The article reports on an action research project, informed by transformative learning theory. Transformative learning involves individuals gaining an awareness of their current habits of mind, and resulting points of views accompanied by a critique of their assumptions and premises, an assessment of alternative views, a decision to negate an old perspective or view in favour of a new one, or to make a synthesis of old and new, resulting in more justified beliefs to guide action. The action research was designed to change the perspectives and practices of higher education teachers from a teacher-centred to a learning-centred dialogic approach. The research demonstrated that a transformation in teaching perspective could be achieved through action research that involved inquiring and interactive teaching. However, implementing the new perspective required additional sustained support. The research also confirmed that action research is a viable means of exploring transformative learning in educational settings.
A common view of theory and practice as domains is that it is difficult, if not impossible, to traverse the epistemological chasm between them. After all, theories are ways of organising our world abstractly in ideas and concepts. Practice is the world that we inhabit empirically. It is a tangible world that we can see, feel, act on, act in, and so on. So, how can one even begin to argue that these apparently disparate worlds can be unified or that they are in the first instance not separate at all? My stance on this is that we, the educators of teachers, are party to the separation. In fact, we teach students that they should ‘apply’ theory to practice. Working with our own struggle at the university where I am based, I will argue that there may be ways of opening the borders between what is, on the one hand a philosophical question, and on the other, a purely empirical question. How do we teach and how do we teach the doing of teaching? My argument explores one way we might begin to restore; to whatever extent this is possible, the unity of theory and practice in teacher education.
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