Ani br I dge

The broad goals, therefore, of teacher education, must respect the agenda of the individual and must aim towards teacher autonomy, not dependence. By the very nature, therefore, of this model of teacher development, teacher educators cannot offer formulaic, top-down prescriptions. Not only do these tend to close off the pathways to autonomy for the teacher, as well as invest responsi­bility for change in the educator (instead of shifting it to the teacher), but they simply cannot provide answers for anything other than low-inference — readily learnable skills (Richards 1990).

The more we have discovered about the classroom, the more we have come to respect the fact that the preparation of teachers involves teaching both low-inference skills, such as giving instructions or eliciting language, as well as higher-level decision-making (e.g. skills, such as interpreting learner error as 'local' or 'global', or knowing when and when not to correct). The latter are less readily learnable, being more abstract, more conceptual and more complex. Richards (1990) perceives this as a dilemma that is a challenge to teacher educators: how to deal with the fact that the aggregate of low-inference teaching skills does not necessarily result in good teaching. He calls for an approach to teacher training that accommodates both holistic and atomistic approaches, what he calls the macro- and micro-perspectives.
This book aims to follow this model of teacher development, and through the tasks to guide the teacher to observe, reflect on their observation, and take control of their own learning.