Fundamental to evaluating the effectiveness of teacher education is determining whether the theory and practice of preservice training carry over into inservice teaching. Considering the large number of beginning teachers who soon drop out of teaching, it appears that they do not. Possibly teacher educators have put too much reliance on the concept of transfer. A review of the literature reveals that transfer may not be the sole factor in the learning process; only in earlier studies of transfer are individual differences accounted for, usually by recognizing intelligence as a major determinant in the transfer process. The success of a beginning teacher may be due to his personal adaptability to the principal, the pupils, the setting, and the role expectations he must face in his teaching assignment rather than to any similarity between his student teaching practice and his first teaching situation. Consequently, "it seems . . . that teacher education will be better served by seeking to learn more ways of developing elements within individuals rather than trying to reconstruct identical situational elements between preservice and in-service experiences." The task of teacher educators is to stimulate professional commitment in their students by serving as models of good teaching practice, with the laboratory experience serving to mold individual students' perceptions of the teaching profession. (SG)