PRACTICAL THEORISING IN TEACHER

EDUCATION

This insightful collection offers a timely contribution to the body of research on

practical theorising in teacher education. Acknowledging the importance of expe-
rience and reflective practice in teaching, this book simultaneously embraces the
essential need for teachers at all career stages to engage effectively and critically with
evidence from research.
Drawing together a range of perspectives from university-based and school-
based teacher educators, this book examines the challenges and critiques advanced
when practical theorising was first proposed, as well as recent tensions created by the
performative culture that now pervades education. It illustrates the constant rene-
gotiation and renewal necessary to sustain such an approach to beginners’ learning,
investigating a range of tools developed by teacher educators to help beginning
teachers navigate these demands.
Demonstrating the value of practical theorising and therefore promoting pow-
erful professional learning for practitioners, this book is essential for teachers at all
career stages, including trainee teachers and student teachers.

Katharine Burn is an Associate Professor of Education at the University of Oxford

and PGCE Course Director; she also coordinates the work of the Oxford Education
Deanery, supporting local teachers’ initial and continued professional learning
through research engagement and collaboration. She is Honorary Secretary of the
Historical Association and co-editor of the professional journal Teaching History.

Trevor Mutton is an Associate Professor of Education at the University of Oxford

and is Director of Graduate Studies. He is currently vice-chair of the University
Council for the Education of Teachers and Deputy Editor of the Journal of Education
for Teaching.

Ian Thompson is an Associate Professor of Education at the University of Oxford.

He is currently Deputy President of the International Society for Cultural-historical
Activity Research and co-editor of the journal Teaching Education.
PRACTICAL THEORISING
IN TEACHER EDUCATION
Holding Theory and Practice
Together

Edited by Katharine Burn, Trevor Mutton

and Ian Thompson
Cover image: © Getty Images
First published 2023
by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2023 selection and editorial matter, Katharine Burn, Trevor Mutton and Ian
Thompson; individual chapters, the contributors
The right of Katharine Burn, Trevor Mutton and Ian Thompson to be identified
as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual
chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the
publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered
trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent
to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Burn, Katharine, 1963- editor. | Mutton, Trevor, editor. | Thompson, Ian
(Ian C.), editor.
Title: Practical theorising in teacher education : holding theory and
practice together / edited by Katharine Burn, Trevor Mutton, and Ian Thompson.
Other titles: Practical theorizing in teacher education
Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2022. |
Includes bibliographical references and index. |
Identifiers: LCCN 2022002455 | ISBN 9781032025674 (hardback) |
ISBN 9781032025698 (paperback) | ISBN 9781003183945 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Teachers--Training of. | Teachers--In-service training. |
Reflective teaching.
Classification: LCC LB1707 .P7235 2022 |
DDC 370.71/1--dc23/eng/20220217
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022002455
ISBN: 978-1-032-02567-4 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-02569-8 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-18394-5 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003183945
Typeset in Bembo
by SPi Technologies India Pvt Ltd (Straive)
CONTENTS

List of illustrations viii

List of contributors x

Introduction 1

SECTION 1
The nature of practical theorising 9

1 The role of practical theorising in teacher education:

formulation, critique, defence and new challenges 11
Katharine Burn,Trevor Mutton and Ian Thompson

2 An international perspective on practical theorising 32

Maria Teresa Tatto

SECTION 2
Negotiating the challenges of practical theorising
for beginning teachers 49

3 Practical theorising in learning to teach history: a shifting

process of negotiation 51
Jason Todd, Eleanor Thomas and Chloe Bateman
vi Contents

4 Practical theorising in a changing context: enabling

beginning science teachers to negotiate different
expectations in the reality of schools 66
Judith Hillier, Alison Cullinane, Rachel Harris, Sarah Jakoby,
Ann Childs and Sibel Erduran

5 Developing teacher agency through the use of theory and

reflection when teaching students to produce written
responses to text 81
Ceridwen Owen and Nicole Dingwall

6 Preservice teachers’ ways of addressing challenges when

teaching reasoning-and-proving in their mentor teachers’
mathematics classrooms 97
Gabriel J. Stylianides and Andreas J. Stylianides

7 Theorising practices of inclusive pedagogy: a challenge for

initial teacher education 113
Margaret Mulholland, Ian Thompson and Jason Todd

SECTION 3
Tools to support practical theorising 127

8 The use of visual models to support practical theorising in

mathematics 129
Nick Andrews, Jenni Ingram and Lucy Dasgupta

9 Assignments as tools for practical theorising: an exploration

of affordances, limitations and possibilities 143
Robert Woore,Trevor Mutton and Laura Molway

10 The use of assessment in sustaining student-teachers’

engagement in practical theorising to support professional
learning 160
Roger Firth and Nicola Warren-Lee

11 Developing the practice of teacher educators: the role of

practical theorising 179
Ann Childs and Judith Hillier with Jennifer Amini, Stuart Farmer,
Jesus Garcia Jorda, Stephen Hearn and Robyn Starr
 Contents vii

SECTION 4
Practical theorising beyond initial teacher education 197

12 Sustaining practical theorising as the basis for professional

learning and school development 199
Katharine Burn and Eluned Harries

13 Practical theorising in the professional development of

primary teachers: outcomes of the ‘Thinking, Doing,
Talking Science’ project 215
Deb McGregor, Helen Wilson, Sarah Frodsham and Patrick Alexander

14 Curriculum: practical theorising in the absence of theory 230

Victoria Elliott and Larissa McLean Davies

Index 245
ILLUSTRATIONS

Figures
8.1 Quadrant model of activity structures 132
8.2 Triangular model of mathematics teaching orientations
(Adapted from Swan (2007)) 133
8.3 Student-teachers’ representation of a lesson they had
taught (black triangle) and their instructional vision (white circle) 137
8.4 Student-teachers’ representation of lesson(s) they had observed.
Multiple positions in the same triangle are when different teachers’
lessons are represented 139
12.1 The vision of a teaching professional promoted in Matthew Arnold
School207
13.1 Some of the key features of ‘Thinking, Talking, Doing Science’ 219

Tables
4.1 Practicals commonly used to demonstrate particular
scientific concepts 69
4.2 Different approaches to the assessment of practical science at
GCSE in England (From Childs & Baird, 2020) 71
4.3 Brandon’s matrix of types of scientific methods (From Brandon,
1994, p. 63) 73
4.4 Example of how one practical activity can be positioned in the
four quadrants of Brandon’s Matrix 75
4.5 Brandon’s Matrix reworked into more pupil-friendly language,
with examples from the AQA (2018) GCSE Physics Required Practical
Handbook (8463) (Taken from Hillier & Ioannidou, 2021) 75
 Illustrations ix

4.6 Questions for student-teachers to consider for each practical, with

a focus on how the practical can be used to support pupils’ learning
(Reproduced from Hillier and Ioannidou, 2021) 76
6.1 Challenges related to preservice teachers’ teaching lessons related to
reasoning-and-proving in their mentor teachers’ classrooms 98
6.2 Analytic framework for coding the ways in which preservice teachers
reported trying, or wanting to try, in order to address challenges 103
6.3 Summary of findings: frequencies of occurrences of the various
ways in which preservice teachers reported trying, or wanting to
try, in order to address challenges related to their mentor teachers’
classrooms105
6.4 Illustrative excerpts for ways in which preservice teachers reported
trying to address challenges related to their mentor teachers’
classrooms106
6.5 Illustrative excerpts for ways in which preservice teachers reported
wanting to try to address challenges related to their mentor teachers’
classrooms108
11.1 The aims of the MSc in Teacher Education 183
11.2 A sample ‘Reflection and activity portfolio’ from Unit 1 185
13.1 A summary of the ways in which each TDTS teaching strategy
supports the development of different features of constructivism
(Adapted from McGregor et al., 2020) 221
13.2 A summary of key TDTS teaching strategies (adapted from
McGregor et al., 2020) and the ways in which expert teachers
practically theorised them 224
13.3 Prominent behaviours implied by the constructivist view of
thinking and learning that have been practically theorised by teachers 225
13.4 Prominent behaviours implied by the socially constructivist
view of thinking and learning that have been practically theorised
by teachers 226
CONTRIBUTORS

Patrick Alexander is an anthropologist of education specialising in the sociology

of schooling, youth transitions and knowledge production in the context of teacher
professional learning. Patrick is a Reader in Education and Research Lead for the
School of Education, Oxford Brookes University. He is also Director of the Brookes
Centre for Educational Consultancy and Development. In this role, Patrick works
closely with teachers in international schools, focusing on the championing of criti-
cal praxis and research engagement for teachers.

Nick Andrews is a mathematics teacher at a secondary school in Oxford. He has

recently returned to teaching having been a mathematics teacher educator for 17
years at the University of Oxford, where he also specialised in the study of teacher
education. His thinking about the Oxford Internship Scheme is shaped by his expe-
riences as a student teacher, school mentor and university tutor on the course.
His other research interests include communication in mathematics classrooms and
teacher decision making. He is now embarking on researching these issues within
his own classroom.

Chloe Bateman is a Teacher of History at Maiden Erlegh School, a large sec-

ondary comprehensive school in Reading, Berkshire. She completed her PGCE
at the University of Oxford in 2018. Her article on generating student enthusi-
asm for knowledge, ‘“I need to know”: creating the conditions that make students
want knowledge’ was published in Teaching History (2018). She is a member of
the Virtually Teachers podcast team and is interested in curriculum development,
careers education and teachers’ continuing professional learning.

Katharine Burn is Associate Professor of Education at the University of Oxford,

where she acts as the PGCE Course Director. She coordinates the work of the
 Contributors xi

Oxford Education Deanery, the University’s multi-strand partnership with local

schools, spanning its initial teacher education programme, support for teachers’
continued professional learning and different kinds of research collaboration and
knowledge exchange. Her research has included longitudinal study of beginning
teachers’ professional learning and various forms of policy analysis. As co-editor of
the professional journal, Teaching History, she also seeks to support forms of profes-
sional discourse that bring together teachers, academic historians and educational
researchers.

Ann Childs is an Associate Professor in Science Education at the University of

Oxford, where she is the Director of the Masters in Teacher Education and she
also teaches on the Post Graduate Certificate in Education. She is on the editorial
board of the journal Research in Science and Technological Education for which she was
co-editor for three years. Her research focuses on teacher education and science
education and she is currently involved in an international research programme on
Teacher Quality.

Alison Cullinane is a Lecturer of Biology Education at the University of

Edinburgh. Prior to starting in Edinburgh, she held teaching and research posts in
both England, as a Departmental Lecturer in Science Education at the University
of Oxford, and in Ireland at the University of Limerick, NUI Galway and Mary
Immaculate College, Limerick. Her research interests centre around teacher educa-
tion, nature of science, practical science and assessment.

Lucy Dasgupta is Assistant Headteacher responsible for Learning and Teaching

at an Oxfordshire secondary school. She has taught mathematics in comprehensive
schools for over 20 years and in that time has been a mentor and professional tutor
for the Oxford PGCE. She is currently seconded as a part-time curriculum tutor on
the mathematics PGCE, having completed an MSc in Learning and Teaching. Her
research includes the use of assessment and verbal feedback in the classroom and the
effect of those on student learning or performance goals.

Nicole Dingwall is a Departmental Lecturer in English Education at the University

of Oxford, and leads the English PGCE programme. She previously taught English
in secondary schools in Australia and the UK. Her main research interests are the
identity and shaping of teachers and the teaching of English in secondary schools.
She is currently completing her doctoral thesis on the cultures of secondary school
English departments.

Victoria Elliott is Associate Professor of English and Literacy Education at the

University of Oxford. Her research interests lie in the fields of secondary English
curriculum and assessment, and the concept of knowledge. She is particularly inter-
ested in the intersections of power and literary curricula, and in who is included
xii Contributors

and who is excluded from classrooms as a result. Before becoming an academic, she
taught secondary English in state schools in the north of England

Sibel Erduran is Professor of Science Education and Director of Research in

the Department of Education at the University of Oxford. She is also Professor
II at the University of Oslo, Norway. She serves as the President of the European
Science Education Research Association; Editor-in-Chief of Science & Education and
an Editor for International Journal of Science. Her work experience includes positions
in the USA and in Ireland as well as the UK. Her research interests focus on the
infusion of epistemic practices of science in science education. She is currently
working on funded projects FEDORA (EU Horizon 2020) and SciKids (UAEU).

Roger Firth was an Associate Professor of Education (Geography) at the University

of Oxford where he led the secondary geography initial teacher education pro-
gramme. A key focus of his research is geographical education, in which he has
published widely. This has led to a wider interest in environmental education, pro-
fessional education and forms of knowledge and their impact on curriculum, peda-
gogy and teacher preparation.

Sarah Frodsham is a Senior Lecturer, Ethics Officer, Research Convenor, STEAM

research group co-convener and Research Associate at Oxford Brookes University.
Her research interests include STEM, STEAM with a speciality in creativity in sci-
ence during all stages of formal and informal education.This speciality is seminal to
the foundations that underpinned her PhD.

Eluned Harries is Head of Teaching and Learning at Matthew Arnold, a large and
successful comprehensive school in Oxford, England. She supports and guides early
career teachers and more experienced colleagues in taking responsibility for their pro-
fessional development and also leads the school’s mentors in inducting new entrants to
the profession. She was one of the first Research Champions in the Oxford Education
Deanery (the University’s knowledge exchange partnership with local schools) and
is committed to ensuring that evidence-based practice is a reality in every classroom.

Rachel Harris has taught physics for over 20 years in Oxfordshire schools. She has
been a PGCE mentor for many years and is a leading member of the Oxfordshire
Schools Physics Partnership Steering Committee, funded by the Ogden Trust. For
over ten years, she has hosted physics undergraduates as part of the Teaching Physics
in Schools option for the University of Oxford Department of Physics. She also
helped to develop two workshops with a Science in Society Award from the Science
and Technology Facilities Council. She has been part of the recent Project Calibrate
to design new approaches for the summative assessment of practical science.

Judith Hillier leads the PGCE Science programme at the University of Oxford
Department of Education, and teaches on the Masters in Learning and Teaching
 Contributors xiii

and the Masters in Teacher Education. She is Fellow and Vice-President of Kellogg
College, with a physics degree from the University of St Andrews, a PhD in con-
densed matter physics from the University of Leeds/Institut Laue Langevin and a
PGCE from Oxford. She taught for several years in an Oxfordshire comprehensive
school. Judith researches the recruitment, retention and education of science/phys-
ics teachers, the role of language in science, and gender and diversity in STEM
education.

Jenni Ingram is Associate Professor of Mathematics Education at the University

of Oxford and has taught on the mathematics PGCE since 2013. Her research
focuses on mathematics education, with a particular interest in interaction and
communication in mathematics classrooms, assessment in mathematics education
and mathematics teacher education and she has published widely in these areas.
She taught mathematics for several years in comprehensive schools in England
before moving into mathematics teacher education and mathematics education
research.

Sarah Jakoby trained as a science teacher at the University of York, after complet-
ing a PhD in prostate cancer research. She has worked in several schools in the
South of England as a teacher, Subject Lead for Physics and Biology and Head of
Science before recently relocating to Scotland. Sarah has been a mentor for trainees
on the University of Oxford PGCE programme and has contributed to several
research projects. She is particularly interested in how misconceptions and literacy
development are addressed in science lessons and is passionate about making STEM
education accessible for learners with additional needs.

Deb McGregor is Professor of Learning and Developing Pedagogy at Oxford

Brookes University. Her research work centres on teaching and learning processes
that span subject disciplines in contrasting formal and informal contexts. As a for-
mer primary and secondary school teacher, educational advisor, lecturer and now
researcher her educational experiences inform the multiple ways that she considers,
examines and articulates pedagogical enactments and the relational connections
between thinking, talking, doing and learning.
She is particularly interested in the ways that learning tasks can be framed so that
students are afforded opportunities to engage in meaningful activity that promotes
thinking, talking and agentive action in educative settings.

Larissa McLean Davies is an Associate Professor and co-leader of the Languages

and Literacies Academic Group in the Melbourne Graduate School of Education
at the University of Melbourne. Larissa’s substantive research and publications are
concerned with teachers’ knowledge; the teaching of English and literature; and
issues of justice in the context of decolonising the curriculum. Her commitment
to the teaching of diverse Australian literature has resulted in significant media
and public-facing contributions to debate about the teaching of English. With her
xiv Contributors

collaborators on the Literary Knowledge Project, Larissa has a book forthcoming

with Routledge in 2022.

Laura Molway became interested in teacher education during her time as a sec-
ondary school teacher of French and German, when she mentored beginning lan-
guages teachers during their school placements. She currently leads the modern
languages strand of initial teacher education at the University of Oxford, where she
also supervises higher degrees in the fields of instructed second language learning
and language teacher education. Her recent research has focussed on the nature
and perceived impact of languages teachers’ professional learning, and formative
language teacher evaluation.

Margaret Mulholland is the specialist Inclusion and SEND policy advisor for
the Association of School and College Leaders. An advocate of the strategy ‘every
teacher a teacher of SEND’ she was a member of the UK Government expert group
on ITT curriculum development and works with local authorities as an external
advisor for NQTs, ITE and leadership development. Margaret spent seven years as
Director of Development and Research at a leading Special School in London and
over a decade at the Institute of Education. She sits on the UCET executive and is
an Honorary Norham Fellow at the University of Oxford.

Trevor Mutton is an Associate Professor of Education at the University of Oxford

and is currently Director of Graduate Studies, having previously been PGCE Course
Director. He taught modern languages for many years before moving to work at the
university in 1997. His research interests are primarily in beginning teachers’ profes-
sional learning, teacher education partnerships and teacher education policy. Trevor
is Deputy Editor of Journal of Education for Teaching and is currently Vice-Chair
of the Universities’ Council for the Education of Teachers (UCET).

Ceridwen Owen recently finished her PhD at Monash University on the everyday
work and becoming of early career English teachers in Victoria, Australia. She works
as a secondary school English teacher in Melbourne, Australia, and is an Associate
Editor of the Australian-based journal English in Australia. Her research interests are
in teacher development and becoming, and the transition of preservice teachers to
the teaching profession.

Andreas J. Stylianides is Professor of Mathematics Education at the University of

Cambridge and Fellow of Cambridge’s Hughes Hall College. His research focuses
on understanding and acting upon problems of classroom practice, with particu-
lar attention to the notion of proof in mathematics. He has published widely in
mathematics education and beyond, and he has delivered over 30 invited talks in
10 ­countries. He is currently an Editorial Board member of Research in Mathematics
Education, Science & Education and the International Journal of Science and Mathematics
 Contributors xv

Education. He is a Visiting Professor at the Norwegian University of Science and

Technology.

Gabriel J. Stylianides is Professor of Mathematics Education at the University

of Oxford and Fellow of Oxford’s Worcester College. His research focuses on
issues related to students’ engagement in reasoning and proving at all levels of
education. He has published four books and has over 90 refereed publications.
His research received funding from the US National Science Foundation, the
US Department of Education, the Education Endowment Foundation and the
Spencer Foundation. He was an Editor of Research in Mathematics Education, and
he is an Editorial Board member of the Elementary School Journal, the Journal of
Mathematical Behavior and the International Journal of Educational Research.

Maria Teresa Tatto is a Professor in the Division of Educational Leadership and

Innovation at Arizona State University, and the Southwest Borderlands Professor of
Comparative Education at the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College. She has authored
and edited 17 books and more than 100 journal articles and book chapters. She
is a former president of the Comparative and International Education Society, an
Honorary Research Fellow in the Department of Education at the University of
Oxford, England, and a Fellow in the American Educational Research Association.

