher education is at a university or not, we need some standard for
what teacher education is. Teacher education should not dump theory nor should
it focus entirely on the practical skills that can only be applied inside of a
classroom. Teacher education should combine the theoretical and the practical,
but more importantly, it needs to give future teachers rich preparation so that
they can be strong teachers for kids"

I would be very interested in what others think of this.