democratic forms of teaching and learning in higher education, with a high emphasis on learner participation, but are rapidly resocialised into more authoritarian understandings and practices during their teaching practice and their subsequent employment in schools. Rather than there being a contradiction between the two (in terms of power over what is taught and learned, how and when) Bartholemew argued that in reality teacher education is often an authoritarian and reproductive preparation for teaching in schools. Part of the reason for this state of affairs may be a reluctance on the part of teacher educators to: ‘pay attention to their own pedagogical reasoning and reflective practice and to create opportunities for their student teachers to access this thinking about, and practice of, teaching’ (Ritter 2009, 46).