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Valuing practice over theory: How beginning teachers re-orient their practice in the transition from the university to the workplace

journal contribution
posted on 2009-01-01, 00:00 authored by Jeanne Allen
This paper is about the experiences of beginning teachers in turning theory learned in universities into practice in the workplace. The research is situated in the context of a pre-service teacher education programme that explicitly and deliberately seeks to bridge the theory-practice gap in teacher education. The paper argues that, despite long-standing awareness of the theory-practice gap as a central issue faced by beginning teachers, attempts by teacher educators to address this issue remain thwarted. The argument draws on interview and focus group data collected via a study of 1st year graduate teachers of an Australian pre-service teacher education programme. The theoretical perspective of symbolic interactionism is used to focus on the meanings that graduates have of their experiences of turning theory into practice. The data suggest that prospective teachers during pre-service training value both the theory that they learn on campus and the practice that they observe in schools. However, once they become practitioners, they privilege the latter. Upon entry to the workplace, graduates come to associate good practice with that of the veteran teacher, whose practice and cache of resources they seek to emulate.

History

Journal

Teaching and teacher education

Volume

25

Issue

5

Pagination

647 - 654

Publisher

Pergamon

Location

Oxford, England

ISSN

0742-051X

eISSN

1879-2480

Language

eng

Publication classification

C1.1 Refereed article in a scholarly journal

Copyright notice

2009, Elsevier

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