Some like me exhibit liberation at having taken the plunge from one career into teaching in the hope that some of the

Some, like me, exhibit liberation at having taken the plunge from one career into teaching, in the hope that some of the idealism and optimism will be well-founded.Wednesday Coming from journalism, a trade which aims at precision and simplification of language, I can't help myself adopting a vigilant and hostile attitude towards jargon and educational psychobabble. So far, though, there's not been much to get too hot under the collar about. OK, we've had talk of "learning outcomes" and "attainment targets" and I'm having to get used to geometry being called "shape, space and measure" and statistics going by the name of "data handling", but I'd still have difficulty writing a Daily Mail leader with the material I've encountered so far.Today, though, there is something I can get my teeth into It had to come, I suppose, a session on Learning Styles. The world, is, we were told, divided into people whose learning styles can be categorised, with snappy labels such as Wholist Verbalisers, Analytic Imagers and Intuitive something-or-others.

After an hour or so of us being assailed by such theories, a hint of restlessness began to pervade the room, an atmosphere which surfaced explicitly when one student behind me asked when the lecturer was going to tell us what the point of all this was. We all recognise that children pick things up in different ways and we will need to consider tailoring our teaching methods to accommodate all pupils, but perhaps don't yet need to drown in psychological theory.Thursday The maths group is getting on really well and we're starting to get to know each other more. Our first free lunchtime is spent in the nearby pub and the first discussion that emerges is about religion. Is there a God? If so, does any world religion have superior claim to that deity? Who goes to church? How often? Shouldn't we be on the RE course?Back in college, the course is taking shape, and it's a shape that's substantially influenced by a rather weighty tome we're all going to get well acquainted with: The National Curriculum, and specifically the Maths section of it. Among the tutors, there are some with a thinly concealed animosity for this document, or rather for the way in which it was seen as being imposed on the teaching profession. But the recent revisions of it seem to have begun to wash away much of that hostility.Ofsted, too, attracts a few barbed comments from the college staff, particularly since the college itself is about to receive a visit from a team of inspectors to look at how teachers are being trained.

However, the tutors certainly don't push their views on us, nor in any way colour their lectures or tutorials in a way which might nurture prejudices in our own minds.Friday Our first school placements are already looming on the near horizon. Very soon we'll be spending two days a week in school and from half-term until Christmas, five days a week. Soon we'll be told which schools we're going to, and there's understandable, intense curiosity among us on where we might end up. This will be the first of two blocks of school experience and the college will try to ensure we see two different types of school. So, each student might get one single-sex school and one mixed, or one 11-16 comprehensive and one sixth form.