Abstract
Should teachers of educational foundations be required to have prior school teaching experience? The question can arise in the Caribbean, partly because it has been explicitly answered in policy in England. The paper seeks to show that the answer is "No". It examines the idea that such experience is necessary to see the scope for foundational ideas to impinge on teachers and administrators, and the dubious assumptions that are needed to support a positive answer. It looks briefly at the nature and point of foundational studies, and how one foundation subject behaves in other contexts. It concludes by considering some possible motivations for a positive answer, arguing that the issues they raise largely support the opposite.
