Presently a contradiction exists between form and function in teacher education. Although creativity and self-awareness are voiced as goals for teachers and their students, teachers are all too often educated by means of lectures, a form which holds quiet attentiveness rather than intellectual aggression a chief value. In their own classes, education professors fail to utilize the techniques they advocate: team teaching, programed texts, and group process. Since teachers tend to teach in the form in which they were taught, a dichotomy between actions and words is perpetuated. Consultations with specially trained teachers of disturbed children revealed that teachers found it difficult to make explicit demands on colleagues or children, were unaware of their value as models, feared to generalize from past experience, saw no relationship between rules governing the behavior of normal children and that of disturbing children, and were fearful of negative criticism. If teachers are to be well-integrated individuals able to foster self-actualization in children, the form of teacher education must be amended to follow its function. Teacher education must encourage creativity and experimentation and provide a model for flexible, dynamic, innovative action so that mistakes may be viewed as opportunities for growth and development. (SG)