Ian Thompson is an Associate Professor of English Education at the Department

of Education and former Director of the PGCE course. Before joining Oxford,
Ian taught English for 16 years in state secondary schools. He is currently co-PI
on the ESRC-funded project Excluded Lives: The Political Economies of School
Exclusion and their Consequences and PI on the AHRC funded project Cultural
Artefacts and Belonging. Ian is the lead editor of the journal Teaching Education.
He publishes in the fields of cultural-historical research, social justice in education,
school exclusions, English education and initial teacher education.

Eleanor Thomas is the Head of History at Burford Secondary School a mixed

11-18 comprehensive in Oxfordshire. She has been a history subject mentor in
the Oxford Internship Scheme for five years and has written about her school’s
approach to the development of A-level students’ research skills in the professional
journal Teaching History.

Jason Todd is a Departmental Lecturer in Education at the University of Oxford,

where he leads the PGCE history programme. Prior to this, he taught history for 19
years in various London state schools, including time as an assistant headteacher in
a Special Needs school. He has published work related to history education, and is
particularly interested in developing the teaching of complex and multi-perspective
history that takes account of students’ diverse backgrounds and gives all young
people access to the history curriculum.
xvi Contributors

Nicola Warren-Lee taught geography in secondary schools for 13 years before

moving into teacher education. Having mentored beginning teachers in school, she
became a tutor on the Geography PGCE at the University of Oxford and the Open
University. Nicola completed her Doctorate in Education in 2017, looking into the
knowledge to which student-teachers have access through their work with school-
based mentors. A Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, Nicola is cur-
rently leading the Geography PGCE at the University of Bristol and is a member of
the GW4 Climate Change Education Research Network (CCERN).

Helen Wilson is an Affiliate Lecturer at Oxford Brookes University, having until

recently been a Principal Lecturer in Science Education. She has been both a sec-
ondary physics and a primary teacher. As a primary science consultant, primarily
for Science Oxford, she continues her research into the links between creative,
challenging primary science lessons and pupils’ attitudes and attainment. She jointly
developed and leads the Thinking, Doing, Talking Science projects (2013–2023),
funded by the Education Endowment Foundation, working with more than 400
schools and 18,000 Year 5 pupils in three randomised controlled trials.

Robert Woore is Associate Professor in Applied Linguistics at the University of

Oxford Department of Education. He teaches and supervises on the PGCE (initial
teacher education), MSc in Applied Linguistics and Second Language Acquisition
and doctoral programmes. Formerly a secondary school teacher of French and
German, his main research interests focus on the learning and teaching of second
languages in instructed classroom settings, with a particular emphasis on phonology
and reading. He is also interested in language teachers’ professional learning and the
interface between Second Language Acquisition research, theory and practice.
INTRODUCTION

Arguments about the nature of the role that ‘theory’ and ‘practice’ should each play
in the preparation of new teachers have raged for decades.While the introduction of
various ‘on-the-job’ training routes into teaching (in England and the United States,
in particular) might seem to imply an outright rejection of educational theory,
simultaneous demands and funding for ‘What Works Centres’ in education clearly
acknowledge that teachers should be making some kind of use of research findings.
Thus the question of how beginners should be introduced to the decontextu-
alized, propositional knowledge that underpins the suggestions for practice that
they are offered in initial teacher education (ITE) remains. Indeed, it has acquired
new impetus as teacher education has come to be defined less as an educational
or training problem and more as a policy problem (Cochran-Smith, 2005), to be
tackled by governments through the operation of different kinds of policy levers.
Internationally, these levers have included both the imposition of national standards
and the introduction of alternative training routes, specifically intended to create a
competitive ‘market’ for new recruits.
As this proliferation and variety of teacher education programmes readily
demonstrate, there is no international consensus on how theory and practice should
be brought together or how the inevitable tensions that arise between them should
be addressed. The ‘problem’ is one that is constantly being revisited by national
governments across the world. At the time of writing this introduction, Australia is
awaiting publication of the outcomes of a new ‘Quality Initial Teacher Education
Review’ commissioned in April 2021 (Australian Government, 2021), while teacher
educators across the university and school sectors in England are responding (almost
universally with concern) to recommendations arising from a recent Initial Teacher
Training Market Review (Department for Education (DfE), 2021) that imply
greater centralised control of ITE curricula.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003183945-1
2 Introduction

In this context of constant questioning and structural redesign, we have ­chosen

to focus attention on a model for integrating theory and practice in the profes-
sional preparation of beginning teachers that was first outlined some 30 years ago.
‘Practical theorising’ was elaborated by Donald McIntyre (1993, 1995) as an alter-
native both to reflective practice, that confined teachers to their existing store of
knowledge, and to naïve assumptions about the ease of translating ideas from theory
into practice. It accepts the fundamental importance of experience in the process
of learning to teach, but recognises the need for teachers to go beyond the limits
that experience alone imposes. Developing adaptive expertise (Hatano and Inagaki,
1986; Berliner, 2001) depends on drawing ideas from diverse sources and subject-
ing them all to critical scrutiny. The approach was pioneered in the context of
a one-year postgraduate programme of ITE, developed as a partnership between
the University of Oxford and some 25 secondary schools across the local educa-
tion authority within which the university was situated. While the national and
local governance structures within education have changed almost beyond recog-
nition in the intervening years, that particular teacher education partnership and
the principles that underpin it have survived. Those principles, and the need for a
tightly integrated, jointly planned programme by which to enact them, have also
proved influential in a number of international contexts and have, most recently,
been adopted in new accreditation requirements for teacher education partnerships
in Wales (Welsh Government, 2017).
Yet the practical theorising approach of the Oxford Internship Scheme has also
attracted fierce criticism, both at its inception and subsequently. Indeed, the chal-
lenges and tensions that were highlighted by the scheme’s earliest critics not only
remain as pressing as ever; they have been compounded by the increased pressures of
performativity that characterise the prevailing neoliberal education policy context.
Given these difficulties, the book seeks both to explain the critiques that have been
advanced and to explore the continued attractions of practical theorising, rooted in
its acknowledgement of the complexities of teaching as an intellectual and relational
practice. The book also seeks to illustrate the constant renegotiation and renewal
necessary to sustain such an approach to beginners’ learning, investigating a range
of tools developed by teacher educators to help beginning teachers navigate these
demands. Finally, it seeks to demonstrates the potential value of the approach in
promoting powerful professional learning for practitioners at all career stages.
Beginning teachers can obviously only be expected to engage in the process
of practical theorising if their ITE programme allows for the effective integration
of the different kinds of knowledge generated and validated within the contexts of
both school and university (Burn and Mutton, 2015). Individual subject disciplines
are important in this respect, since teachers need to have ‘command of the knowl-
edge structures characteristic of the scientific disciplines underlying their school
subject, as well as the capacity to select, structure, and present learning content in
forms learnable by the specific groups of pupils they teach’ (Brouwer and Korthagen,
2005, pp. 162–163). The focus of many of the chapters in this book is, therefore, on
the specific way in which student teachers’ capacity to engage in practical theorising
 Introduction 3

has been developed in the context of learning to teach a particular subject. Other
chapters examine how practical theorising has been developed in relation to more
generic aspects of pedagogy.While the importance of finding effective ways to inte-
grate theory and practice has long been recognised within ITE, the new demand
for evidence-informed practice and research-literate teachers (BERA-RSA, 2014)
means that the process of practical theorising also has much to offer in the context
of teachers’ early career and continuing professional development, both of which are
also explored, particularly in the final section of the book.

The structure of the book

The book consists of four sections. The first, dealing with ‘The nature of practical
theorising’, explains how the process was originally conceptualised as a principled
approach to the integration of theory and practice, and illustrates how it relates to
other ways of thinking about how beginning teachers might negotiate the relation-
ship between the two. Within this section, the first chapter, by Burn, Mutton and
Thompson, sets out to establish why both theory and practice are essential in the
preparation of teachers, before presenting details of practical theorising as it was
first articulated by McIntyre (1993, 1995). It explains how the approach informed
the development of the Oxford Internship Scheme, a pioneering university-school
collaboration committed to the creation of a jointly planned and tightly integrated
ITE programme. While the use of practical theorising has been sustained within
(and extended far beyond) this particular programme, its use has also been subject to
serious questioning and critique and its adherents have continued to encounter sig-
nificant challenges in putting it into operation. In acknowledging and exemplifying
these questions and tensions, this chapter serves as a foundation for the whole book,
explaining why practical theorising has been enthusiastically embraced as a means
of bridging the theory/practice divide, while also raising essential questions about
whether it is worth persisting with and, if so, how it can be most effectively sup-
ported. The second chapter, by Tatto, considers the concept of practical theorising
from an international perspective, examining how it relates to and compares with
other constructs and practical strategies that have been used in a variety of contexts
to promote beginning teachers’ active and critical engagement with both theory
and practice.This chapter ends with further reflection on the question of whether it
is actually possible – or indeed desirable – to establish the conditions that McIntyre
(1993) identified as necessary to support practical theorising.
The second section takes up this question in its focus on ‘Negotiating the chal-
lenges of practical theorising for beginning teachers’, with chapters variously written by
university and school-based teacher educators, often also including the perspective
of beginning teachers themselves. This is true of Chapter 3, co-authored by Todd,
Bateman and Thomas, examining the process in the context of learning to teach
history at secondary level. The chapter engages directly with an early critique of
practical theorising (Hirst, 1990) that asking student-teachers to engage with prac-
tical theorising simply places too many demands on them. The inclusion of the
4 Introduction

three authors’ different perspectives, with particular emphasis on the process as it

was experienced over the course of a one-year programme, allows the authors to
explore whether and how the focus of the theorising shifted over time and to con-
sider the nature of the relational work involved in negotiating inevitable tensions.
Bateman’s reflection, in particular, also sheds light on the kinds of foundation estab-
lished by the process for her continued learning as an early career teacher.
Chapter 4, co-authored by a mixed team of university-based teacher educators
and school-based subject mentors – Hillier, Cullinane, Harris, Jakoby, Childs and
Erduran – focuses on how beginning teachers learn to teach and to assess stu-
dents’ practical work in science. Specific examples of common practical activities
(i.e. science experiments) are used to illustrate both the potential of practical theo-
rising and the challenges to its use that have been created by changing assessment
processes. All the authors had recently been involved in Project Calibrate, a funded
research project to develop a new framework for the assessment of practical work
in science (Childs and Baird, 2020; Cullinane, Erduran and Wooding, 2019) and
the chapter demonstrates the particular value of wider collaborative work between
university- and school-based colleagues, using research to support effective forms
of adaptation to changing contexts. Chapter 5, by Owen and Dingwall, focuses on
another aspect of teaching central to a particular discipline, again profoundly shaped
by the demands of high-stakes assessment systems: the development of students’
written responses to texts. Picking up on the comparative theme introduced in the
first section, and drawing on research with early career teachers in Australia along-
side the experiences of student-teachers within Internship, the chapter explores the
parallels between practical theorising and the concept of praxis – and the role that
the process plays in the development of teacher agency. Chapter 6 also deals with a
subject-subject issue – the teaching of reasoning-and-proving within mathematics.
G. Stylianides and A. Stylianides examine the challenges that preservice teachers,
training to teach at primary level in the United States, encountered in their practice
within the classrooms of their school-based mentors.The authors stress the role that
a carefully structured approach to reflective thinking played in the ways in which
the preservice teachers addressed particular challenges associated with classroom
norms and with the pupils’ habits of mind.
Chapter 7, the final chapter in this section, moves away from subject-specific
issues to examine some of the tensions and challenges associated with seeking to
develop preservice teachers’ commitment to, and ability to adopt, genuinely inclu-
sive pedagogies, given the range of contradictions encountered in the context of
policy and practice related to provision for students with special educational needs
or disabilities. The authors Mulholland, Thompson and Todd go on to explore a
specific example from the Oxford Internship Scheme in which the student-teachers
undertake an intensive placement within a special school (or special needs base),
examining how the process of practical theorising in this context equips them to
ask new questions of their school-based mentors and to experiment with different
forms of practice within the mainstream settings to which they return.
 Introduction 5

The third section acknowledges the tensions explored in the second and
focuses very specifically on particular ‘tools to support practical theorising’ – i.e. devices
designed and deployed by the teacher educators to help beginning teachers nego-
tiate the challenges that they face. Some – such as the various diagrammatic rep-
resentations of practice used within the mathematics programme that are explored
in Chapter 8 by Andrews, Ingram and Dasgupta – are instruments that the teacher
educators share with the student-teachers to guide their thinking and enable them
to describe the practices that they observe as well as to articulate their ambitions and
assumptions. Others – such as the formal written assignment, analysed in Chapter 9
by Woore, Mutton and Molway – are built into the programme design. Chapter 10
is similarly concerned with how the assessment process can be structured to support
the pedagogical principles of practical theorising. Here Firth and Warren-Lee look
at the role of relatively informal, small-scale tasks, alongside that of the more formal
three-way meetings held between student-teacher, school-based mentor and uni-
versity-based tutor, at each assessment reference point.
Chapter 11, the final chapter in this section, looks at the learning of teacher
educators themselves. It explains how the structure of a part-time Master’s pro-
gramme, intended for teacher educators working variously in schools and univer-
sities and for other professional development providers, has itself been designed to
support the process of practical theorising. Childs and Hillier draw on vignettes that
encapsulate the experience of five different teacher educators within the MSc in
Teacher Education, to explore how the process compares to two other well-known
approaches to teacher educator learning: ‘self-study’ and ‘inquiry as stance’. Their
analysis also demonstrates that the challenges associated with practical theorising as
a method of learning for beginning teachers tend to present much less significant
obstacles for novice teacher educators.
The final section of the book, concerned with ‘practical theorising beyond initial
teacher education’ explores the ways in which experienced teachers’ continued pro-
fessional learning can continue to be enriched by the process. In Chapter 12, this
exploration focuses on practical theorising in the context of a particular second-
ary school that has joined an extended knowledge-exchange partnership with the
University of Oxford and nominated a senior school leader as the school’s ‘research
champion’.The chapter, co-authored by Burn (the partnership co-ordinator for the
university) and Harries (the school-based research champion) analyses the extent
to which, and the ways in which, the processes of continued professional develop-
ment that underpin the school’s improvement strategy remain rooted in teachers’
research engagement. Chapter 13, by McGregor, Wilson, Frodsham and Alexander,
examines the process of practical theorising as it played out in a substantial project
supporting the professional learning of primary teachers in England. The ‘Thinking
Talking Doing Science’ project, followed McIntyre’s principles by translating theo-
retical propositions derived from a constructivist approach to learning science, into
a range of specific and well-resourced suggestions for practice, enabling teachers to
experiment in a variety of ways with the development of new flexible and inclusive
6 Introduction

approaches that were found to provide more equitable opportunities for learning
science for all pupils.
The final chapter, by Elliott and McLean Davies, which represents another col-
laboration between teacher educators in England and Australia, shifts attention from
pedagogy to curriculum and raises important questions about whether or how a
practical theorising approach can work where there is a lack of theory to draw on,
and when the timescales involved are too long to provide immediate feedback on
the impact of the decisions taken. The authors argue that even with these con-
straints, a mindset inspired by practical theorising, which recognises an interplay
between theory (conceived of both as knowledge and as the ability to theorise) and
practice, enables teachers to make use of curriculum theories when they are pre-
sented. It also enables teachers to examine carefully the other theories or theoretical
concepts which tend to be drawn on in the absence of curriculum theory, and so to
embed or enact them appropriately in practice.

References
Australian Government (2021). Quality Initial Teacher Education Review. Retrieved from
https://www.dese.gov.au/quality-initial-teacher-education-review
BERA-RSA (2014). Research and the Teaching Profession Building the Capacity for a Self-improving
Education System. Retrieved from: https://www.bera.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/
12/BERA-RSA-Research-Teaching-Profession-FULL-REPORT-for-web.pdf
Berliner, D. C. (2001). Learning about and learning from expert teachers. International Journal
of Educational Research, 35(5), 463–482.
Brouwer, N., & Korthagen, F. (2005). Can teacher education make a difference?. American
Educational Research Journal, 42(1), 153–224.
Burn, K. & Mutton, T. (2015). A review of ‘research-informed clinical practice’ in Education.
Oxford Review of Education, 41(2), 233.
Childs, A., & Baird, J. A. (2020). General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) and
the assessment of science practical work: an historical review of assessment policy. The
Curriculum Journal, 31(3), 357-378.
Cochran-Smith, M. (2005) The new teacher education: For better or for worse? Educational
Researcher, 34 (7) 3–17.
Cullinane, A., Erduran, S., & Wooding, S. J. (2019). Investigating the diversity of scientific
methods in high-stakes chemistry examinations in England. International Journal of Science
Education, 41(16), 2201-2217.
Department for Education (2021). Initial Teacher Training Market Review Report. Retrieved
from https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/initial-teacher-training-itt-market-
review-report
Department for Education (DfE) (2021) Initial Teacher Training (ITT) Market Review. Retrieved
from: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/initial-teacher-training-itt-market-
review/initial-teacher-training-itt-market-review-overview
Hatano, G. & Inagaki, K. (1986). Two courses of expertise. In H. Stevenson, H. Azuma, & K.
Hakuta (Eds.), Child development and education in Japan (pp. 262–272). New York: Freeman.
Hirst, P. (1990). Internship: a view from outside. In P. Benton (Ed.), The Oxford internship
scheme: integration and partnership in initial teacher education. London: Calouste Gulbenkian
Foundation, 147–159.
 Introduction 7

McIntyre, D. (1993). Theory, theorizing and reflection in initial teacher education. In

J. Calderhead & P. Gates (Eds.), Conceptualising reflection in teacher development. London:
Falmer, 39–52.
McIntyre, D. (1995). Initial teacher education as practical theorising: a response to Paul Hirst.
British Journal of Educational Studies, 43(4), 365–383.
Welsh Government (2017). Criteria for the Accreditation of Initial Teacher Education Programmes
in Wales. Retrieved from https://gov.wales/initial-teacher-education-programmes-
accreditation-criteria
SECTION 1
The nature of practical
theorising
1
THE ROLE OF PRACTICAL THEORISING
IN TEACHER EDUCATION
Formulation, critique, defence and new
challenges

Katharine Burn, Trevor Mutton and Ian Thompson

The nature of the relationship between theory and practice in initial teacher
education (ITE) has been a perennial topic of international debate (e.g. Darling-
Hammond, 2017; Korthagen, 2010). While the importance of practice is – at some
level, at least – undisputed, since the capacity to act effectively as a teacher is the
ultimate standard by which the outcome will be judged, the relevance of the-
ory has, on many occasions, been called into question. Where its value has been
accepted, opinions have often been divided as to how it can be related to practice
and where the precedence should lie. This introductory chapter will begin by
briefly outlining some of these debates in the context of England, illustrating the
range of views that have been advanced and the ways in which they have regularly
re-surfaced, illustrating the challenges inherent both in holding the two elements
together and in giving precedence to one and down-playing or delaying the intro-
duction of the other.
After making the case that both theory and practice are essential in the prepara-
tion of teachers, the chapter will outline how the idea of ‘practical theorising’ was
originally developed as way of describing a process by which the two elements
could be held together. It was first proposed by Donald McIntyre (1993, 1995), who
led the research that informed the development of the Oxford Internship Scheme,
a pioneering university-school collaboration that sought to create a jointly planned
and tightly integrated ITE course, and the chapter will show how ‘practical theoris-
ing’ was initially defined and how it was defended and elaborated in response to the
challenging critiques that it quickly encountered. While its use has been sustained
within – and extended far beyond – the course within which it was first conceptu-
alised, adherents of practical theorising have continued to encounter new challenges
in putting it into operation. In acknowledging and exemplifying these evident and
often extensive contradictions, this chapter serves as a foundation for the whole

DOI: 10.4324/9781003183945-3
12 Katharine Burn et al.

book, clearly establishing what practical theorising involves and why it has been
enthusiastically embraced as a means of bridging the theory/practice divide, while
also raising essential questions about whether it is worth persisting with and, if so,
how it can be most effectively supported.

