Crossing the “Theory-practice Divide”: Learning to Be(come) a Teacher

Abstract

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.

A University and School Working in Partnership to Develop Professional Practice Knowledge for Teaching

“…We used a two-phase process of generating data. In phase one we reviewed the published research on the teaching school during the period 2010-2017-these comprised five journal articles (Gravett, 2012;Gravett et al, 2014;Gravett and Ramsaroop, 2017;Ramsaroop and Gravett, 2017;Loukomies et al, 2018). Using qualitative content analysis (Merriam, 1998) we looked for patterns across the historical unfolding of the findings of these papers, reflecting the views of multiple role players; focusing specifically on how the teaching school operates as a space for student teachers to learn in and from practice, and what their mentoring in this learning comprises.…”

“…We designed the BEd in Foundation Phase Teaching with a view of offering a program in which student teachers would experience congruence between coursework learning and practice learning in the school. We envisaged concrete experience in the school providing student teachers with opportunities to systematically study, analyze and theorize practice (Gravett, 2012) during coursework and vice versa. The program design was also informed by the view that prospective foundation phase teachers need to study the development of young children closely in order to develop a solid understanding of how children learn, change and develop over time.…”

"Do all roads lead to Rome?": The influence of two different higher education programmes on beginner teacher identity

“…These programmes are provided by 23 universities with either distance or face-to-face education, include both professional and academic modules, and are interspersed with varying periods of supervised teaching practice in schools as part of the preparation for pre-service teachers' work in schools as Hofmeyr (2016) has observed. The idea that universities do not prepare pre-service teachers effectively for the realities of classroom teaching is not exclusively a South African one (Gravett, 2012). In some countries a key part of pre-service teacher education has now become the concern of the schools, thus creating a situation in which teacher education takes the form of "training on the job" (Korthagen et al, 2001, p. 2).…”

Building a vision for social justice praxis for teacher education through service-learning

“…Concerning the performance of the students on the course, the main concerns were (1) inability to apply theory in practice, which is a common complaint in higher education (Gravett 2012;Levine 2006;Schön 2017); (2) lack of prior knowledge of learner support; and (3) lack of knowledge on how to reflect, which impacted negatively on their ability to compile a good portfolio.…”

“…Levine (2006:25) warns us that 'one of the biggest dangers we face is preparing teachers who know theory and know nothing about practice'. Teaching is a profession in which theory is embedded in practice (Gravett 2012;Schön 2017) and therefore student teachers need to learn to integrate it into what they teach in a meaningful way. In addition, the importance of collaboration between schools and universities, to lessen the theory-practice gap, has been highlighted by several researchers (Dean, Lauer & Urquhart 2005;Korthagen, Loughran & Russell 2006;Valencia et al 2009; Zeichner 2010).…”