What makes a good teacher, and what should you look for in your training?
23rd September 2026
People sometimes worry that they don’t know enough about teaching before they apply for teacher training. Knowledge and experience of what it’s like to teach isn’t a requirement for applicants to NTTC. We know that teacher training exists because teaching is a complex profession and because learning to do it well takes time, practice and guidance.
Whether you have prior experience in schools or not, there are some things worth looking for in a training programme. One is a serious approach to subject and curriculum knowledge. Teachers need to know the subject they are teaching, but they also need to understand how knowledge is organised within that subject, what pupils are likely to find difficult and how their explanations and examples can help pupils develop their understanding.
Another is a good understanding of how pupils learn. Educational research has given us useful insights into areas such as prior knowledge, working memory, retrieval and practice. The value of this research is not in memorising a list of principles; it is in helping teachers make better decisions about what they ask pupils to do and how they respond when learning is not secure.
That requires more than learning about research in a training room. A trainee might learn about questioning on Friday and then have to decide on Monday whether the questions they are asking actually reveal what their pupils understand. They might learn about explicit instruction and then discover that an explanation which seemed clear to them was not clear to their class. The connection between professional development and classroom practice matters.
Feedback is an important part of teacher development. It is difficult to improve if nobody helps you identify what you are doing well, what is getting in the way of pupils’ learning and what you might try next. Equally, feedback is only useful if you have opportunities to act on it and see whether a change has made a difference.
The relationship with the school-based mentor is particularly important. Trainees need someone who knows their teaching well enough to give specific advice, but they also need opportunities to develop their own professional judgement. The aim isn't for a trainee to copy one particular teacher; it is to develop the knowledge and habits that will allow them to make sound decisions for themselves.
A good training programme should also recognise that becoming a teacher takes longer than one training year. The aim is not to produce a finished teacher by the end of the course. It is to establish the foundations on which a new teacher can continue to develop.
This is one reason I think it is worth asking providers about the thinking behind their curriculum. What do they believe new teachers need to know? How have they decided what to include and how to sequence their sessions? How does research influence the programme? How are trainees expected to practise what they learn? How does the training respond to what trainees are experiencing in their schools?
Those questions tell you something about how a provider thinks about teacher education. They also give you a better basis for comparing courses. ‘Evidence-informed’ has become a common description in education, so it is worth looking beyond the phrase and asking what it actually means in the programme you are considering.
Finally, don't worry if you cannot yet imagine yourself as a fully competent teacher. You are not expected to. What matters much more is whether you are curious about the profession, willing to learn and prepared to think carefully about your practice. Those qualities will take you a long way during the training year and beyond it.
If you want to talk to NTTC about anything mentioned in this article, please contact us: NTTC@ccn.ac.uk and 01603 773708 / 773278.
Why don’t you come along to NTTC’s open morning at Norfolk House, Exchange Street, Norwich to meet the team? We’ll be there to talk you through all aspects of our training programme, including our PGCE, on Saturday 26 September from 9.30am to 1pm.