Teacher education is currently the subject of widespread political debate and radical reform. There is, however, very little recent empirical evidence about what actually happens on teacher training courses and in the first year of teaching.

As one of the core areas of the curriculum, science provides particular challenges, especially to teachers working at the top to the primary age range. These authors, both experienced primary teachers themselves, ask what teachers really need to know - both about their subject and about their children - in order to teach science effectively. This text gives practical guidance on curriculum planning, on balancing enquiry approaches to learning with more formal telling, and on the difficult area of collecting and interpreting evidence of children's progress for assessment.

The Leverhulme Primary Project reported here provides for the first time evidence on what is actually happening in teacher education today and on how novice teachers learn their craft. The book looks in detail at the experience of all the student teachers on one post graduate primary teacher training course and of those responsible for them in their university and in schools. It tracks them as they work to acquire the appropriate subject and pedagogical knowledge and as their own beliefs about teaching develop during the course. A final section follows some of the students through their fist...