Innovation in inservice education and training of teachers (INSET) is examined within the context of the general pattern of teacher education in Canada and by means of two case studies of INSET programs--Perfectionnement des Maitreseen Mathematiques (PERMAMA) and the Atlantic Institute of Education (AIE). It is stated that, at present, most INSET activities fall into two large families. First, there are those activities planned and carried out by Ministries of Education either regionally or locally. This family has an incredible variety of approaches to teacher education; it is almost impossible to describe and assess its programs because they occur in ten different provinces without a unifying central agency. The second family of INSET activities is those that are either university based or related. PERMAMA and AIE were chosen as representative of this family. Both programs contain several aspects that may be pointing to future directions in INSET in Canada. These aspects are offered as tentative conclusions to this examination of INSET: (1) INSET planners must shift the center of focus to the teacher-on-the-job and make every attempt to understand the problems teachers face in today's schools; (2) INSET is basically a curriculum problem where the learners are teachers; (3) teacher education seems to have been largely concerned with producing teachers as technicians in the transmission of knowledge; (4) in education, including INSET, we are still living off the 19th century--its schools, its educational laws, its systems of beliefs, attitudes and values, and its educational structures. (MM)