International perspectives on the theory - practice divide in secondary initial teacher education

This paper is centred on one of the main issues that underpins the move towards more school based initial teacher training in England - who is developing the theoretical aspects of a teacher’s professional knowledge? Traditionally this has been one of the functions of the University. For the purposes of this paper we have focussed on the trainees' perspectives of what theoretical aspects of their training have been developed in schools , which teaching staff were involved and how well was this done.