The relationship between theory and practice in ITE – a perennial

topic of debate
Claims that theory is unnecessary: practice can be learned through
apprenticeship
Within England, the claim that there is no need for theory in initial teacher educa-
tion was most memorably summarised in 2010 in a declaration by Michael Gove,
then Secretary of State for Education, that teaching is a craft, ‘best learnt as an
apprentice observing a master craftsman or woman’ (Gove, 2010). Although this
claim underpinned rapid and far-reaching reforms by the Coalition Government,
intended to establish schools as the lead players in teacher education partnerships
(DFE 2010a, 2011), such a view was far from new. It echoed arguments advanced
some 30 years earlier by neo-conservatives, such as O’Hear (1988) and Lawlor
(1990), who condemned the teaching of educational theory as both irrelevant and
counter-productive. Their criticism was directed particularly at the emphasis on the
‘foundation’ disciplines of education (psychology, sociology, philosophy and history)
that had become widespread following the recognition of teacher education as a
graduate level course of professional preparation and the gradual transformation
of teacher training colleges into colleges of education. But the specific appeal to
apprenticeship can be traced back some 200 years to the Monitorial System, devel-
oped, in slightly different forms, by Bell and Lancaster in the early nineteenth cen-
tury. As the former declared:

It is by attending the school, seeing what goes on there, and taking a share in
the office of tuition, that teachers are to be formed, and not by lectures and
formal instruction.
(cited by Southey, 1844, p. 127)

Developed as a means of addressing the perennial shortage of competent teachers

at a time when the churches’ provision of elementary education was expanding,
the main objective of the Monitorial System was to ensure that only one adult
would be needed to operate any school, however large. Pupil-teachers or mon-
itors, apprenticed for five years at the age of 13, could be taught directly by the
Superintendent, and they, in turn would teach others. Although this system applied
only to the elementary education of the working class, there was no assumption that
those beginning to teach at secondary level (within fee-paying or endowed schools)
required any kind of theoretical foundation to their work either. Their own univer-
sity education in a particular subject discipline was regarded as qualification enough.
 The role of practical theorising in teacher education 13

Claims that theory should precede the practice to which it is to be

applied
While the realm of private education in England long continued to regard any
kind of professional preparation as unnecessary, the call for some kind of academic
or theoretical basis to teacher training for the state-funded sector was made within
ten years of the government’s introduction of compulsory elementary education.
The establishment of ‘day training’ colleges linked to the universities was pro-
posed in 1888 by the Cross Commission, specifically to overcome the acknowl-
edged limitations of the pupil-training system and the inadequate support offered
by residential religious institutions. But, although 16 such colleges were created
before the turn of the century, many universities remained wary of involvement in
teacher education. They left the establishment of new training colleges mainly to
the newly formed Local Education Authorities, which often worked closely with
schools in what Robinson (2004) has highlighted as an early and effective form
of partnership. It was not until the 1960s that the government accepted proposals
by the Robbins Committee to turn these various training colleges into colleges of
education, establishing a four-year education degree, in addition to the postgrad-
uate certificate of education that provided a route for graduates choosing to join
the teaching profession. It was at this point that reference to ‘educational theory’
became most pronounced as universities sought to demonstrate the academic cred-
ibility of their new degree courses. An invited seminar of professors of education,
convened in March 1964 and led by the philosopher R.S. Peters, mapped out the
four foundation disciplines of educational theory (psychology, sociology, philoso-
phy and history of education) that they regarded as constituting the basis of rational
educational practice (Hirst, 1996). This model proved highly influential across the
country; so much so that – despite the fact that it was actually very short-lived and
had begun to be dismantled by the early 1980s – it tended to dominate politicians’
and popular conceptions of university involvement in ITE for decades to come
(Furlong, 2013).
In the 1980s, however, the criticisms of this focus on the psychology, sociology,
philosophy and history of education came both from policy-makers and from some
of those working in ITE, with some opponents regarding these disciplines as essen-
tially irrelevant, but others arguing that inadequate attention was paid as to how
beginning teachers could actually draw on the insights from these theories in prac-
tice. Within this model, it was simply assumed that the theory should precede prac-
tice and that classroom experience would provide an opportunity for its application.
As views of what counts as worthwhile educational theory have changed over
time – as with the recent emphasis on evidence-based practice, in which it is
assumed that educational research provides validated insights into ‘what works’ –
so new kinds of insistence on theory have also tended to assume that it can be
straightforwardly applied. The Carter Review of Initial Teacher Training (2015), for
example, suggested that the best that can be expected of most trainees by the end
of their preparation is that they should be ‘intelligent consumers of research who
14 Katharine Burn et al.

take an evidence-based approach to their own practice’ (p. 28).To make this possible,
the review called for the development of ‘a central portal of synthesised executive
summaries, providing practical advice on research findings about effective teaching
in different subjects and phases’ (p. 54). Despite earlier references to trainee engage-
ment in learning to teach as a process of enquiry, the review’s recommendations
effectively offered a ‘technicist’ view of teaching, that involves the skilled execution
of pre-determined procedures.

Claims that practice should precede theory: establish competence

before acknowledging complexity
Yet even the most enthusiastic adherents of evidence-based practice generally
acknowledge that research findings can rarely be simply or straightforwardly applied
within the complex world of the classroom. In his former role as chief executive
of the Education Endowment Foundation, a government-designated What Works
Centre for Education, Kevan Collins recognised that research had to be ‘used intel-
ligently’ and could only supplement and ‘never replace professional experience and
teachers’ understanding of their schools and students’ (EEF, 2019, p. 2). In acknowl-
edging that effective use of research depends on its integration with practical exper-
tise, some have concluded that in the professional education of teachers, the practical
and relational elements have to come first.
Many schools in England took up the Coalition Government’s invitation (DFE,
2010a) to assume the leadership of teacher education either through a new ‘School
Direct’1 route or by operating as School-Centred Initial Teacher Training (SCITT)
providers. Since the latter were able to offer Qualified Teacher Status without any
requirements for an academic qualification alongside it, some deliberately chose
to focus first on building new teachers’ knowledge of their students and equip-
ping them with practical skills. Although they recognised the complexities of teach-
ing and the need for experienced teachers to draw critically on different sources of
knowledge, testing them carefully within their particular context, some SCITTs –
such as the one examined by Mutton et al. (2018) – made a conscious choice to
reduce the demands of the training year. They concluded that the best provision that
could be offered in what was, inevitably, a difficult year was deep immersion in a
single context, allowing trainees to build relationships with students from the start,
along with clear and unambiguous advice about what to do, boosting their confi-
dence as they mastered its implementation. The lead school within that particular
SCITT was fully committed to introducing more experienced teachers to action
research models of professional learning, drawing critically on research literature to
guide their approach to particular problems of practice, but regarded this kind of
enquiry-based approach as inappropriate for beginners, leaving them insecure and
uncertain about what to do.
A more positive argument that sustained classroom experience would allow
beginning teachers to make more productive use of research-based and theoretical
 The role of practical theorising in teacher education 15

insights also resonates with ITE models put forward by university-based teacher
educators. Orchard and Winch (2015), for example, proposed a distinct two-stage
process with more academic input and opportunities for critical reflection included
in the second stage, although they did not go as far as eliminating theory altogether
from the first.
Of the three claims about the relationship between theory and practice discussed
so far (a pure apprenticeship model; the presentation of research of theory first, in
the expectation that it can then be applied; or a focus on building practical expertise
before introducing research and/or theory as a basis for its evaluation), the third has
perhaps the most to recommend it. Even this brief survey of successive models of
teacher preparation in England reveals that the first two have repeatedly been found
to be inadequate. Indeed, they often have been challenged by those who advocated
or introduced them. The earliest calls for greater balance and integration of practice
with theory, once teacher education had moved out of training colleges and into the
university sector, came not from government but from universities themselves. The
critique advanced by McIntyre, discussed in detail below, represents one such exam-
ple, but there were other pioneering schemes in the 1980s – in Sussex and Leicester,
for example (see Furlong et al., 1988; Hirst, 1990) – also seeking to achieve greater
integration. Some 30 years later, even as the Coalition Government was urging
schools to assume the leadership of teacher education and dispense altogether with
university partners if they chose, it also championed the idea of evidence-based
practice and teachers’ use of research, as reflected in its establishment of the What
Works Centre for Education.

The necessity of both theory and practice

Ideological factors and struggles for status and power have undoubtedly played an
important role in the competing claims and policy turns outlined above. Yet the
main reason for continuing debate about the most appropriate form of ITE almost
certainly derives from much more fundamental issues rooted in the nature of pro-
fessional learning: despite the fact that both practical capabilities and theoretical
understanding are essential for effective teaching, they do not always align neatly
with one another in beginners’ experience of specific contexts and they cannot
both be developed quickly.
Teaching is self-evidently a practice: it requires action. Theoretical understand-
ings of how children and young people learn or why particular strategies are effec-
tive are inadequate if they cannot be translated into specific actions in the classroom
that will promote learning. But this practice is a relational one, involving interaction
with up to 30 individuals at a time, and thus involves dealing simultaneously with
multiple variables. The range of competing demands that teachers face was bril-
liantly captured in Doyle’s (1977) observational study of student-teachers’ experi-
ence that identified its most salient features as its ‘multidimensionality, simultaneity
and unpredictability’ (p. 53). Just one example of a typical classroom activity from
16 Katharine Burn et al.

Doyle’s account – managing a class discussion – serves to illustrate the complexity

of teaching. It requires the teacher to attend simultaneously to:

the pace of the interaction; the sequence of students’ responses; fairness

in selecting students to answer; the quality of individual answers and their
relevance to the purposes of the discussion; the logic and accuracy of con-
tent; while at the same time monitoring a wide range of work involvement
levels, and anticipating interruptions from internal sources … and external
sources (p. 52).

Such an example clearly reveals both the necessity of establishing clearly defined
routines to simplify the teacher’s task and the range of in-the-moment decisions
and judgements that still have to be made, even if the routines have been mastered.
As Doyle indicated in his reference to ‘fairness’, some of those decisions involve a
moral dimension; a point that Kennedy (2004, 2005) has more fully acknowledged
in her discussion of teachers’ classroom decision-making. Much of the time such
decisions depend not merely on technical judgements about how to achieve a par-
ticular objective, but on moral choices about how to arbitrate between competing,
but incompatible, priorities. Indeed, Kennedy’s examination of experienced teach-
ers’ ways of thinking about practice, led her to conclude that they are actually trying
to address no fewer than six different, competing concerns:

• covering desirable content;

• fostering student learning;
• increasing students’ willingness to participate;
• maintaining lesson momentum;
• creating a civil classroom community and
• attending to their own cognitive and emotional needs.

While, at any particular time, one or more of these concerns might need more
attention than others, none of them can ever be wholly neglected. This experience
of attending to a range of simultaneous demands, not all of which could be recon-
ciled with one another, was also apparent in our own studies of beginning teachers’
learning (Burn et al., 2015), where we identified up to six different kinds of goals
that student-teachers, even in their earliest lessons, reported seeking to achieve, and
up to 12 different kinds of factor that they reported taking into account within their
planning and subsequent classroom interactions.
Faced with multiple, competing objectives and an array of relevant considera-
tions in seeking both to choose between them and determine how to achieve the
desired outcome, it is essential that new teachers quickly develop fluency in the
use of practised routines. Beginners readily appreciate the value of what Kennedy
(2006, p. 26) has termed ‘rules of thumb’ – collections of ready-made responses to
events that reduce the need for extensive thought about each event as it unfolds.
This is precisely why learning from the advice and observation of experienced,
 The role of practical theorising in teacher education 17

successful practitioners is so valuable. But given the objective that such practices
should become sufficiently automated that they can be sustained without excessive
cognitive or emotional burden, so it is also apparent why these recommended rou-
tines should, ideally, also be well-rooted in research evidence and well-justified in
terms of the values that underpin them. Once practices become habitual matters of
routine, they are remarkably resistant to change.
Yet change is a constant feature of the circumstances in which teachers work. It
occurs most obviously when teachers move from one school to another or when
new curricula are introduced, but it also occurs every time they encounter new
students. Even if teachers remain in the same school, their cohorts will change
year by year, and the demographic features of particular catchment areas may alter
significantly over time. Just as important as effective ‘rules of thumb’ is the capacity
to evaluate why such established practices sometimes do not work in new circum-
stances. That capacity requires an understanding of the rationale for their use – of
the theory that underpins them – which gives teachers the capacity to determine
what exactly needs to be adapted to meet the specific circumstances that they now
face. In their detailed analysis of what all teachers need to learn if they are to be
adequately prepared for a changing world, Hammerness and her colleagues point
not only to the need for efficiency in ‘acquiring and using well-learned schemas
and routines’ (Hammerness et al., 2005, p. 374) but also to the fundamental impor-
tance of what Berliner (2001) has called ‘adaptive expertise’: the capacity to ‘move
beyond existing routines … to rethink key ideas, practices and even values in order
to respond to novel situations’ (Hammerness et al., 2005, pp. 358–359). Practice
alone is not enough; new teachers need a sufficient understanding of the grounds
on which that practice is based that they can review its appropriateness and, where
necessary, adapt what they are doing in response to particular changes in the context
or the objectives they are seeking to achieve. Moreover, as noted above, the point of
establishing routine practices is that they free teachers to reflect critically on the val-
ues inherent in their choice of objectives, not just on the efficacy of their methods.

Practical theorising as a means of combining practice and theory

in the context of ITE
It was recognition of this need for critical evaluation – alongside a passionate com-
mitment to making most effective use of the expertise of experienced p­ ractitioners –
that prompted McIntyre (1990a) to elaborate a process of professional learning, to
which he later applied the label ‘practical theorising’ (McIntyre, 1995). While many
structural features of the course in which this process was embedded were not new,
in that others had also been experimenting with structural arrangements (such as
serial placements), that would bring theory and practice into close proximity with
one another (Hirst, 1990), the distinctive feature of Internship was the way in which
all suggestions for practice, regardless of whether they derived from research or from
practical experience in specific contexts, were expected to be received: not as pre-
scriptions to be followed, but as hypotheses to be tested.
18 Katharine Burn et al.

In developing this approach, McIntyre (1990b, 1991) acknowledged the essen-

tial contribution of knowledge drawn from two distinctive sources. Alongside the
strategies recommended and modelled by skilled practitioners, whose experience
was rooted in a specific school context and shaped by their knowledge of particular
individuals and groups of students, he also emphasised the importance of sugges-
tions for practice advanced by university-based teacher educators, based on a thor-
ough understanding of theoretical and research literature, and on considered analysis
of the assumptions and values implicit in them. In light of previous research, which
had highlighted the problems arising from discontinuities between the university
and school-based components of teacher education courses, McIntyre suggested
that it would be inappropriate to assume a straightforward continuity of perspective
between ideas proposed in each context. The likelihood of discontinuities between
highly contextualised craft knowledge and practical wisdom on one hand and more
systematised and abstract kinds of knowledge on the other should be explicitly
acknowledged and student-teachers should be encouraged to test all ideas that they
encountered against various criteria: the academic criteria of theoretical coherence
and consistency with research evidence, for example, as well as the practical criteria
of feasibility and effectiveness in the particular school context (McIntyre, 1990a).
The radical nature of this solution is highlighted by Alexander’s (1984) histor-
ical survey of attempts to tackle the persistent theory-practice problem. While the
nature or form of the theory offered to student-teachers had changed many times
as teacher educators sought to make it more relevant or readily applicable, all those
attempted solutions still depended in essence on the replacement of one sort of
‘given’ theory by another. This was obviously the case when the pure disciplines
of education had given way to various integrated themes derived from those dis-
ciplines. But it was equally true of subsequent attempts to replace academic theory
with a new professional theory grounded in the close analysis of classroom practice:
the codification of craft knowledge that McNamara and Desforges (1978) were
seeking, for example, in their ‘process-product’ research. As Alexander pointed out,
the ‘codified craft knowledge’ idea, even if proved successful, was just as likely to
present student-teachers with problems of ‘application’ in that it was unlikely to be
regarded as anything other than someone else’s methodology, someone else’s com-
mon sense. Introducing the idea of an active process of ‘theorising’ acknowledges
the need for all claims about what should be done – or what will work – to be
tested and critically evaluated.
McIntyre presented this process as an acknowledgement of reality:

Whether we like it or not, interns [as student-teachers within Internship

came to be known] will make their own judgements about what matters in
teaching and about how they can best teach’; they ‘want to and will test things
out for themselves – they would not accept the “the answers” even if we had
reliable knowledge to offer them.
(McIntyre, 1988, p. 104)
 The role of practical theorising in teacher education 19

Within Internship, learning to teach was therefore conceptualised as ‘a continual

process of hypothesis-testing’ (McIntyre, 1980, p. 298). This was not to abandon
‘theory’; the wide knowledge of differing practices, thorough understanding of rel-
evant theoretical and research literature and considered analysis of the assumptions
and values implicit in different practices offered by university tutors was as impor-
tant as the professional craft knowledge offered by classroom practitioners. But it
was to insist that both should be subjected to critical scrutiny. No views or prac-
tices, whatever their source, should be accepted as authoritative (McIntyre, 1990b).
Indeed, the tension between different kinds of knowledge offered by experienced
practitioners and university tutors was a valuable and potentially productive one.
By explicitly acknowledging it, student-teachers could be encouraged to recognise,
value and employ in their critical scrutiny of the ideas they were offered, the sys-
tematically diverse criteria emphasised by each partner.
The expectation that student-teachers should test out all ideas was not, however,
limited to those presented to them by their teacher educators (both school-based
subject mentors and university tutors). In acknowledging that student-teach-
ers would want to make their own judgements about what matters in teaching,
McIntyre was drawing on research evidence that showed the importance of stu-
dent-teachers’ preconceptions, the ideas about teaching and learning that they
brought with them. Largely shaped by their own experience as learners (Lortie,
1975), such ideas were often highly elaborated, acted as powerful models and deter-
mined each student-teacher’s own agenda and priorities. By creating a climate in
which all ideas were subjected to careful scrutiny and explicitly encouraging the
use of ideas from diverse sources, including their own personal histories, it was
hoped that student-teachers would be helped to recognise and articulate some of
the preconceptions they brought with them, and so subject them – as well as others’
ideas – to careful evaluation.
It is important to note that while the idea of ‘practical theorising’ implies an
active process of testing and probing, experimenting and evaluating, it did not
imply a rejection of theory as the distillation of knowledge. In embracing the term
‘theorising’ and acknowledging his debt to Alexander (1984) for his identification
of the distinction between ‘theory’ and ‘theorising’, McIntyre (1993) explicitly
rejected Alexander’s assumption that theory as intellectual process replaces theory as
propositional knowledge. University-based tutors had an obligation to offer such
knowledge to their student-teachers – that was their raison d’être – but they were
expected to share it in the form of ‘suggestions for practice’ that could be tested in
the context of the specific schools in which those student-teachers were working.
In emphasising the importance of the theoretical and research base that under-
pinned these suggestions, McIntyre was thus endorsing the importance of critical
reflection as an essential part of the process of learning to teach while rejecting the
idea that ‘reflective practice’ was all that was needed.The focus of their reflection had
to be the suggestions for practice that they were offered on the basis of research as
well as those proposed and modelled by experienced practitioners.
20 Katharine Burn et al.

