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efficiency) to pursue teaching styles or to exploit learning opportunities
which make the best use of their individual talents and creativity?
In what ways can individual originality be encouraged in teachers without
risking any undue loss of cohesion in the performance of the teaching
staff as a whole? Are individual teachers given enough shared
responsibility for curriculum development within schools so that they
operate as a team with objectives which they have personally helped to
determine? Are senior staff sufficiently alive to their professional
responsibilities towards junior staff for example, in providing
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appropriate induction arrangements for newly-qualified recruits? Do
senior teachers display appropriate qualities of leadership in professional
matters and in the development of the curriculum areas for which they
are responsible, over and above their proper concern with managerial
and organisational matters?
8.25
Teachers have significant roles to play in the work of the
Curriculum Development Committee and the CDC Textbooks Committee, their
membership of subject committees and panels enabling syllabus development,
in particular, to reflect the needs and interests of pupils as perceived
by the teachers themselves. The system of continuous evaluation of
Educational Television programmes also depends very much on the direct
participation of teachers. Could additional opportunities be found for
teachers to participate in planning and policy-making and, if so, in
what areas would their contribution be most useful?
8.26
Are our present arrangements and development plans for teacher
education sufficient to meet the challenges of universal education? In
particular, is teacher training making teachers flexible enough to be
able to respond to change? Is it enabling teachers to prepare pupils
for tomorrow's world, rather than replicate in the classroom the
conditions under which they themselves were taught? Are teachers