Theorizing from the classroom

Abstract

This article outlines a possible methodology for integrating theory and practice in teacher training. Rejecting the theoretical-input model found in most teacher-training programmes, the author argues that we need to encourage teachers to theorize and conceptualize their own practice, as a basis for articulating, examining, and revising their assumptions. The article tries to show how classroom data in the form of a live or video-taped lesson, an audio-recording or a lesson transcript, are the ideal resource for initiating and sustaining the process of theorizing.1 The article seeks to show how the intuitive and subjective responses of teachers to classroom data can be used to raise theoretical questions, which can be then linked to current conceptual issues. These questions will suggest the areas that need to be read up or investigated for clarity and deeper understanding. Such an approach to theory, which is rooted in teachers' own intuitions and which encourages them to move from the specific to the general, is seen as being more meaningful than one which is based on theoretical inputs from trainers. A teachers' workshop, in which the methodology was tried out is described, end the implications for teacher training are considered