The apparent radicalism of McIntyre’s insistence on student-teachers testing all

the ideas offered to them was also tempered by his acknowledgement that primary
importance had to be given to the attainment of a basic competence in teaching.
Not only was achievement of this objective a fundamental obligation of all teacher
education courses, it was also a pre-requisite if student-teachers were actually to be
able to engage effectively in the processes of critical reflection implied by his con-
ception of practical theorising. As he acknowledged,

Many interns [student-teachers] themselves need to be convinced that they

are competent, and are recognised as being competent before they can have
the sense of security necessary to examine their teaching objectively and
openly in relation to their own aspirations as educators.
(McIntyre, 1990a, p. 31)

In order to ensure student-teachers’ basic competency and to assure them of it,

McIntyre therefore proposed that their course should be divided into two distinct
phases. In the first, their investigations of teaching should be primarily concerned
with ‘finding effective ways of doing things that are specified in advance as necessary
aspects of competent teaching’; only in the second phase, after their classroom com-
petence had been formally recognised, would they be encouraged ‘to articulate and
explain their own criteria for some important facets of their teaching, and to gather
evidence and look critically at their teaching in relation to those criteria’ (p. 31).
In dividing Internship into two distinct phases and acknowledging the impor-
tance of focusing first on the achievement of ‘classroom competence, conceived
in terms of consensual professional criteria’ (p. 32), McIntyre placed an important
limitation on the operation of practical theorising within ITE: the need to estab-
lish a degree of consensus across the partnership about the basic competencies to
be achieved. Within the early years of the course’s operation, this consensus was
reached through negotiation across the partnership, as part of the joint planning
of the programmes within it by university tutors and school-based mentors. After
1997, the formal descriptors of the competences required before student-teach-
ers could move into Phase 2, had to take account of new nationally prescribed
‘Standards’ for the award of Qualified Teacher Status (DfEE, 1998).Yet while these
descriptors obviously specified the short-term goals that student-teachers had to
attain (such as achieving and maintaining classroom order, or ensuring that students
understand the lesson content or know what they are expected to do), neither the
original – nor the subsequent versions of them – prescribed exactly how those goals
should be achieved. The principle of student-teachers critically testing the methods
suggested to them thus remained valid.
In explaining the differences between the two phases, McIntyre drew on the
distinction originally drawn by Carr and Kemmis (1986) between technical and
practical reflection. He saw the former as relevant to the first phase, in which stu-
dent-teachers were focused on the effective attainment of given goals, while the
latter applied to the second phase, when student-teachers were articulating their
 The role of practical theorising in teacher education 21

own criteria for evaluation, related to the ‘assumptions, predispositions, values and
consequences’ that underpinned their practice (McIntyre, 1993, p. 44). McIntyre
also pointed out that engagement in the third level of reflection identified by Carr
and Kemmis (1986) – critical or emancipatory reflection, which includes wider eth-
ical, social and political issues and recognises the institutional and societal forces
that may constrain the individual teachers’ freedom or limit the efficacy of their
actions – is not something that can readily be achieved by beginners looking crit-
ically at their own practice. Within Internship, critical consideration of the social
and institutional context of teaching and of the ethical dimensions of educational
policy was therefore expected to be developed alongside student-teachers’ teaching,
in a parallel programme delivered both within the university and in school-based
groups, dealing with issues such as assessment, provision for students with special
educational needs, and the interaction between class, race and gender in educational
outcomes. By operating the programme across the two contexts, such issues could
similarly be examined with reference both to research and policy literature and to
practices within specific partnership schools.

Critiques advanced in direct response to the initial elaboration of

practical theorising
Two specific limits were thus applied to the operation of practical theorising as it
was first elaborated in the contexts of ITE:

i) the need for a set of consensual professional criteria used to define the minimal
level of classroom competence to be achieved before student-teachers could be
encouraged to select for themselves the criteria by which their practice should
be evaluated;
ii) recognition of the fact that while student-teachers were expected to ask critical
questions about the broader institutional and societal forces that may constrain
individual teachers’ pedagogical choices and limit their efficacy, they were not
expected to ask those questions in the context of their own practice, but only
in relation to research, theoretical and policy literature and as they applied to
the practices of experienced teachers within their partnership school.

Despite these important limitations, the model of practical theorising was quickly
subject to a range of critiques at the level of both theory and practice. The educa-
tional philosopher Paul Hirst (1990) criticised the process for its apparent relativism,
arguing that by giving students responsibility to test the suggestions for practice
that they were offered, practical theorising seemed to elevate personal judgement
above professional consensus. It was a criticism subsequently echoed by Furlong
and Maynard (1995), who were concerned that decisions about what constituted
appropriate forms of practice appeared to be left to the individual student-teacher.
Hirst also looked beyond the principles of Internship to the way in which it
operated in practice, arguing that many elements within it actually reflected an
22 Katharine Burn et al.

assumption of consensus; they had been ‘jointly produced on the basis that there is
an existing body of practices for which rational public defence is to be expected and
should be pursued by those involved’ (Hirst, 1990, p. 153).
While Hirst (1990) offered ‘A View from Outside’, early research by insiders also
suggested that there might be serious practical difficulties operating a partnership
officially premised on the principle that ‘consensus is not expected, either between
university and school or between interns [student-teachers] and staff ’ (McIntyre,
1990a, p. 32). Tutors engaged in practitioner research within the different curricu-
lum programmes revealed how uncomfortable student-teachers found it to engage
in conversations that revealed differing beliefs between themselves and their men-
tors. This reticence seemed to apply both to discussions of very practical issues like
pupil motivation (Haggarty, 1997) and to more apparently abstract issues such as
subject ideology (Davies, 1997). In analysing the content of certain conversations
between individual mentors and their student-teachers, Haggarty also found that
the mentors made far less reference to practicability criteria than had been antici-
pated – perhaps in response to an unspoken sense of pressure to present the imple-
mentation of perceived good practice as unproblematic.
A similar reluctance to express and confront contradictory views was also
encountered by Hake (1993), working within the scheme initially as a school-based
subject mentor and subsequently as a university-based curriculum (subject) tutor.
As a mentor, she claimed to have felt inhibited by what seemed the right line to
toe’ (Hake, 1993, p. 24). Her subsequent investigations as a curriculum tutor into
the attitudes of mentors suggested that within joint planning meetings held in the
university many mentors seemed similarly awed and simply acquiesced to univer-
sity proposals. Once in the school context, however, the same mentors tended to
denigrate those university ideas as unrealistic and idealised. Student-teachers, she
suggested, would either encounter a false consensus that glossed over real differ-
ences, or glaring contradictions with no encouragement in school to take seriously
the university contribution or to make use of academic criteria in the evaluation
of practice.

Re-iteration and wider acceptance of the principles of practical

theorising
On the issue of principle, McIntyre’s (1993) response to the charge that practical
theorising seemed to elevate personal judgement above professional consensus, was
to reiterate his conviction that beyond the limited agreement that could be achieved
in relation to the short-term goals that student-teachers were expected to attain,
there could be no definitive claims about the most effective methods of attaining
them (nor indeed, about the universal validity even of those goals). While he was
optimistic about initiatives underway at the time to elicit and examine the implicit
craft knowledge embedded in the practice of experienced teachers, he regarded that
research as in its infancy and a long way from revealing what elements, if any, might
prove to be consensual. But ultimately, he argued that no research endeavour could
 The role of practical theorising in teacher education 23

ever yield more than a ‘local, temporary and partial’ consensus (McIntyre, 1993,
p. 373). This was due not only to the fact that much research on teaching tended to
be conducted within radically different ideological traditions, but also to the mul-
tiplicity of interacting factors and the constantly changing nature of social realities,
which would always frustrate any attempt to identify generalisable knowledge that
could be applied regardless of context.
In response to Hirst’s practical critique that university-based tutors and school-
based mentors actually operated with a high degree of consensus, McIntyre made
clear that the process of practical theorising does not require the rejection of con-
sensus where it is found to exist; it is merely the presumption of consensus that is the
problem, as the empirical studies conducted by Haggarty (1997) Davies (1997) and
Hake (1993) had all revealed. The fact that differences may be difficult to articulate
does not make them any easier to negotiate in practice; it makes it all the more
important to model and explicitly promote the process of practical theorising.
Clarity about what was expected of the student-teachers and careful structure
of the course in order to promote it was also McIntyre’s response to Hirst’s critique
that practical theorising imposed an intolerable burden on beginning teachers.
Work within the university – seminars, workshops, reading lists and assignments –
should all be structured to facilitate the testing of all ideas against criteria of concep-
tual clarity, consistency with available evidence, logical coherence and awareness of
implicit social and educational values. Similarly, both university tutors and school-
based mentors needed to give ‘explicit guidance about how to test the feasibility,
effectiveness-in-context and general practicality of ideas through observation, dis-
cussion and students’ own teaching’ (McIntyre, 1993, p. 375). Clear explanations
of how student-teachers were expected to learn needed to be accompanied by
clear explanations of what the products of that learning should be, ‘including the
expectation that there will be few simple verdicts, and that evaluation of ideas
from whatever source will normally be qualified, conditional, tentative and quite
complex’.
Subsequent research within Internship revealed the importance and value of this
kind of clarity. Hagger (1997) and Hagger and McIntyre (2006) demonstrated that
providing student-teachers with specific guidance about how to ask questions of
the practices that they observed gave them much richer insights into the practices
of experienced teachers and the rationale that underpinned them. Although Burn
(2006) found a continued reluctance among student-teachers to express their res-
ervations or raise explicit questions about particular suggestions for practice offered
to them in school, she also observed that committed mentors succeeded in creating
contexts in which their student-teachers felt able to experiment with alternatives.
Burn’s detailed examination of advice about lesson planning given by both curricu-
lum tutors and mentors revealed quite a high degree of consensus between the two
in terms of their suggestions for practice, but it was also clear that both were explic-
itly drawing on different sources of knowledge in making those recommendations
and that the student-teachers recognised and valued the different perspectives that
they offered.
24 Katharine Burn et al.

Much more recent research, comparing the experience of learning to teach

within different ITE courses in England and the US (Tatto et al., 2018), one of
which was Internship, has provided rich evidence, confirming both the power of the
original principles of practical theorising and the challenges inherent in their oper-
ation. Systematic exploration of the way in which the partnership structures effec-
tively create two distinct ‘social situations of development’ for each intern, made it
possible to explore the extent of alignment between the ideas that student-teach-
ers brought with them into the course (shaped by their prior experiences) and
those advocated by their mentors and curriculum tutors. A range of case studies
(based on observations of lessons taught by student-teachers and feedback discus-
sions with their mentor or regular class teacher), each reflecting different patterns
and degrees of consensus between student-teacher, mentor and curriculum tutor,
revealed that even where practical theorising was being actively promoted and nur-
tured (which was not always the case), its effectiveness depended on the strength
of the school-university partnership as it operated within individual subjects. It was
also dependent on the student-teachers’ willingness and capacity to engage with
ideas from diverse perspectives and on highly skilled mentoring. It was the mentor’s
commitment and willingness to engage with the process that appeared to exert the
most powerful influence on the student-teacher’s approach. Where the mentors’
recommendations were clearly in conflict with those advocated by the university
tutors (as expressed in separate interviews) and no explicit consideration was given
to considering alternative views, the mentor’s views tended to prevail.

The wider influence of the concept of practical theorising and the

structures that support it
Although the term ‘practical theorising’ has not generally been adopted beyond the
Oxford context, there has been widespread recognition of the distinctive sources
of knowledge that inform the recommendations that university-based and school-
based teacher educators are each equipped to offer and of the risks inherent in
assuming that student-teachers will find it easy to reconcile them.This has prompted
teacher educators across the world to explore ways of bringing the two sources of
knowledge as close together as possible, making it possible for beginning teachers to
ask critical questions of each in light of the other. In 2013, the British Educational
Research Association and Royal Society of Arts embarked on an enquiry into the
role of research in teacher education (BERA-RSA, 2014), within which they com-
missioned an international review of ITE courses explicitly committed to bringing
theory and practice together in forms of ‘research-informed clinical practice’ (Burn
& Mutton, 2015). The significance of this phrase, linking research with the setting
in which practice occurs, lies in the medical analogy at its heart. In borrowing from
medical education (as McIntyre had done in developing an ‘internship’ model), use
of the term ‘clinical’ practice emphasises the centrality of the specific students with
whom a beginning teacher is working. It highlights the need to observe and analyse
the experiences of those particular individuals in context, diagnosing their learning
 The role of practical theorising in teacher education 25

needs and evaluating their responses as a means of evaluating the appropriateness

and efficacy of the prescriptions drawn from research literature.
Courses committed to this vision of research-informed clinical practice were
found in other parts of the UK (specifically the Glasgow West Teacher Education
Initiative and Scottish Teachers for a New Era); in Europe (specifically the Realistic
Teacher Education programmes in the Netherlands); in the United States (­specifically
the Carnegie Corporation Teachers for a New Era) and in Australia (specifically the
University of Melbourne’s Masters of Teaching), all of which had made explicit
commitments:

(a) to facilitate and deepen the interplay between the different kinds of knowledge
generated and validated within the different contexts of school and university;
and
(b) to provide scope for beginning teachers to interrogate each in light of the
other, bringing both to bear on interpreting and responding to their classroom
experiences.
(Burn & Mutton, 2015, p. 219)

The list of courses committed to these principles was far from exhaustive, but it
served to illustrate the common features required to make their achievement possible:

1. Partnership between university and school expressed in joint planning of the

beginning teachers’ programmes.
2. A single coherent course with explicit relationships and short-time intervals
between connected elements in the different contexts.
3. Carefully graduated teaching tasks intended to permit rational analysis.
4. Explicit encouragement to use ideas from diverse sources and to test them in
their specific context.

Although the last of these features were variously described as ‘clinical reasoning’,
‘practical problem-solving’ or as the adoption of ‘an (action) research orientation’
or ‘enquiry stance’, the use of these approaches within a tightly integrated, jointly
planned course resonated closely with the principles inherent in practical theo-
rising: that of testing all ideas against the diverse criteria valued in the contexts
of school and university. The most recent and direct influence of these principles,
mediated by John Furlong (2015) through his report for the Welsh Government
Teaching Tomorrow’s Teachers, can be seen in the criteria for the accreditation of ITE
courses in Wales (Welsh Government, 2018) intended to create:

successive generations of teachers who are active users of research, who can
engage in a meaningful process of enquiry, who can formulate and implement
appropriate pedagogical approaches and who can critically reflect on the pro-
cess and the outcomes of their engagement with research evidence.
(Harris, et al., 2021)
26 Katharine Burn et al.

Recurring critiques of practical theorising and ongoing practical

challenges
Acceptance in diverse contexts of the principles of practical theorising has, however,
never succeeded in resolving all the concerns raised about its appropriateness as a
model for beginning teachers’ learning. Ellis (2010), who worked for a number of
years as an English curriculum tutor within Internship, continued to highlight the
inappropriateness of expecting student-teachers, in a position of relative powerless-
ness, to articulate questions about the practices recommended by their tutors or
modelled by teachers in their partnership schools. The weakness of their position
had, he argued, been compounded since the scheme’s introduction by the intro-
duction of national standards, effectively imposing a uniform model of competence.
Seeking to fit in, would always be the easier option. Ellis was also critical of the way
which the model of learning seemed to regard teachers’ knowledge as an entirely
individual attribute, described in narrowly cognitive terms, without adequate rec-
ognition of the role that particular settings (schools and subject departments) play
in extending or denying different possibilities for participation and innovation.
Arguing from a socio-cultural perspective, Ellis claimed that the notion of practical
theorising effectively reduced beginning teacher learning to an individual process
of accommodation to the cultural practices of specific schools, albeit one framed
as a difficult cognitive struggle, shaped by input from both university tutors and
school-based mentors.
Ellis’s solution – one that he sought to implement with an experimental cohort
within Internship – was to call for a ‘re-conceptualisation of teacher knowledge and
learning, informed by a richer, more complex understanding of experience’ (Ellis,
2010, p. 111). This meant treating the experience from which beginning teachers
were expected to learn as an object of collaborative enquiry; explored not just by the
student-teachers, but by the teachers in their school departments and by the uni-
versity-based teacher educators. Using the conceptual tools of activity theory and
the structures of Developmental Work Research (Engeström, 2005), his provision of
‘mirror data’ about the departments’ practices, provided the structures that allowed
all parties to examine how and why those practices had come to be as they were
and to acknowledge the tensions and contradictions within them, thereby opening
up new possibilities for change.
The fact that Ellis was prompted to intervene so deliberately, providing carefully
structured opportunities for collaborative reflection on the tensions inherent in
existing practices, can be interpreted as an endorsement of certain principles within
the concept of practical theorising: the importance of working in partnership to
bring theoretical perspectives and practical experience together, and the need for
critical examination of ideas from all sources. But ultimately, his conclusion that
the generation of genuinely open dialogue about the contradictions inherent in
established practices required such intensive, structured support may be regarded
as confirmation of the intolerable demands that the process actually imposes on
vulnerable beginners.
 The role of practical theorising in teacher education 27

To the concerns that Ellis enumerated, may now be added a range of new or
more developed challenges explored by the various contributors to this volume,
all of which cast fresh doubt on the value of the idea. At the heart of many of
these challenges is recognition of the fact that the expertise of experienced practi-
tioners is riven with acknowledged – as well as unacknowledged – c­ ontradictions
because of the increasing pressures of a standards-driven agenda, dominated by
high-stakes assessments, which narrowly prescribe the range of outcomes that are
valued. Chapter 4, for example, highlights the constant tensions experienced by
science teachers who recognise the importance of practical work for young people’s
understanding of science but are constrained in their use of it by the breadth of the
curriculum that they have to cover and the limited ways in which students’ aware-
ness of scientific method capacity to engage in investigative work is assessed. Similar
tensions in the practice of English teachers are explored in Chapter 5, which exam-
ines the pressures that they feel to promote students’ use of restrictive writing frames
or scaffolds, intended to guarantee success within the narrow parameters of public
examinations while constraining students’ engagement with texts and expression of
their personal responses to them.
The prescription of practices that have been identified as promoting examina-
tion success, but that conflict with teachers’ conceptions of worthwhile goals and
ethical practices, has been intensified in recent years by the changes to governing
structures within the education system, accelerated by the Academies Act of 2010
(DFE, 2010b). The creation of groups of schools, some with private sector spon-
sors, and others operating as multi-academy trusts, has created a new hierarchical
structure in which detailed decisions about both curriculum and pedagogy are fre-
quently made at trust level (Wilkins, 2017), denying agency even to subject leaders
within individual schools. When even experienced teachers and subject leaders lack
the scope to question or to deviate from centrally mandated practices, it is diffi-
cult to argue that inexperienced novices should be allowed the opportunity to
test out alternative strategies in their own practices. While an argument might be
made about the need for beginning teachers to explore a range of strategies and to
think critically about the kinds of rationale and range of evidence that underpin
them, schools that often engage in ITE simply to secure a supply of new recruits
tend to regard such an expansive vision as unnecessary: their priority is to prepare
teachers to work effectively within their own particular context, operating agreed
policies and practices with efficiency. Adaptive expertise (Berliner, 2001) is regarded
as unnecessary for their immediate purposes.
But perhaps the most serious threat yet to the exercise of practical theorising in
England is the introduction of a new ‘Core Content Framework’ for initial teacher
training, mandated by the government (DFE, 2019). Its implementation by ITE pro-
viders is subject to inspection by the Office for Standards in Education (DFE, 2020).
This represents an extraordinary extension of the Teachers’ Standards, providing a
tightly specified lists of propositional statements about what constitutes effective
teaching practice that beginning teachers are expected to accept (‘learn that …’)
and implement (‘learn how …’). The fact that the content of the framework is
28 Katharine Burn et al.

supported by a list of ‘key evidence statements drawn from current high-quality

evidence from the UK and overseas’ might appear to endorse a vision of teaching
as a research-informed practice, but the specific studies cited represent a very nar-
row spectrum of research, conducted within particular paradigms. As Helgetun and
Menter (2020) have shown, the use of ‘evidence’ has itself become a ‘tool of gov-
ernment’ used not merely to justify policy but to ‘grant speaking rights to selected
actors whom ministers deem to have the right ideological leanings’ (p. 11). The
expectation that designated research findings, modelled by expert practitioners in
school, should be simply applied by beginning teachers takes us back to a ‘techni-
cist’ view of teaching as little more than the skilled execution of pre-determined
procedures.

