learning from experience
english teachers as life-long learners
It is a bit of a truism in education that teachers should be teaching their students to become life-long learners rather than just educating students for narrowly conceived vocational pursuits. Mind you, it is not that long since an Australian federal government, in the 1980s, was trying to force teachers to focus more on school as vocational preparation - ‘preparing students for employment’. This invariably meant narrowing down teaching and learning options, limiting student choices and creative potential, resulting in a much less rich and much less diverse curriculum.
These days, however, it is recognised around the world that learning should be lifelong and that learning is by no means even restricted to formal settings like schools or universities. (See report from International Labour Organisation, 2000,  Lifelong learning in the twenty first century: The changing roles of educational personnel).
If this notion of lifelong learning is applied to learning to teach, then this implies three important ideas:
 Pre-service teachers’ learning to teach did not just begin at their first class in their Education courses.
Learning to teach is not restricted to formal classes or lecturers attended at university, the readings done for these classes, or the teaching rounds completed during an education course.
Learning to teach does not conclude when a graduate teacher attends his/her final class, takes his/her final class as a student teacher, or submits his/her final assignment. Learning to teach does not conclude after three or five or ten or twenty years of teaching experience.
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