A practice turn for teacher education?

TLDR

The practice turn has reshaped teacher education, moving away from traditional demonstration lessons and micro‑teaching toward a broader focus on professional practice and prompting researchers to reconsider how teaching is studied. The study aims to develop new theories of teacher education practice that reconceptualise professional practice beyond the dominant “days in schools” model, thereby informing higher education and policy contexts. The authors collaborate in parallel to examine practice theory in pre‑service teacher education, analysing how to reconceptualise professional practice beyond the traditional days‑in‑schools model. They argue that the emerging focus on teaching as a practice is timely given recent developments in practice theory and growing research attention at Charles Sturt University and beyond.

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.