Tomorrow's Teachers‐‐the role of local authorities in teacher education in the 1990s

Planning for tomorrow requires us to identify present trends which seem likely to continue to develop. Changes and developments in technology have been rapid and their speed of change is accelerating. This makes it difficult to see far ahead, yet technological advance has important implications both for the content of teaching and the process of learning. It offers opportunities for a better match of student and learning material than we have had before and it also has a valuable contribution to make to continuing education.Tomorrow's teachers need to be able to build on what we now know about effective education and their employers, whether LEA or some other, need to consider the pre‐service and in‐service education essential to maintain a teaching force able to cope with rapid change.Teachers will still require basic teaching skills but will need, more than ever, to be good managers of the learning environment. In‐service training appears to be most effective when it is closely related to the actual, schools and classrooms from which teachers come. It is necessary that teachers’ employers should be aware of this.