The besetting weakness of teacher education in the Federal Republic is seen as the separation of theoretical and practical aspects of training; this separation is institutionalised in the ‘two‐phase’ structure which is universally adopted in West Germany. The ‘one‐phase’, experimental, programme developed at the University of Oldenburg in the late 1970s appeared to overcome this problem, but was aborted by a (political) decision to end the experiment. Although full evaluation had not been completed the article examines some of the factors accounting for the apparent success of the ‘ELAB’ innovation.