Gurushala

Research in Teacher Education

W.B. Yeats, the renowned Irish poet, in his reflection on walking amongst children in a

schoolroom, directs our attention to the conditions which do or do not conduce to effective

teaching in the early twentieth century. A passionate attachment that is to learning emerges from

its mirror; a passionate attachment to communication and engagement. For Yeats, education is not

to be unearthed in the, then prevalent, practice of beating learning into a child, nor in the

cultivation of the sense of failure (despair), nor yet in the unremitting grind and toil of simply

ploughing through the ‘stuff’ that passes for knowledge. Rather, the teacher is he or she who

magnifies the wonders of the world for children; in a very real sense he or she is both dancer and

dance.