A practice turn for teacher education?

Abstract

Within the Research Institute for Professional Practice, Learning and Education (RIPPLE) at Charles Sturt University, teacher education researchers have been quick to respond to the opportunities created by what is known as ‘the practice turn’ that characterises contemporary theory around the globe and across disciplines. We are working, together and in parallel, to explore ways in which we can take up the affordances of renewed attention to theories of practice in professional (teacher) education. Our aim is to build new theories of teacher education practice that can sustain us as we interact within and around contemporary higher education and school education policy and regulatory frameworks. While these may work to constrain and delineate teacher education curriculum decisions, they also delineate the social and interpersonal parameters of the field on which we practise as teacher educators in universities today. In this paper I explore and examine the idea of practice in pre-service teacher education to ask if there are ways to reconceptualise professional practice and professional experience outside of the now dominant ‘days in schools’ model that has become the major way in which we provide pre-service (student) teachers with the opportunity to actually study the act of teaching and the actions that are involved in the practice of their profession. Drawing on the work of Grossman, teaching is an idea that has devolved over time. What was once a core teacher education practice of the ‘demonstration lesson’ followed by student practice of key skills has disappeared from initial teacher education curricula. Similarly, other forms of studying teaching such as the ‘micro-teaching’ approach of the 1970s and 80s have also diminished over time. With new developments in practice theory and attention to professional practice as a research area within Charles Sturt University and elsewhere, a focus on the study of teaching as a practice is timely.