‘It’s just a wait and see thing at the moment’. Students’\ud preconceptions about the contribution of theory to classroom practice in learning to teach

This paper reports on an exploration of the preconceptions held by Primary PGCE students about the relationship of theory to classroom practice in learning to teach. Preconceptions about learning to teach have been found in the past to be unsophisticated and unhelpful, yet durable. Linking theory and practice within teacher education is notoriously difficult and studies report scepticism about the value of research findings and theory in everyday classroom practice. Furthermore, the nature of teachers’ professional knowledge is itself uncertain and highly complex. Unlike many previous investigations into student teacher thinking, this small-scale case study captures participants’ views before the start of their training and explores the research question through three key issues: what constitutes teacher knowledge, where this knowledge is learned and how these different facets of knowledge relate to one another. While many of the complexities of teaching are yet to be understood fully in this pre-course phase, these participants prove to be far from naïve and begin the course open to a range of forms of learning, with a positive view of the potential contribution of theory to practice. The insight into this starting point leads to some potentially important implications for future course design. The research relates to an English university, but the debate is significant to teacher education more widely