Reflective Teachers and Reflective Tutors: school experience in an initial teacher education course

The newly developing four‐year B.Ed. course of initial teacher education at Oxford Polytechnic is based on the development of a reflective teacher/tutor approach. School experience has been central to the development, because the approach requires that attention be paid to the perspectives of the three groups involved: teachers, tutors and students. The process of action research in which these perspectives were taken into account is described. The resulting simultaneous development of the model of reflective teaching/tutoring and of the course itself is explained and some conclusions drawn about the approach, the process of change, action research and teacher appraisal. Finally some questions that have arisen in the course of the inquiry are raised.