Why persist with practical theorising when it’s so much easier in

theory than in practice?
In the face of Hirst’s (1990) original critique about the unfair burden that it places
on the shoulders of the most vulnerable, and the mounting challenges outlined here,
all exacerbated by neo-liberal trends in education and teacher education policy, the
question arises as to whether it is worth persisting with practical theorising as a
model of professional learning.
Our first answer to this question takes us back to the analysis of alternative options
with which this chapter began. As Churchill famously observed of democracy as a
form of government, practical theorising is clearly the worst way of managing the
relationship between theory and practice, other than all the others that have been
tried. A more developed answer is offered by the range of chapters within this book
exploring how the advocates of practical theorising have sought to understand and
mitigate the serious challenges outlined above and to maximise the potential of
McIntyre’s proposed solution.

Note
1 School Direct is a school-led route into teaching, run by a partnership between a lead
school, other schools and an accredited teacher training provider. The lead school has
overall responsibility for requesting training places from the Department for Education
and allocating them to individual schools. The lead school also determines which train-
ing provider to work with and decides how funding will be split between the school
and the training provider. The scheme thus gives schools the scope to select and
recruit their own trainees, with an expectation that graduating trainees will then be
employed by the school or partnership of schools. (See https://www.gov.uk/guidance/
school-direct-guidance-for-lead-schools)

References
Alexander, R. J. (1984) Innovation and continuity in the initial teacher education curriculum.
In R. J. Alexander, M. Craft, & J. Lynch (Eds.), Change in Teacher Education. London: Holt
Rinehart and Winston, 103–160.
 The role of practical theorising in teacher education 29

BERA-RSA (2014). Research and the Teaching Profession Building the Capacity for a Self-improving
Education System. https://www.bera.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/BERA-RSA-
Research-Teaching-Profession-FULL-REPORT-for-web.pdf
Berliner, D. (2001). Learning about and learning from expert teachers. International Journal of
Educational Research, 35(5), 463–482.
Burn, K. (2006). Promoting critical conversations: the distinctive contribution of higher edu-
cation as a partner in the professional preparation of new teachers, Journal of Education for
Teaching, 32(3), 243–258.
Burn, K. & Mutton, T. (2015). A review of ‘research-informed clinical practice’ in Initial
Teacher Education. Oxford Review of Education, 41(2), 217–233.
Burn, K., Mutton, T., & Hagger, H. (2015). Beginning Teachers’ Learning: Making Experience
Count. Northwich: Critical Publishing.
Carr, W. & Kemmis, S. (1986). Becoming Critical: Education Knowledge and Action Research.
London: The Falmer Press.
Carter, A. (2015). Carter Review of Initial Teacher Training (ITT). London: DfE.
Darling-Hammond, L. (2017). Teacher education around the world: What can we learn from
international practice? European Journal of Teacher Education, 40(3), 291–309.
Davies, C. (1997). Problems about achievement of shared understandings about ITE between
schools and university. In D. McIntyre (Ed.), Teacher Education Research in a New Context:
The Oxford Internship Scheme. London: Paul Chapman, 16–41.
Department for Education (DfE) (2010a). The Importance of Teaching: The Schools White Paper.
Retrieved from https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-importance-of-
teaching-the-schools-white-paper-2010
Department for Education (DfE) (2010b). Academies Act 2010. Retrieved from: http://www.
education.gov.uk/schools/leadership/typesofschools/academies/a006122 2/academies-
act-2010
Department for Education (DfE) (2011). Training our Next Generation of Outstanding Teachers:
Implementation Plan. Retrieved from: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/
training-our-next-generation-of-outstanding-teachers-implementation-plan
Department for Education (DfE) (2019). ITT Core Content Framework. Retrieved from:
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attach-
ment_data/file/843676/Initial_teacher_training_core_content_framework.pdf
Department for Education (DfE) (2020). Initial Teacher Education Inspection Framework and
Handbook. Retrieved from: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/initial-teacher-
education-ite-inspection-framework-and-handbook
Department for Education and Employment (DfEE) (1998) Teaching: High Status, High
Standards (Circular 4/98). London. Her Majesty’s Stationery Office.
Doyle,W. (1977). Learning the classroom environment: an ecological analysis. Journal of Teacher
Education, 28(6), 51–55.
Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) (2019). The EEF Guide to Becoming an Evidence-
informed School Governor and Trustee. Retrieved from https://educationendowmentfounda-
tion.org.uk/tools/governors-guidance/
Ellis, V. (2010). Impoverishing experience: the problem of teacher education in England.
Journal of Education for Teaching, 36(1), 105–120.
Engeström,Y. (2005). Developmental Work Research: Expanding Activity Theory in Practice. Berlin:
Lehmanns Media.
Furlong, J. (2013). Education—An Anatomy of the Discipline: Rescuing the University Project?
London: Routledge.
Furlong, J. (2015). Teaching Tomorrow’s Teachers. Options for the Future of Initial Teacher Education in
Wales. Report to Huw Lewis,AM, Minister for Education and Skills. Cardiff:Welsh Government.
30 Katharine Burn et al.

Furlong, J. & Maynard, T. (1995). Mentoring Student Teachers: The Growth of Professional
Knowledge. London: Routledge.
Furlong,V. J., Hirst, P. J., Pocklington, K. and Miles, S. (1988). Initial Teacher Training and the Role
of the School. Milton Keynes, Open University Press.
Gove, M. (2010). Speech to the National College Annual Conference. Delivered on 25 November.
Retrieved from:https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/michael-gove-to-the-national-
college-annual-conference-birmingham
Haggarty, L. (1997). Readiness among student teachers for learning about classroom manage-
ment issues. In D. McIntyre (Ed.), Teacher Education Research in a New Context:The Oxford
Internship Scheme. London: Paul Chapman, 60–75.
Hagger, H. (1997). Enabling student teachers to gain access to the professional craft knowl-
edge of experienced teachers. In D. McIntyre (Ed.), Teacher Education Research in a New
Context:The Oxford Internship Scheme. London: Paul Chapman, 99–133.
Hagger, H. & McIntyre, D. (2006). Learning Teaching from Teachers: Realising the Potential of
School-Based Teacher Education. Maidenhead: Open University Press.
Hake, C. (1993). Partnership in Teacher Training:Talk and Chalk, London: Tufnell Press.
Hammerness, K., Darling-Hammond, L. & Bransford, J. with Berliner, D., Cochran-Smith,
M., McDonald, M. & Zeichner, K. (2005). How teachers learn and develop. In L. Darling-
Hammond, J. Bransford, with P. LePage, K. Hammerness, & H. Duffy (Eds.), Preparing
Teachers for a Changing World: What Teachers Should Learn and Be Able to Do. San Francisco:
Jossey-Bass.
Harris, A., Jones, M., Furlong, J., Griffiths, J., & Hannigan–Davies, C. (2021). A research
informed approach to Initial Teacher Education in Wales: intentions, examples and reflec-
tions. In D. Mayer (Ed.), Teacher Education Policy and Research: Global Perspectives. New York:
Springer, 195–208
Helgetun, J.B. & Menter I. (2020). From an age of measurement to an evidence era? Policy-
making in teacher education in England. Journal of Education Policy, DOI:10.1080/02680
939.2020.1748722
Hirst, P. (1990). Internship: a view from outside. In P. Benton (Ed.), The Oxford Internship
Scheme: Integration and Partnership in Initial Teacher Education. London: Calouste Gulbenkian
Foundation, 147–159.
Hirst, P. (1996). The demands of professional practice and preparation for teachers. In J.
Furlong & R. Smith (Eds.), The Role of Higher Education in Initial Teacher Training. London:
Kogan Page, 166–178.
Kennedy, M. (2004). Reform Ideals and Teachers’ Practical Intentions. Education Policy Analysis
Archives, 12, p. 13.
Kennedy, M. (2005). Inside Teaching: How Classroom Life Undermines Reform. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press.
Kennedy, M. (2006). Knowledge and Vision in Teaching, Journal of Teacher Education, 57(3),
205–211.
Korthagen, F. A. J. (2010). How teacher education can make a difference. Journal of Education
for Teaching, 36(4), 407–423.
Lawlor, S. (1990). Teachers Mistaught. London: Centre for Policy Studies.
Lortie, D.C. (1975). Schoolteacher: A Sociological Study. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago
Press.
McIntyre, D. (1980).The contribution of research to quality in teacher education. In E. Hoyle
& J. McGarry (Eds.), World Year of Education, 1980, Professional Development of Teachers.
London: Kogan Page, 295–307.
 The role of practical theorising in teacher education 31

McIntyre, D. (1988). Designing a teacher education curriculum from research and theory
on teacher knowledge. In J. Calderhead (Ed.), Teachers’ Professional Learning. Lewes: The
Falmer Press, 97–114.
McIntyre, D. (1990a). Ideas and principles guiding the Internship Scheme. In P. Benton (Ed.),
The Oxford Internship Scheme: Integration and Practice in Initial Teacher Education. London:
Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, 17–41.
McIntyre, D. (1990b). The Oxford internship scheme and the Cambridge analytical model.
In M. Booth, J. Furlong, & M. Wilkin (Eds.), Partnership in Initial Teacher Training. London:
Cassell, 110–127.
McIntyre, D. (1991). The Oxford University model of teacher education. South Pacific Journal
of Teacher Education, 19(2), 117–129.
McIntyre, D. (1993). Theory, theorizing and reflection in initial teacher education. In J.
Calderhead & P. Gates (Eds.), Conceptualising Reflection in Teacher Development. London:
Falmer, 39–52.
McIntyre, D. (1995). Initial teacher education as practical theorising: a response to Paul Hirst.
British Journal of Educational Studies, 43(4), 365–383.
McNamara, D.R. & Desforges, C. (1978). The social sciences, teacher education and the
objectification of craft knowledge. British Journal of Teacher Education, 4(1), 17–36.
Mutton, T., Burn, K., Hagger, H., & Thirlwall, K. (2018). Teacher Education Partnerships: Policy
and Practice, Northwich: Critical Publishing.
O’Hear, A. (1988). Who Teaches the Teachers? Research Report No. 10. London:The Social Affairs
Unit.
Orchard, J. & Winch, C. (2015). What training do teachers need? Why theory is necessary to
good teaching. Impact No. 22 Philosophical Perspectives on Education Policy. Wiley Online
Library. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/2048-416X.2015.12002.x
Robinson, J. (2004). Power to Teach: Learning through Practice. Abingdon: Routledge.
Southey, C.C. (1844). The Life of Dr Bell,Vol. II. London: John Murray.
Welsh Government (2018). Criteria for the Accreditation of Initial Teacher Education Programmes
in Wales. February 2018. https://gov.wales/sites/default/files/publications/2018-09/cri-
teria-for-the-accreditation-of-initial-teacher-education-programmes-in-wales.pdf
Tatto, M.T., Burn, K., Menter, I., Mutton, T. & Thompson, I. (2018). Learning to Teach in
England and the United States:The Evolution of Policy and Practice, Abingdon and New York:
Routledge.
Wilkins, A. (2017). Rescaling the local: multi-academy trusts, private monopoly and statecraft
in England. Journal of Educational Administration and History, 49(2), 171–185.
2
AN INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVE ON
PRACTICAL THEORISING
Maria Teresa Tatto

Introduction
This chapter considers the concept of practical theorising from an international
perspective, examining how it relates to and compares with other constructs and
practical strategies deployed within teacher education programmes across different
contexts to enable early career teachers to negotiate the relationship between the-
ory and practice.
The chapter begins by examining different conceptions of the knowledge that
is considered necessary for teaching, with an emphasis on the knowledge that is
needed in practice. While there are different conceptions of what teachers need to
know, depending on the goals and purposes of education (Tatto, 1998; Hordern
& Tatto, 2018), every conception has in common a concern for the knowledge
that informs practice. Paradoxically, while practice represents the key outcome
of teacher education and constitutes the embodiment of teaching, it remains
under-theorised and under-researched. The deep-rooted separation of subject
matter and pedagogy as discrete areas of knowledge for teaching and the structure
of the field may be to blame. This is an issue that teacher educators in the U.S.
and elsewhere, following Shulman (1986), have attempted to address by advancing
the concept of pedagogical content knowledge as a requisite for practice along
with knowledge of the subject, of pedagogy, of the curriculum, pupils and con-
texts. But while this more sophisticated and integrated view of the knowledge
for teaching has proved useful, especially for initial teacher education (ITE), it has
not eliminated the notion that there is an important divide between what is gen-
erally described as ‘theory’ (what future teachers learn in universities and in their
teacher education programmes – which includes Shulman’s types of knowledge)
and practice (what teachers learn in the schools and from other teachers when
they begin to teach).

DOI: 10.4324/9781003183945-4
 An international perspective on practical theorising 33

McIntyre’s (1993) proposal for an alternative approach to knowledge that prom-

ises to bridge the theory-practice divide ‘the disciplined theorizing about practice’
introduces an essential element, and a challenge, to the knowledge needed for pro-
fessional teaching (p. 50): the notion of practical theorising.
This chapter examines significant studies found in the international literature
(e.g., Darling-Hammond, 2017; Tatto & Hordern, 2017) and samples recent ones to
explore the relationship between theory and practice. This modest review reflects
the diverse ways in which the field has conceptualised preservice teachers’ active
and critical engagement with theory and practice, in contrast with that provided by
McIntyre (1993, p. 48).
The chapter ends with a reflection on the challenges that teacher educators
must confront if they attempt to engage with the turn to practice in teacher educa-
tion, namely whether it is possible and/or desirable to arrive at the conditions that
McIntyre (1993) identified as necessary to support practical theorising in teacher
preparation programmes:

1. The identification of a consensual body of ‘practical principles’ (p. 48) that

needs to be undertaken by schools of education (or what Elliot (1991) refers to
as a ‘practical science view of teacher education’).
2. The engagement of teacher educators in developing such essential ‘visions’ (p.
48) through their research.
3. Explicit acknowledgement and clear presentation of the different kinds of the-
oretical knowledge (or ‘disciplines of theorizing’) that are deemed essential
for student teachers to have access to within the limited constraints of initial
teacher education (p. 50).

Perspectives on the knowledge needed for teaching and how it is

to be acquired
Much has been written about the knowledge that is considered necessary for
­teaching. Large-scale international studies have uncovered what seems to be some
agreement, at least in ITE (Tatto et al., 2018b, 2020). Teachers need to know the
subjects they will teach and how to teach them to culturally diverse pupils, as well as
knowing how those subjects are structured and presented within the school curric-
ulum. They need to be well versed in general pedagogy and methods of assessment
and to have developed a series of skills and dispositions ranging from digital tech-
nology to engaging their pupils in emotional learning.The list goes on to reflect the
complexity and demands of teaching.
There is less agreement on the arrangements that would help teachers acquire
such knowledge, and there is very little systematic data on how well those arrange-
ments work. ITE is variable across the world and also within countries and may
include three- to five-year programmes, often encompassing a master’s degree,
shorter, one-year programmes, and very short training periods, along with support,
provided in various ways, when in schools. Regardless of where teachers obtain
34 Maria Teresa Tatto

their certification, concerns with the quality of teacher learning persist, ranging
from how well new teachers know their subject and how well they can teach it, to
issues with classroom management and with their ability to address the needs of an
academically and culturally diverse student community. One of the key challenges
entailed in understanding how to improve the preparation of teachers seems to
reside in lack of coherence in the provision and, more specifically, in the lack of
alignment between theory and practice (Tatto et al., 2018a).
Recently we have been witnessing a turn to practice in teacher education.
Scholars such as Korthagen et al. (2006) have suggested that traditional teacher
education places a stronger emphasis on conceptual knowledge (episteme) than on
knowing through experience (phronesis), and propose that learning to teach should
be grounded in experiences of practice – such calls have resonated with the educa-
tion community. Perhaps the scholar that best exemplifies deep thinking about this
move to practice is McIntyre who proposed an empirically-based model, centred
on the notion of practical theorising back in the early 1990s.
The notion of practical theorising as a particular approach to learning to teach
which occurs in partnership between universities and schools, helps focus the scope
of this chapter on the professional preparation of teachers occurring within such
partnerships. Other alternative ways of becoming a teacher do not allow the imple-
mentation of such an approach and are therefore not discussed in depth.

Contributions and limitations encountered in the international

research literature
To understand the contribution of the notion of practical theorising to the prepa-
ration of teachers, it is important to understand the general contours of the field
and why bringing together theory and practice has been so challenging and, at the
same time, essential.
Reviews of teacher education systems across the world exist, highlighting
approaches that have been followed by high performing systems such as Finland and
Singapore, among others (Darling-Hammond, 2017; Tatto, 2015). Such reviews are
useful in that they highlight the way systems are organised to prepare future teachers
and signal the important role that research plays in supporting reflective practice in
teacher education. This chapter takes that work into account and seeks to extend it
by engaging in a brief conceptual review of the international research literature in
the last five years. To find relevant literature, I used the extensive library system at
Arizona State University which draws from multiple databases and includes inter-
national publications. I used the following keywords: initial teacher education, the-
ory practice approaches and research. I restricted the scope of the search to full-text
online, peer-reviewed journals, looking for articles related to education and educa-
tional research in the period 2015–2021. The search generated more than 10,000
results organised by relevance – as per the search terms. Due to time and resource
limitations, I decided to look at a sample and read the first 50 entries looking
for empirical pieces that included detailed descriptions of approaches used by ITE
 An international perspective on practical theorising 35

programmes to ensure connections between theory and practice or that encouraged

pedagogical reasoning. I eliminated pieces that did not include evaluative evidence
of the programme’s success. I ended up with eight pieces. I did another pass on
Google Scholar and found some additional peer-reviewed published reports that
seemed relevant including some that had been published in the last ten years. Of
these pieces, only one article from 2010 describes in careful detail the approach used
in a way that would allow other teacher educators to replicate it, and provide evalu-
ation results and critical analysis of the possibilities and limitations of such approach
(Youngs & Bird, 2010). Overall, the approaches to bringing together theory and
practice in these pieces are varied – that is, there is no single recognised approach
that is seen as viable across the different programmes and contexts explored.
In England, Holland, Evans and Hawksley (2011) explored trainees’ perspectives
concerning how well schools developed the ‘theoretical aspects’ of their training.
Three routes preparing future secondary teachers formed part of this exploration.
Teach First and the Graduate Teaching Programme were school-based. The third
route was a university-based Postgraduate Certificate in Education (PGCE), within
which future teachers spend two ten-week blocks on teaching practice.Trainees were
asked whether studying theoretical issues in their training was important; yet what
was meant by theoretical issues, or by theory, was assumed, rather than defined. More
specific questions asked about theories related to behaviour management, learning
and teaching, the curriculum, aims and purposes of education, subject pedagogy and
social issues, with the subject mentor being the key person with whom these issues
were discussed. In general, the views of trainees varied, with Teach First trainees
valuing more the ‘role of theory’ to inform their practice while those of trainees on
the Graduate Teaching Programme and the PGCE were mixed. According to the
authors, many students who claimed to value ‘theory’ were not able to name any
theories. But perhaps the most important finding was that ‘no trainees referred to
the importance or value of using theory as a launch point for learning how to theo-
rize themselves’ (p. 8).The authors do not go into detail about what each route does
to facilitate the ‘school-based teacher’s understanding of the relationship between
theory and professional knowledge and its application in the classroom.’The authors
suggest increased resources for staff development (for the subject mentors, for exam-
ple) so that trainees can be encouraged to apply and develop theories grounded in
practice and to inform critical reflection and improvement (p. 19).
Marcondes, Leite and Ramos (2017) explored an approach that prioritises the
connection between theory, practice and research in ITE in Brazil. The authors
explain that the National Curricular Guidelines suggest that higher education insti-
tutions include several units dedicated to basic studies, subject area studies, seminars
and scientific projects, practice as a curricular component, theory-practice activities
and supervised practicum in each subject area. According to the authors, ‘school
professionals and student-teachers are expected to be able to analyse, investigate, try
out solutions and educational procedures for the observed and experienced practices
during their practicum’ (p. 333). The authors offer the example of the Government
Grant Programme for Initial Teacher Education that formed partnerships between
36 Maria Teresa Tatto

universities and schools where ‘teaching practice was the focus for investigation
considering the basic school teacher as a knowledge maker’ (p. 334). This particu-
lar programme attempted to connect academic and school knowledge by funding
‘teaching projects’ designed and proposed by each participating higher education
institution, which are then developed by student-teachers in public schools under
the supervision of both basic education teachers and university supervisors (teacher
educators). The student-teachers have the opportunity to ‘integrate theory with
practice from the very beginning of their university programmes’ since they may
take part in the Government Grant Programme from their first academic term
onwards, as well as having the opportunity to ‘experiment with teaching situa-
tions and environment in real contexts’ (p. 336). While the idea of bridging the
gap between theory and practice via research seems to be the impulse behind the
guidelines, there is no clarity about the actual process or about whether the process
has been successful. It is also not clear what is meant by theory, practice or research.
Goodnough, Falkenberg and MacDonald (2016) examined how theory-practice
relationships were conceptualised and enacted in a new one-year post-degree K-12
teacher preparation programme in Canada. The contribution of this piece is that
the authors do focus on the challenge that confronts the field; that is, the many
meanings of the terms theory and practice in ITE. According to the authors in this
new programme:

Teacher candidates complete a suite of core courses throughout three semes-

ters, addressing topics such as teaching and learning theories, inclusionary
practices, foundations of education, pedagogy, curriculum and assessment,
child development, and legal and social contexts of education, and practica
requiring 12 weeks in classrooms. Throughout the program, teacher candi-
dates complete a variety of seminars and a curriculum inquiry project that is
shared publicly at the end of the program. (pp. 8–9)

The authors uncovered an approach that fosters strong theory-practice relationships

including an ‘embedded practicum,’ a teaching and learning seminar whose pur-
pose is to connect university course content, school-based experiences and diverse
assessment and pedagogical approaches in courses, and reflection and inquiry by
teacher candidates (p. 11). A key finding is the importance of the embedded practi-
cum model which introduces candidates to school-based experiences as the authors
describe:

Following a three-day orientation at the university there is a two-week ses-

sion where teacher candidates become familiar with school and classroom
policies and procedures, are actively engaged in classroom activities under the
direction of a cooperating teacher, prepare instructional materials with the
cooperating teacher and/or other teachers, and complete guided reflections
based on their experiences. After this two-week experience, they return to
university coursework for four days, while still visiting a school for one day
 An international perspective on practical theorising 37

per week. The one-day experience is explicitly linked to a core program

course. Each teacher candidate, during the practicum, is supported by sev-
eral cooperating teachers, a university supervisor, and a school-based liaison
teacher who coordinates school-based activities for teacher candidates and
others involved in supporting the teacher candidates. At the latter part of the
first semester, teacher candidates complete a three-week practicum, paired
with one cooperating teacher [taking] more responsibility for teaching and
learning activities when compared to the initial practicum. In the next semes-
ter, teacher candidates continue course work at the university, as well as the
one-day per week in schools. In the latter part of this semester, teacher can-
didates complete a seven-week practicum. At this point, the teacher candidate
is expected to take responsibility for at least 50% of the teaching assignment
of the cooperating teacher.
(pp. 11–12)

The embedded practicum model was identified by all faculty (and by teacher can-
didates) as one of the key ways in which the programme supports and fosters strong
theory-practice relationships. ‘Because teacher candidates start school-based expe-
riences at the outset of the program and this continues throughout the program
weekly, faculty commented on how this enriches their courses and allows stronger
theory-practice relationships to be established’ (pp. 11–12).
While this programme seems to have been successful in accomplishing its goals,
the authors mention a series of challenges, including the establishment of a shared
vision for teacher education, being cognisant of teacher candidates’ needs, and the
importance of collaboration in the creation of a coherent teacher preparation pro-
gramme as an essential element in creating and fostering strong theory-practice rela-
tionships. This is an important piece in that it evaluates the strategies implemented
in the programme and also clarifies to a certain extent the faculty and staff views on
theory and practice relationships, namely, ‘in terms of theory, faculty referred to it
as “concepts, ideas, frameworks and formal knowledge needed to inform the doing
or practice” [and as] existing in a reciprocal relationship or as being “seamless” with
practice’ (p. 16).
In Hong Kong, Tang, Wong, Li and Cheng (2019) studied the degree to which
theory-practice links contribute to teacher competencies in a Bachelor of Education
course that uses a theory first approach to ITE. According to the authors, the cur-
riculum includes modules in the academic subject major, in the pedagogy major, in
education studies as well as minor/elective modules, modules in the Undergraduate
Core Curriculum (e.g., general education modules) and two blocks of fieldwork in
the primary and/or secondary education sectors each six to eight weeks in dura-
tion which take place in the latter half of the programme (p. 127). The authors
found positive associations between three factors defining professional competence
(competence in classroom teaching; in subject matter, pedagogical and educational
knowledge; and working in schools) and two factors regarding student-teachers’
engagement with the theory-practice link (theoretical knowledge as a guide for
38 Maria Teresa Tatto

professional decisions and a tool for reflection on practice; and practicalising theo-
retical knowledge – i.e., adapting theoretical knowledge to practice situations such
as addressing learners’ needs, being agentic in addressing the challenges of the con-
text and being versatile and integrating different aspects of learning) While the
authors recognise the importance of linking theory with practice, the study does
not get at the strategies that the programme, teachers and schools use to facilitate
theory and practice connections.
McGarr, O’Grady and Guilfoyle (2017) explored whether student-teachers’
acceptance or rejection of theory may be explained by whether they perceive the
authority of teacher educators as legitimate. The study was conducted within a
four-year concurrent teacher education course in the Republic of Ireland. This
concurrent course exposes student-teachers to degree content (subject specialist
knowledge) and education theory (lesson planning, behaviour management and
socio-political issues). According to the authors, in the early part of the course,
student-teachers explore classroom practice, while in the later stages, they explore
broader socio-political issues in a sequence that resembles that advocated by
McIntyre. The meaning of education theory was left for student-teachers to define
as well as its relevance to practice. The authors conclude that ‘if the goal of teacher
education is to develop critically engaged teachers, […] particularly in light of the
neoliberal reforms that aim to de-professionalise their roles, […] then perhaps stu-
dent-teachers’ opinions about educational theory [are] not as important as their
ability to reflect critically on all sources of information they encounter as emerging
professionals.’ (p. 59). This study provides an alternative angle from which to look at
the theory-practice link; however, there is no description of how the course sup-
ports student-teachers to connect theory and practice.
Nkambule and Mukeredzi (2017) explored preservice teachers’ professional
learning experiences during teaching practice in Acornhoek, rural Bushbuckridge
in South Africa as part of the Wits Student Rural Teaching Experience Project.This
project operates as a cohort model, within which a group of students are placed
in rural schools for residential practicum. To facilitate support to student-teachers,
the project developed partnerships between the university and primary and sec-
ondary schools in the area. The findings show that through group reflective discus-
sions within a professional learning community, preservice teachers experienced a
shift of mind concerning teaching in rural schools as they engaged in professional
thinking, learning and meaning-making.The challenges experienced as reported by
student-teachers, however, range from the unwillingness of mentors to be observed
and to work with student-teachers to a widespread lack of professionalism in relat-
ing to pupils. It is not clear how the partnerships were formed and whether univer-
sity-based members of the project and the schools shared the same understandings
when supporting student-teachers.
Von Esch and Kavanagh (2018) present a framework of adaptive expertise based
on the Japanese lesson study model (the studio day) to prepare classroom teachers
to teach English Learning students in the U.S. The model supports teacher educa-
tors and student-teachers in analysing such pupils’ understanding of mathematics
 An international perspective on practical theorising 39

concepts and lessons. While the model seems successful in facilitating dialogue
and reflection, it is not clear whether it supports general area teachers in success-
fully addressing the learning needs of their English Learning pupils, as teachers still
seemed to lack knowledge of pupils’ language and culture.This study is important as
it makes evident an additional layer of complexity in bridging theory and practice
that teachers need to address (language differences).
Youngs and Bird (2010) described two instructional assignments embedded
in university courses in a large research university in the U.S. The assignments or
instructional activities which are described in detail in this piece are designed to
support student-teachers during their practicum to ‘move toward mastery’ (p. 185).
While the purpose of the assignments is to support advanced secondary teaching
candidates to address instructional issues and engage in sophisticated pedagogical
reasoning, an additional purpose is to bring faculty together in the design of authen-
tic evaluative tools or assessments of teacher candidates’ learning and performance
as they get close to obtaining a teaching credential. This piece provides an excellent
example of teacher educators’ collaborative expertise in designing and creating the
context for student-teachers to bring together what they have learned in the pro-
gramme in the context of their practice in collaboration with partner schools.
Also in the U.S., Lampert et al. (2013) and McDonald, Kazemi and Kavanagh
(2013) have developed a model based on the notion of core teaching practices
to be mastered through learning cycles. According to the authors, the concept of
core practices is used to identify and explicitly focus novice teachers’ attention on
specific, recurring elements of classroom practice (such as eliciting and interpreting
students thinking, explaining and modelling content, using assessments or leading
a discussion, among others) that are central to the effective design and respon-
sive implementation of different instructional activities. The authors hope that this
model might become a field-wide tool for the organisation and implementation of
practice-based teacher education initiatives. While these core practices are generic,
several researchers have been working on developing subject-specific core practices
including Kazemi et al. (2016) on mathematics, and Peercy and Troyan (2017) on
English language learning.
In sum, there are several emerging and promising innovations in the field. Yet
in general, the field suffers from definitional problems and a lack of coherence on
the theories and practices that can help teachers achieve the purposes of education.
The insights from research seem to be limited by traditional understandings and
structures; that is, the spaces in which teachers are prepared can extend or limit the
possibilities of what teachers can learn and reveal a great deal about the conceptions
of teaching across contexts (Brooks, 2021; Hordern & Tatto, 2018).

The fragmented nature of the spaces where teachers learn

From the moment teacher education moved into higher education institutions,
three important learning spaces emerged and have persisted and become generalised
across systems. These three spaces have both facilitated the preparation of teachers
40 Maria Teresa Tatto

but have also served to contribute to an incoherent system. While some efforts at
coherence have been successful, the origins of the system exert enormous pressure
towards fragmentation. More recently a fourth space has also emerged and may help
support a more coherent system of teacher preparation.
The first space is the universities. These equip all individuals (including poten-
tial future teachers) with knowledge of the academic disciplines and may include
a subject specialisation (such as biology, mathematics, history and so on). Typically,
this space is not populated by education faculty, but by university professors who
teach these programmes in the disciplinary departments. Once the academic prepa-
ration is completed, many individuals continue their professional studies; some do
this in the same university (e.g., in concurrent programmes) and some in special-
ised schools (for instance schools of medicine or colleges/schools/departments of
education).
The second space is the professional graduate schools or faculties. Once future
teachers have finished their academic preparation, teacher preparation begins with
the study of subjects related to pedagogy and to schools and schooling, including
the curriculum, norms, purposes, regulations and roles. The prospective teachers are
introduced to theories of teaching and learning including those related to pedagogy
in general, to subject-specific pedagogy and to student thinking, among others.This
preparation is provided in education departments by educators, many of whom are
former teachers, who support future teachers in contextualising the knowledge of
the academic disciplines within the boundaries of the school curriculum for pupils
of different ages. It is also in this second space where future teachers learn foun-
dational subjects that closely apply to education, such as philosophy, psychology,
sociology and history. Such courses are typically taught, not by former teachers, but
by faculty whose knowledge represents an intersection of education and such foun-
dational academic disciplines. In some cases, the education and the foundational
faculty, while they may share the same physical space, function in two different
sub-spaces.
The separation between the first (university) and second spaces (professional
graduate school), while receiving less attention in the literature, represents what
can be an important gap in the preparation of teachers. In the U.S., the Carnegie
Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching has endeavoured to create collabo-
rative arrangements within universities where academic faculties and faculties of
education work together so that disciplinary knowledge can be tailored to support
knowledge of the subjects of the school curriculum for future teachers (e.g., in
some concurrent programs in the U.S. future teachers take the same mathemat-
ics courses as prospective engineering students). Despite these efforts, these spaces
remain separated.
The third space is schools, where the practicum or clinical practice introduces
future teachers to the world of practice. In contrast with the first space, the second
and third spaces require the formation of working partnerships between the teacher
educators in higher education institutions and the schools where teachers would
engage in teaching their first lessons with support from more experienced teachers
 An international perspective on practical theorising 41

and mentors. Education faculty or teacher educators are expected to support teach-
ers’ sense-making as they apply what they have learned in the first two spaces in
their practice, with the support of classroom teachers.While several approaches have
emerged that would allow the two worlds of the university teacher educators and
school teachers to be brought together, they tend to remain distinct and can often
collide with unhappy or unproductive consequences for the future teachers.
More recently, a fourth learning space has emerged that allows teachers more
time to learn from their practice by becoming engaged in action research or self-
study. The teacher as a researcher is typically accomplished as part of a master’s
degree programme (as in Finland) and, in many cases, has the happy effect of sup-
porting early career teachers in bringing the experiences and learnings gained in
the different spaces together to produce critical practice-based research that can be
used by teachers to improve and guide their practice.
The first space is usually experienced as part of a university undergraduate degree
while the second and third spaces may be part of the undergraduate degree or a
one-year graduate degree as in England (the PGCE). To be certified as a teacher,
several requirements need to be met.
These four spaces may or may not exist across systems in this manner or may
exist in a different sequence. For instance, some programmes in the U.S. and else-
where are experimenting by placing future teachers first in schools, followed by an
immersion period of education studies, and a return to schools for longer periods
and with more teaching responsibility. In Finland, as in other countries in Europe
after the Bologna agreement, future teachers need a master’s degree to become
qualified, after their academic and education preparation; here the emphasis is on
learning to research their practice once in their classroom. A recent international
study of policy, knowledge and practice in teacher education describes similar trends
elsewhere (Tatto & Menter, 2019).
Whatever the different arrangements, the existence of these four spaces of teach-
ing-learning has created important challenges for educators. In some cases, there has
been a successful integration of these spaces but in many cases, the field continues
to be fragmented. It is at this point where McIntyre’s practical theorising makes an
important contribution to the field.

The theory vs practice debate

Before engaging more fully with the theory-practice debate, and discussing the
practical theorising approach in detail, it is important to examine what is meant by
theory and what is meant by practice.
The dictionaries define theory as ‘a supposition or a system of ideas intended to
explain something, especially one based on general principles independent of the
thing to be explained’ and more specifically as a ‘set of principles on which the prac-
tice of an activity is based’ (OUP, 2021). Practice is defined as ‘the actual application
or use of an idea, belief, or method, as opposed to theories relating to it’ (OUP,
2021). Thus, even in the dictionaries, these two concepts are seen as a dichotomy.
42 Maria Teresa Tatto

The words ‘in practice’ are used to refer to reality as ‘what happens as opposed to
what is meant or believed to happen’ (OUP, 2021).
An important question is whether the issue is about the connection between
policy and practice or whether this formulation of the problem is actually distract-
ing us from something of more urgent and immediate concern such as the many
different meanings of ‘theory’ which when considered together reveal that there is
not a coherent consensual body of ‘practical principles’ and that the field continues
to struggle to agree on the content and pedagogy of teacher education.

The notion of practical theorising

McIntyre’s notion of practical theorising emerged in a particular context – the
University of Oxford – which offers a full-time one-year PGCE, a teaching qual-
ification that allows someone with a degree to teach in a state school. The course
prepares secondary school teachers and follows an internship model (the Oxford
Internship Scheme) which requires a truly collaborative partnership between the
university and the schools, who have joint responsibility for the planning, delivery
and assessment of the curriculum and professional development programmes. The
course emerged in the late 1980s as an important response to a very real problem
of university domination of ITE and a lack of connection to school practice. It
should be noted, however, that soon afterwards, England saw the introduction of
mandated ITE partnerships between universities and schools, with the government
stipulating for the first time exactly how long student-teachers on a one-year PGCE
programme should spend in their placement schools (set at 24 weeks for secondary
teachers), thus significantly shifting the balance in what had initially been planned as
a true partnership. (More radical change has followed in the last ten years with the
introduction of the School Direct1 model tipping the balance much more strongly
towards school-led provision.)
The deliberate pursuit of a true balanced partnership between higher education
institutions and schools makes the concept of practical theorising as defined by
McIntyre unique, and as such, it may be challenging to generalise to other contexts.
For instance, while an important concern in the field is the need for future teach-
ers at the start of ITE to master the subject they will teach (an acute need among
non-subject specialist primary education teachers), the future teachers within
Internship are preparing to teach at the secondary level, and when they embark on
the course, they already possess a strong knowledge of the subject they will teach.
Consequently, the first, second and third spaces of teaching-learning are clearly
defined.
Given this context, McIntyre’s work can be seen as an important effort to pre-
pare professionals able to implement inquiry-based teaching in a short time and as
an authentic attempt to create a true partnership within ITE.The process of prepar-
ing inquiry-based teachers requires teachers to learn in two significant sites of social
development – the schools and the university, drawing together scholarship and
practice within their own evolving learning experience (Tatto et al., 2018a). This
 An international perspective on practical theorising 43

is not something that can be learned quickly, within a short course. A significant
period of learning, observation and mentoring practice is needed.
McIntyre (1993) suggests that learning to teach occurs at three levels (a) tech-
nical; (b) practical; (c) critical or emancipatory. During the technical phase, future
teachers are typically concerned with the attainment of short-term goals or mini-
mum standards of classroom competence that would qualify them as teachers, such
as ‘achieving and maintaining classroom order and purposeful activity, gaining pupils
attention and interest, ensuring that pupils know what they are expected to do
and that they understand the content of the lessons’ (p. 45). While lesson planning
is emphasised, in programmes that pursue inquiry-based teaching or research-in-
formed practice, the means to attain these goals are not prescribed as the context and
the personal skills and commitments of the individual teachers mediate this process.
According to McIntyre, not until this phase is completed satisfactorily are teachers
asked to concentrate on learning to evaluate and develop their teaching practice.
During the practical phase, student-teachers are directed towards developing
their ability to: ‘articulate and justify their criteria for evaluating self-selected aspects
of their teaching, to use these criteria through collecting and interpreting appro-
priate evidence, and explore useful ways of developing their teaching in the light
of these self-evaluations,’; to do so, McIntyre points out, ‘student teachers need to
engage in wider theorizing about, for example, the nature of their subjects, their stu-
dents’ long-term learning processes and the wider purposes of schooling.’ (p. 45) A
key idea here is that student-teachers must feel competent and have ‘learned enough
about the complexities of classroom teaching to be able to meaningfully attempt
to relate the classroom practice to their educational values’ (p. 45). In contrast with
more recent approaches (McDonald et al., 2013), McIntyre does not explicitly sug-
gest providing instructional activities that may help scaffold the application of theo-
retical knowledge to intended student-teacher practices, although examples of such
activities are discussed in Section 3 of this volume. It may also be assumed that the
novice teachers and their mentors design this level of preparation.
The third level called critical or emancipatory is at the core of inquiry-based
teaching. According to McIntyre, what is considered important here is that teachers
understand how their work which is shaped by institutional and social structures
and ideologies

can serve interests different from and sometimes in conflict with those of the
pupils whom they are teaching; and that they should be helped to begin to
search for strategies through which, individually and collectively, they can
contest the processes and the ideologies of schooling.
(p. 46)

In this phase, McIntyre continues,

[t]ensions between practices found in the schools and the abstract analysis and
theoretical ideals studied at university and in the literature are deliberately
44 Maria Teresa Tatto

exploited so that both theory and practice can be critically examined. It is

through theorizing about others’ practices that student teachers are helped
to gain a critical perspective on the contexts within which they are working
[…] and based on such understanding they are encouraged to introduce this
reflectivity on their practices.
(p. 47)

According to McIntyre,

in developing a repertoire of skills, the student teacher’s success is likely to

depend both on the deliberate use of ideas from a wide variety of sources, and
also on theorizing about these ideas concerning a range of criteria, including
some at the practical and critical levels.
(p. 45)

The knowledge needed for teaching

To achieve such a high standard of teaching, McIntyre (1993) recognises the vast
amounts of knowledge required, especially in relation to what we call the founda-
tions (philosophy, psychology, sociology, etc.), but he also considers the limited time
available to prepare teachers. He suggests that teacher education courses should
be concerned with helping future teachers ‘to understand, to theorize about, and
especially to evaluate various suggestions for practice’ (p. 49). Thus, as far as the role
of the foundation disciplines is concerned, the most helpful ideas from theoretical
and research work on education need to be made accessible. While introducing
student-teachers to helpful ideas they are also introduced to a ‘kind of disciplined
theorizing about practice’ which will continue to be valuable in their professional
lives (p. 49).

The role of theory

McIntyre (1993) argues that there are two main theoretical disciplines for stu-
dent-teachers to learn in higher education and that these should be included as
explicit theoretical content at early stages within teacher education courses as a
foundation for teachers’ future theorising. The first is conceptual analysis2 which is
concerned with elucidating the meaning and questioning the meaningfulness of
concepts and assertions, the hidden assumptions on which arguments depend and
the value judgements implicit in arguments. The second is the use of theory developed
from empirical research relevant to a suggested practice (e.g., the effectiveness of the
practice for achieving short- and long-term goals). This is an important observa-
tion, especially considering that the philosophy of education and learning to do
research are rarely taught in teacher preparation programmes – at least that is the
case in the U.S.
 An international perspective on practical theorising 45

The role of action research

Action research is seen as an essential activity in teacher education, which should
culminate in suggestions for practice in learning to teach and should be evalu-
ated by educators and student-teachers mainly through discussion of research-based
knowledge about teachers’ thinking, classroom practice and learning. Both teacher
educators (in universities and schools) and future teachers must have a shared under-
standing about ‘the nature of the knowledge which it will be useful to develop and
about how it may be best developed.’ (p. 51).

The integration with practice and the role of a core curriculum

Finally, McIntyre (1993) argues that the integration of theory and practice in ITE
depends on having a ‘core curriculum’ negotiated around the tasks of teaching that
are agreed to be the most important by both university and school educators (p. 49).
Consequently, the development of a core curriculum is likely to be the essential
element in McIntyre’s proposal.

Additional approaches
Beyond McIntyre, in the U.S., there has been a healthy exchange of ideas around
the areas that should be emphasised in teacher education, between types of knowl-
edge (or what some call theory) and teacher actions or practices. This exchange,
as Kennedy (2016) argues, has been ongoing for several decades. The recent turn
to practice in teacher education has prompted new discussion and proposals to
consider the ‘core’ practices that future teachers should learn, a move that resem-
bles the lists of practices that originated after the teacher effectiveness drive in the
1960–1970s. While thinking about essential practices that may be useful, Kennedy
(2016) argues against the increasing focus on lists of core practices to character-
ise successful teaching and inform teacher education. Instead, she proposes that
learning teaching must be organised according to the purposes of education. She
proposes that there are five ‘universal goals’ (or purposes) of teaching which can
serve to organise [core] practices in teacher education. These goals of teaching as
articulated by Kennedy support and extend McIntyre’s conceptions. These include
‘portraying curriculum content in a way that enables young minds to compre-
hend it; enlisting student participation, exposing students’ thinking at the moment,
containing student behaviour, all of this in a way that is consistent with teachers’
needs in constructing a conducive teaching and learning environment (ethical/
moral dimension)’ (p. 10–14). Other scholars have developed a collaborative that
continues to create a set of resources for teachers that explain how to enact what
they call high leverage practices.3 These approaches allow fewer degrees of freedom
to schools and mentors than recommended by McIntyre but seems to be very pop-
ular among U.S. teacher educators.
46 Maria Teresa Tatto

The conclusion briefly examines the challenges and possibilities in McIntyre’s

three propositions that may support future teachers’ practical theorising in light of
what was learned from the analysis in this chapter.

Conclusion
The turn to practice in teacher education is gaining momentum in some cases as a
reaction against traditional teacher education, and others as several innovations are
tested. This does not mean however an abandonment of theory or of teacher edu-
cation located within higher education institutions – as has become very clear after
the COVID-19 pandemic, well-prepared professional teachers are vital. It rather
means that bodies of knowledge that are essential to inform teachers’ judgement
and understandings still need to be identified, defined and implemented. It also
means that the arrangement and connections of the spaces where teachers learn
may need to be re-imagined. Much has been learned including McIntyre’s model
of practical theorising, the work on teacher knowledge as explained by Shulman
and the work on core practices developed by the teaching works collaborative and
through Kennedy’s framework constructed around the purposes of education.
As the brief review of the literature conducted for this chapter shows, there is
much variability in the field, at a time when there is a need for unity and collabo-
rative work. At this point, it is important to go back to the conditions for advance-
ment that McIntyre pointed out. There is an urgent need to identify and adopt
a consensual body of practical principles that must be undertaken by schools of
education.The innovations, including those discussed in this chapter, provide a solid
point of departure. McIntyre’s call for teacher educators to develop such visions
through rigorous research also needs to be heeded to provide evidence of how well
these innovations help future teachers to enact practices that help culturally and
learning diverse students engage in the breadth and depth of experiences that are
needed to become a flourishing, ethical human being. In addition to identifying a
consensual body of practical principles and developing research around the imple-
mentation of such principles, it is important to make explicit the different types of
theoretical knowledge or what McIntyre calls the ‘disciplines of theorizing’ that
should be made available to student-teachers during their preparation.

Notes
1 The School Direct model, which has, according to Furlong (2013) threatened the univer-
sity project of teacher education, gave schools control of large numbers of training places,
allowing them to recruit applicants directly and to decide which university provider they
would work with. Fees for the ITE programme – which had previously been paid to the
university and then shared with partner schools – are, within the School Direct model,
paid to the schools, with a portion passed on the universities with which they have cho-
sen to collaborate.
2 See, for example, https://philpapers.org/browse/conceptual-analysis and https://lib-
guides.usc.edu/humanitiesresearch/conceptual
3 See Teaching works resource library (n.d.). https://library.teachingworks.org/curriculum-
resources/high-leverage-practices/
 An international perspective on practical theorising 47

References
Brooks, C. (2021). Initial Teacher Education at Scale: Quality Conundrums. Abingdon: Routledge.
Darling-Hammond, L. (2017). Teacher education around the world: What can we learn from
international practice? European Journal of Teacher Education, 40(3), 291–309.
Elliot, J. (1991). Three perspectives on coherence and continuity in teacher education, paper
prepared for UCET Annual Conference, November, University of East Anglia.
Furlong, J. 2013. Education: An Anatomy of the Discipline: Rescuing the University Project?
Abingdon: Routledge.
Goodnough, K., Falkenberg, T., & MacDonald, R. (2016). Examining the nature of theory–
practice relationships in initial teacher education: A Canadian case study. Canadian Journal
of Education, 39(1), 1–28.
Holland, M., Evans, A., & Hawksley, F. (2011, August). International perspectives on the t­heory -
practice divide in secondary initial teacher education. [Paper presentation]. Association of Teacher
Educators in Europe, Latvia. Retrieved from http://shura.shu.ac.uk/information.html
Hordern, J. & Tatto, M. T. (2018). Conceptions of teaching and educational knowledge
requirements. Oxford Review of Education, 44(6), 686–701.
Kazemi, E., Ghousseini, H., Cunard, A., & Turrou, A. C. (2016). Getting inside rehearsals:
Insights from teacher educators to support work on complex practice. Journal of Teacher
Education, 67(1), 18–31.
Kennedy, M. (2016). Parsing the practice of teaching. Journal of Teacher Education, 67(1),
6–17.
Korthagn, F., Loughran, J. & Russell,T. (2006). Developing fundamental principles for teacher
education programs and practices. Teaching and Teacher Education, 22(8), 1020–1041.
Lampert, M., Franke, M. L., Kazemi, E., Ghousseini, H., Turrou, A. C., Beasley, H., & Crowe,
K. (2013). Keeping it complex: Using rehearsals to support novice teacher learning of
ambitious teaching. Journal of Teacher Education, 64(3), 226–243.
Marcondes, M. I., Leite, V. F. A., & Ramos, R. K. (2017). Theory, practice and research in
initial teacher education in Brazil: Challenges and alternatives. European Journal of Teacher
Education, 40(3), 326–341.
McDonald, M., Kazemi, E., & Kavanagh, S. S. (2013). Core practices and pedagogies of
teacher education: A call for a common language and collective activity. Journal of Teacher
Education, 64(5) 378–386.
McGarr, O., O’Grady, E., & Guilfoyle, L. (2017). Exploring the theory-practice gap in initial
teacher education: Moving beyond questions of relevance to issues of power and author-
ity. Journal of Education for Teaching, 43(1), 48–60.
McIntyre, D. (1993). Theory, theorizing and reflection in initial teacher education. In J.
Calderhead & P. Gates (Eds.), Conceptualising Reflection in Teacher Development. London:
Falmer Press, 39–52.
Nkambule, T. & Mukeredzi, T. G. (2017). Pre-service teachers’ professional learning experi-
ences during rural teaching practice in Acornhoek, Mpumalanga Province. South Africa
Journal of Education, 37 (3), 1–9.
OUP (2021). Definitions of Theory [online]. Oxford University Press. Retrieved from https://
www.lexico.com/definition/
Oxford University Press (2021). Definitions of Practice [online]. Oxford University Press.
Retrieved from https://www.lexico.com/definition/
Peercy, M. M. & Troyan, F. J. (2017). Making transparent the challenges of developing a prac-
tice-based pedagogy of teacher education. Teaching and Teacher Education, 61, 26–36.
Shulman, L. S. (1986). Those who understand: knowledge growth in teaching. Educational
Researcher, 1(2), 4–14.
48 Maria Teresa Tatto

Tang, S. Y. F., Wong, A. K. Y., Li, D. D. Y., & Cheng, M. M. H. (2019). Examining student
teachers’ engagement with the theory-practice link in initial teacher education. Journal of
Education for Teaching, 45(2), 123–139.
Tatto, M. T. (1998). The influence of teacher education on teachers’ beliefs about purposes of
education, roles and practice. Journal of Teacher Education, 49(1), 66–77.
Tatto, M.T. (2015). The role of research in the policy and practice of quality teacher educa-
tion: An international review. Oxford Review of Education, 41 (2), 171–201.
Tatto, M. T. & Hordern, J. (2017). The configuration of teacher education as a profes-
sional field of practice: A comparative study of mathematics. In J. Furlong & G. Whitty
(Eds.), Knowledge and the Study of Education: An International Exploration. Oxford: Oxford
Symposium Books, 255–274.
Tatto, M. T., Burn, K., Menter, I., Mutton, T., & Thompson, I. (2018a). Learning to Teach in
England and the United States:The Evolution of Policy and Practice. Abingdon: Routledge.
Tatto, M. T. & Menter I. (Eds.). (2019). Knowledge, Policy and Practice in Learning to Teach: A
Cross-National Study. London: Bloomsbury Academic.
Tatto, M. T., Rodriguez, M., Reckase, M., Smith, W, Bankov, K., & Pippin, J. (2020). The
First Five Years of Teaching Mathematics (FIRSTMATH): Concepts, Methods and Strategies for
Comparative International Research. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer.
Tatto, M.T., Rodriguez, M., Smith,W., Reckase, M., & Bankov, K. (Eds.) (2018b). Exploring the
Mathematics Education of Teachers using TEDS-M Data. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer.
Teaching works resource library (n.d.).https://library.teachingworks.org/curriculum-resources/
high-leverage-practices/
Von Esch, K. S. & Kavanagh, S. S. (2018). Preparing mainstream classroom teachers of English
learner students: Grounding practice-based designs for teacher learning in theories of
adaptive expertise development. Journal of Teacher Education, 69(3), 239–251.
Youngs, P. & Bird, T. (2010). Using embedded assessments to promote pedagogical reasoning
among secondary teaching candidates. Teaching and Teacher Education, 26(2), 185–198.
SECTION 2

Negotiating the challenges

of practical theorising for
beginning teachers
3
PRACTICAL THEORISING IN
LEARNING TO TEACH HISTORY
A shifting process of negotiation

Jason Todd, Eleanor Thomas and Chloe Bateman

Introduction
Donald McIntyre’s (1990, 1993, 1995) articulation of the process of practical theo-
rising in the Oxford Student Internship Scheme acknowledged the importance of
reflection as an essential element of teacher development but challenged its appro-
priateness as a model for preservice teachers’ learning, given the limitations of their
experience and the range of other sources from which they could usefully learn.
McIntyre’s conception of the process was a dynamic one, in which the nature of the
issues about which preservice teachers theorised was expected to change over the
course of their initial training – initially technical and practical, but with increas-
ing attention given to more ‘emancipatory’ considerations. The demands of such
a process were recognised from the scheme’s inception, with Paul Hirst (1990) in
particular raising important questions about whether it was appropriate to ask so
much of beginners. While this question seems more pertinent than ever, given the
precarious context of teacher recruitment and retention, it is equally important to
ask how teacher educators, working in the diverse contexts of school and university,
each constrained by established policies and subject to particular institutional pres-
sures, navigate the demands that nurturing such a process entails.
This chapter adopts an auto-ethnographic approach to exploring this question
within the Oxford Internship Scheme, drawing on reflective accounts of the pro-
cess of practical theorising within the history curriculum as experienced by a sub-
ject-based mentor and a student-teacher. Both were invited to begin by reviewing
McIntyre’s elaboration of the process, his dialogue with Hirst and to reflect on the
following questions in light of their experience over the course of an academic year:
• What did the scheme’s commitment to the process of practical theorising mean
for my practice as a student-teacher/mentor/over the course of the PGCE year?

DOI: 10.4324/9781003183945-6
52 Jason Todd et al.

• What were the challenges that I encountered and how did I negotiate them?
• In light of this experience, what is the value of practical theorising as a model
for beginning teachers’ professional learning?

A commentary provided by the curriculum tutor acts as a conclusion. The inclu-

sion of the three different perspectives, with particular emphasis on the process as it
was experienced over time, allows us to explore whether and how the focus of the
theorising shifted between the technical, the practical and the critical and to con-
sider the nature of the relational work involved in negotiating inevitable tensions
or conflict. The reflection by the student-teacher, in particular, also sheds light on
the kinds of foundation established by the process for continued learning as an early
career teacher.

History curriculum programme context

Hagger and McIntyre (2006) highlighted how much of the important practical
work in relation to learning to teach has ‘to be done in schools’ (p. 60) with the
danger that the ‘theoretical’ work of the university becomes ‘detached’ from this
‘practical world of schools’. For them, an important part of reconciling this ten-
sion is to clarify the contributions made by different partners, recognising how
school-based ITE is heavily dependent on the willingness of experienced teachers,
especially school-based subject mentors, in ‘guiding and supporting the learning of
student teachers in schools’ (Hagger & McIntyre, 2006, p. 168).
The history PGCE programme at Oxford is structured around a number of
key themes. The first is ‘preconceptions’, seeking to engage student-teachers’ prior
assumptions as any ‘new understandings are constructed on a foundation of existing
understandings and experiences’ (Donovan & Bransford, 2005, p. 4). This includes
consideration of their prior understanding of history as a discipline, but also their
thinking about the teaching and learning of history in schools. Other themes include
the ‘context of history teaching’ that supports student-teachers to orient themselves
in relation to the national curriculum and examination options but also to historicise
the teaching of history (Cannadine et al., 2011; Keating & Sheldon, 2011). The main
theme of the first term is ‘planning for learning’, which is structured in relation to the
second-order concepts and processes of historical enquiry that shape the construction
and form of historical knowledge. In addition, since teaching is fundamentally a pro-
cess of mediation between students and historical knowledge, curriculum tutors also
focus considerable attention on the range of students with whom the student-teachers
will be working. The first term ends by looking at ‘responsive teaching’ and ‘evalua-
tion’ to explore how the student-teachers check and evaluate their plans for learning,
focusing attention at specific times on different ways in which to evaluate the students’
learning, including formal assessment, and so review the effectiveness of their practice.
A key facet of the learning, in relation to each of the themes, is encouraging
the student-teachers to draw on a range of sources for their learning; from their
university-based tutors, their readings, their school-based mentors and their own
 Practical theorising in learning to teach history 53

practice. This includes a number of school-based tasks that link to the universi-
ty-based programme. Such tasks offers scope for the student-teachers to reconcile
tensions across settings, in particular using their own practice to try out ideas that
they think are important, and subject them to critical evaluation in the context of
their specific placement.
Nonetheless, the implementation of this programme across two settings – the
university and the school – presents a number of challenges. Dividing the pro-
gramme into themes and weekly historical concepts is relatively straightforward at
the university: there is time and scope in these sessions to ask critical questions, but
there remains the risk of artificiality and distortion. While at school, implementing
the programme is more complex: it can be harder to ask critical questions. So, while
school provides an authentic context for exploring ideas, it requires a commitment
to rational analysis by both the student-teacher and the mentor.
Underpinning the thematic approach is a commitment, therefore, for ‘looking for
attractive ideas for practice’ from a variety of sources,‘and subjecting these ideas to crit-
ical examination’ (Hagger & McIntyre, 2006, p. 58). It is an approach that needs careful
modelling. One of the first activities subject tutors conduct with student-teachers
before they visit their placement school, is to talk through three planned approaches
to the same substantive historical content: ‘Was Britain alone in 1940?’
The point here is not to favour one approach over another, but to begin to iden-
tify criteria that the student-teachers can use to subject ideas to critical examination.
Some of these will be practical in nature, related to issues of time and resources, but
will also consider the demands being made of the student-teachers. Also implicated
are students and the specifics of the contexts of their placement school. A final set
of criteria relates to a consideration of the purposes of history education in schools,
closely linked to the programme’s first theme of preconceptions. Tutors are inviting
the student-teachers to think about the values and assumptions embedded in these
three approaches but also what their reflections reveal about their own values.
While this initial modelling is informed by McIntyre’s three levels of ­theorising –­
from technical and practical to emancipatory – it does not presume that this is sufficient.
As McIntyre (1993) suggests, student-teachers have limited experience of constructing
hypotheses for action and will need to access useful ideas as part of an ongoing process
of subjecting these to scrutiny. In particular, he suggests that reflection on their practice
is perhaps not the best place to start in order to ‘contest the processes and ideologies
of schooling’ (McIntyre, 1993, p. 46). More emancipatory theorising, about wider
ethical, social and political issues, requires mentor and student-teacher to commit to
a process of experimentation matched by a commitment by university-based col-
leagues to ‘making available to our students’ theoretical knowledge which they will
mostly, with refinement, be able to usefully assimilate to their professional thinking’
(McIntyre, 1993, p. 41). This is a twin process that must be sustained in partnership
across the duration of the course and inevitably beyond, given the shifting nature
of education.
The second curricular assignment offers a more sustained and in-depth approach
to practical theorising. It gives the student-teacher the scope to examine the ideas
54 Jason Todd et al.

to which they are most attached and the core ideas embedded in the practices of
the placement school. Over an 18-week period, they agree a specific historical con-
cept or process with which to plan a sequence of lessons with their school-based
mentor. With the guidance of the mentor, they identify a specific class and initially
investigate the students’ current ideas, understandings, practice and difficulties in
relation to their chosen focus. Alongside this, they conduct a review of relevant
research-based and professional literature, outlining typical preconceptions students
might have, with the focus on different models of progression and suggestions for
activities and strategies that might enable progress. Both these elements contribute
to a teaching intervention during which the student-teacher collects evidence to
help evaluate their teaching but also to explain the contexts they are working in and
the ideas they have explored.
The above offers a small exemplification of the ways in which the history PGCE
programme has been informed by the ideas of practical theorising. However, Hirst’s
(1990) questions and challenges regarding practical theorising remain ever more
pertinent today. The auto-ethnographic sketches below help to clarify different
partners’ distinctive roles and relationships and what is required of them. In par-
ticular, what demands the ‘open-ended’ nature of the process of practical theoris-
ing places on the student-teacher; especially the challenge of reconciling personal
judgements based on practical theorising that may be at odds with more clearly and
narrowly identified ideas regarding teacher professionalism and practice.

A mentor’s perspective
My role as a school-based subject mentor is very much informed by my experiences
as a preservice teacher on the Cambridge Secondary History PGCE, where I was
exposed to historical rigour, theoretical reflection, practical training and outstanding
mentoring. In particular, I valued the role of two dedicated school-based mentors
who were genuinely concerned about my progress as a preservice teacher.
Fundamental to the process of practical theorising is the idea that practice and
theory are bound together, and that the relationship between school, university and
student-teacher is vital. Internship recognises the complexity of classroom teaching
and the changing dynamics of a relationship between mentor and student-teacher.
Mentors have a huge responsibility. The numerous roles and guises a mentor must
adopt include providing emotional and professional support, being role models,
observers and problem solvers (Hall et al., 2008; Zelditch, 1990). As such, I take my
role of mentoring student-teachers very seriously. I am very much in a constructive
and fluid dialogue with student-teachers; the mentoring relationship develops over
an extended period, during which a student-teacher’s needs and the nature of my
relationship with them tend to change. I try to be aware of these changes and vary
the degree and type of attention, advice and encouragement that I provide.
McIntyre’s (1993) three different levels of theorising and reflection inform my
mentoring of student-teachers within school. In the initial stages of Internship, my
focus as a mentor is very much on supporting student-teachers in gaining basic
 Practical theorising in learning to teach history 55

professional competence and negotiating the mechanics of teaching. There are

clear criteria that student-teachers must meet, including achieving and maintaining
classroom order and purposeful activity, gaining students’ attention and interest and
ensuring students know what they are expected to do and understand (McIntyre,
1993). Working within the school’s ethos and culture, I help student-teachers to
develop a repertoire of strategies to achieve these desired effects, directly linking
their theoretical ideas gained from a wide variety of sources, including seminars,
workshops and wider reading, to their practical outcomes in school. I also put
significant emphasis on planning for learning in the early stages of the course.
Through observations of other experienced teachers, their initial teaching and
our d­ iscussions, student-teachers have a range of opportunities to explore the sec-
ond-order ­concepts and processes of historical enquiry in depth. Student-teachers
begin to wrestle with the practicalities of planning lessons; making conscious
decisions about who will do what and how within the given time of the lesson,
articulating precise objectives and linking these to desired outcomes or tasks. The
mentoring strategy of collaborative planning and team-teaching with student-­
teachers at this stage can provide the environment in which they feel empowered
to make these decisions.
During this early stage of the PGCE course, I invest considerable time ensuring
that student-teachers understand the rationale for activities they are being asked
to complete. I encourage them to take their theoretical discussions and test the
ideas in their planning and teaching. For example, early in the course, when stu-
dent-teachers are also in the university for two or three days each week, they spend
time completing wider reading and discussing effective planning for teaching the
second-order concept of cause and consequence with their fellow student-teachers
and subject tutors. In mentor meetings, we then discuss what aspects of causation
students find hard to decipher, and what specific strategies, examples and analogies
we use to help understanding; for example, using causal paperchains to enable Year
9 students to wrestle with the relative importance of the causes of the First World
War. Student-teachers are then given an opportunity to test these theoretical ideas
in practice; for example, by teaching a Year 7 causation lesson sequence on why
William won the Battle of Hastings. Through evaluation and reflection on the les-
son, the student-teacher may then go onto re-plan the lesson that either one of us
– or both of us – may teach. Through this structured framework, student-teachers
develop the confidence to begin taking risks in testing knowledge gained from
diverse sources and subjecting them to critical evaluation.
I guide student-teachers to begin to cultivate the skills of habitual reflection
through evaluation of their own teaching. During observations and evaluation dis-
cussions at this stage, I start to identify and discuss their strengths and weaknesses
and help them to take these into account in their future planning and teaching.
Student-teachers are given clear targets for their learning on a regular basis, with
appropriate opportunities and suggestions for specific strategies that will enable
them to work towards these targets. We explore how they can check and evaluate
their plans for learning, how they can effectively evaluate the students’ learning,
56 Jason Todd et al.

including formal assessment, and so review the effectiveness of their teaching prac-
tice. This also links into student-teachers’ second curricular assignment, which is
designed to shift their focus from their own teaching to students’ learning. This
assignment really has practical theorising at its heart as student-teachers shift from
considering stand-alone lessons to getting to grips with the complexities of medi-
um-term planning. Student-teachers choose the scope of their investigation, linking
it, with mentor guidance, directly to the school context.We then collectively evalu-
ate this sequence and the student-teachers consider the implications for their future
practice. This process is thought-provoking for both mentors and student-teachers
and results in some exceptional work: we currently still teach lesson sequences
developed by student-teachers as part of their second curriculum assignments in
our Key Stage 3 schemes of learning.
Over the course of the first school placement, there is a clear shift once stu-
dent-teachers are satisfied that they have demonstrated basic competence. At this
point, they are usually considerably more prepared to be self-developing teachers
who concentrate on learning to evaluate and develop their own teaching. There is
also a tangible shift from what it means to be a teacher to a history teacher. My real
emphasis here, as a mentor, is in supporting student-teachers in embedding the habits
of reflection; they should begin to direct the evaluation of their own lessons, drawing
on an appropriate range of criteria and sources of evidence. By the second placement,
I would expect student-teachers to be establishing their own developmental priori-
ties and the ways in which these might be addressed. For example, a student-teacher
may have identified working with other adults, whether parents, teaching assistants
or members of the pastoral team, as a particular area of development. I then support
the student-teacher in looking at theoretical and practical learning opportunities
that could help them address these targets. One particular student-teacher had read
extensively about the impact of teaching assistants (Russell et al., 2013), examined
the Education Endowment Foundation’s (EEF) recommendations about effective
use of teaching assistants and spoken at length with the school SENCO and several
teaching assistants. The student-teacher then took these theoretical ideas and tested
them in practice by trialling numerous ways of working effectively with teaching
assistants in the history classroom.The student-teacher was then able to consider the
implications of this for their future practice and how they might establish positive
working relationships with their teaching assistants in their NQT year.

What were the challenges that I encountered and how did I negotiate
them?
A critical challenge that I encounter in the course of the Internship year is sup-
porting student-teachers in navigating the often-conflicting roles of teaching,
learning and being a student. Husbands identified that barriers are frequently con-
structed ‘between different sites of learning – between library, seminar and class-
room’ (Husbands, 2011, p. 94). Student-teachers can often feel as though they are
being pulled in different directions: they have to navigate their own initial beliefs
 Practical theorising in learning to teach history 57

and ideals about why they have entered into the teaching profession, the ‘contrasts
between the way things are done in school and how they imagined things would
be done’ (Hagger & McIntyre, 2006, p. 59), as well as testing the theoretical ideas
that they have gained from their curriculum days and wider reading. This challenge
can be tackled in a number of ways, but primarily by ensuring that theory, practice
and reflection remain at the core of all conversations and activities that I engage
in with the student-teachers. It is necessary to ensure that student-teachers have
a keen understanding of the rationale for why they are engaging in the various
school-based tasks and curriculum assignments that they carry out in school. A
good example of developing this understanding is the theoretical discussion that
student-teachers have with their curriculum tutors about the statutory requirements
of the current History National Curriculum, and for GCSE and A-level specifica-
tions. We also discuss the implications of these requirements in school; the impact
that time and resourcing can have and the decisions teachers have to make regarding
what to teach and when.The student-teachers will then apply this understanding in
practice when planning lessons to meet particular requirements – and encounter-
ing for themselves the time constraints posed by the framework of the current 9-1
GCSE syllabus.1
The level of support and challenge that each student-teacher requires can vary
considerably and this can pose its own challenges when juggling the demands of
day-to-day school life. Each student-teacher enters into the school environment
with their own preconceptions and ideals and has to grapple with various intel-
lectual, practical, social and emotional problems which can be very different from
student-teacher to student-teacher. Internship is very much tailored to provide indi-
vidualised support. As a mentor, I endeavour to get to know each individual stu-
dent-teacher and recognise that there is no precise formula for good mentoring. In
my experience, the quality of communication with university-based subject tutors,
school-based professional tutors and other mentors within Internship provides the
bedrock of ensuring appropriate support for student-teachers, by allowing consist-
ency in approaches within both the school and university setting. Mentor meetings
provide an opportunity for me to regularly check in and assess the needs of each
student-teacher and give ample opportunity for discussion. These discussions can
range from high-level theoretical thinking about particular substantive concepts to
whether a student-teacher is coping with their workload and getting enough sleep.
Student-teachers have at least four visits in school from their subject tutor during
the course of the Internship, which gives us the necessary time to discuss their
­progress with them, and the strategies needed to enhance this.
The wider historical community also generates debate, ideas and research into
which both mentors and student-teachers can enter.The Historical Association’s sec-
ondary journal Teaching History’s regular features ‘What’s the Wisdom On’ and ‘New,
Novice or Nervous’ provide an insight into key articles on particular features of
teaching and learning and short guides to practice-based professional thinking on a
particular aspect of history teaching. For example, if a student-teacher is struggling
with the teaching of a particular second-order concept, such as significance, we might
58 Jason Todd et al.

both return to their original reading on that concept and then collaboratively plan
a sequence of lessons focusing on significance.
A further challenge is ensuring that all members of my department are con-
sistent in their approach to supporting the progress of student-teachers. Whilst it
is important that student-teachers learn professional knowledge from a range of
experienced teachers, effectively integrating a student-teacher into a department
has to be carefully managed as they can often struggle, particularly initially, with
the different ‘teaching personas’ that make up a history department and can face
‘identity crises’ as a result (Hagger & McIntyre, 2006). As a mentor, I have to ensure
that everyone within the department understands the nature of Internship and is
committed to supporting the student-teachers in their progress. There is also the
added complexity of exchanging information regarding the student-teacher’s pro-
gress. In my department, this is tackled by regular informal conversations about each
student-teacher’s progress and distributing a more formal record of their weekly
programme and targets.

In light of this experience, what is the value of practical theorising as a

model for student-teachers’ professional learning?
Internship provides a unique model in which the collaboration of student-teacher,
school and university is paramount through its emphasis on practical theorising.
It enables the effective integration of the different kinds of knowledge that stu-
dent-teachers develop in both university and school. By the end of the PGCE year,
I would like to hope that student-teachers are equipped with a toolkit of strategies
that will enable them to teach history rigorously whilst considering learners’ needs
and desires across a range of contexts. Student-teachers should have a real sense
of their own identity as a history teacher, a solid grounding in the nature of their
subject, why it is worth learning and how children learn effectively. They will also
have a strong sense of their fundamental teaching values. Most importantly, stu-
dent-teachers will have a real grounding in both theory and practice and will rec-
ognise the vital place that evaluation and reflection play in advancing their teaching
and the learning of their students.

A student-teacher’s perspective
During the final weeks of the University of Oxford PGCE course, one of my
cohort expressed her concern that she ‘did not know everything about being a
teacher, even though the course was almost over’. Our university-based subject
tutor, Jason Todd, thought for a moment and then replied,

If you left here believing you knew everything there is to know about teach-
ing, I would be worried. The aim is that you know what you know and what
you do not know, that you know how to tackle the latter and that being a
professional is about doing just that.
 Practical theorising in learning to teach history 59

I have always remembered this exchange and have come to see it as encapsulating
the principles and potentials of practical theorising as an approach to initial teacher
education.
Practical theorising has enormous value as a model for beginning teachers’ pro-
fessional learning because of the opportunities it creates for unique insights through-
out the Internship year. Considering its value two years after completing my PGCE
course, however, its greatest benefit in my experience has been the foundations the
practical theorising process has laid for continued learning and professional devel-
opment as an early career teacher. The following reflections, therefore, are of both
the short-term and long-term impact practical theorising has had on my practice
as a history teacher.

What did the scheme’s commitment to the process of practical

theorising mean for my practice as a student-teacher over the course
of the PGCE year?
Hagger and McIntyre (2006) proposed that the Oxford programme is attractive to
beginning teachers because it ‘treats the tasks of teaching and of school-based learn-
ing to teach as more intellectually challenging than they have generally been in the
past’ (p. 182). For me, the most striking – and rewarding – intellectual challenges of
teaching are when I am forced to look beyond my own personal classroom experi-
ence to solve a problem.
The scheme’s commitment to practical theorising meant that, from the very first
curriculum session, I was aware that a crucial part of my reflections as a teacher
must be an assessment of the knowledge I had and the knowledge I needed to gain
from external sources. The extent to which this was embedded, through extensive
weekly reading of work by teacher practitioners who had devised solutions to issues
we were grappling with (for example, causation or differentiation), meant that I
quickly became aware of the range of different sources of knowledge available to
develop my own thinking and practice, such as other teachers, books, professional
journals and Twitter.
The emphasis the programme placed on embracing diverse sources of knowl-
edge promoted a culture of sharing best practices amongst my cohort of begin-
ning teachers which thoroughly enriched our experience of learning to teach. The
approach also inspired me to look beyond the most obvious sources of knowledge
and take ideas and inspiration from fiction, anthropology, art and other disciplines
to gain ideas for lesson sequences and activities. As an early career teacher, I have less
time and space to research new ideas than I did during my PGCE. However, the
fulfilment and successful student outcomes I experienced as a result of this research
mean that I continue to engage critically with ideas from professional journals and
conferences and am carrying out my own action research projects in my school to
further develop my own practice. Without practical theorising being so central to
my formative experiences of teaching, it is hard to imagine that I would feel simi-
larly compelled to continuously seek out ideas from such a range of sources.
60 Jason Todd et al.

Yet, without a means of sorting and navigating them, the variety and quantity
of ideas about how to teach has the potential to become overwhelming, especially
for a beginning teacher. The imperative that ‘no knowledge, whatever the nature
of source, should be assumed to be valid’ has therefore been essential to my own
continued practice (McIntyre, 1993, p. 42). As a result of engaging with the process
of practical theorising during my PGCE, I question any knowledge – including that
which originates from my own experience – based on whether the ideas are suita-
ble for my context, the time scale I have available to enact them and whether they
are appropriate to achieve my desired aims (Hagger & McIntyre, 2006). Working
with these criteria has prevented me from attempting to incorporate ostensibly
attractive but ultimately unsuitable ideas into my own repertoire.
Perhaps most significantly, my experience of practical theorising means that
I have learnt to enjoy engaging with competing and even conflicting ideas and
sources of knowledge. Instead of seeing disparities in perspectives as an issue to
overcome, I see them as evidence that the issue – like so many in teaching – is
worthy of further investigation and not a question to shy away from simply because
there is no easy answer.

What were the challenges I encountered and how did I negotiate

them?
McIntyre identified that challenges often arise for student-teachers when there is
a clash between their own ideas about what it means to be a teacher and the ideas
and ideals of their placement schools:

It is the contrasts between the way things are done in the school and how the
student teacher has imagined she would do them … So the delicate social
problems and the stressful emotional problems, the inherently very complex
intellectual problems and the fundamental practical problems about what to
do and how to do it effectively can easily all get combined into overwhelm-
ing difficulties that are just too complex to be faced, especially on one’s own.
(McIntyre, 1993, pp. 59–60)

Newman has discussed the concept of ‘critical incidents … moments which allow
you to stand back and examine your beliefs and your teaching critically’ which are
important in practitioner research (Newman, 2000, p. 1). McIntyre suggests that,
even at the beginning of their courses, student-teachers possess ‘diverse preconcep-
tions’ about teaching which must be brought into the open for any real progress to
be made (McIntyre, 1993, p. 51). On the very first day of the course, our curricu-
lum tutors had begun to elicit and unpick these preconceptions through activities
including ranking the effectiveness of lesson ideas and plans. For me, however, the
true importance of these activities became clear only when I experienced my own
‘critical incident’ and real challenge during the first weeks at my placement school.
 Practical theorising in learning to teach history 61

My placement school had recently introduced a new knowledge-focused teach-

ing and learning initiative which appeared to focus mainly on the transmission
of substantive knowledge, eclipsing the teaching of disciplinary aspects of history;
for example, the relationship between evidence and interpretations. In addition, I
sensed this focus went hand in hand with an underlying belief that ‘child-centred
activities frequently serve as a distraction … leading to a shallower grasp of the
subject’ (Peal, 2014, p. 190).
This state of affairs unsettled my long-held and unexamined stance that my role
as a history teacher was to develop students’ conceptual understanding and proce-
dural skills (with transmitting substantive knowledge a secondary concern). It also
contrasted sharply with the emphasis our university sessions were placing on student
engagement and guiding students to recognise the purpose of studying history and
of particular lesson activities. I was struggling to comprehend how the school’s focus
on conveying knowledge could be reconciled with my sense that I wanted to create
contexts and learning moments in which students genuinely desired knowledge and
engaged with the discipline of history in a purposeful way (Bateman, 2018).
It was only through the process of practical theorising that I was able to find a
way through the woods and use the challenge I faced as an opportunity to develop
my own thinking and practice as a history teacher. Firstly, my subject tutor guided
me towards specific reading as part of my curriculum assignment, which enabled me
to see that the tension between my own, the university department’s and my place-
ment school’s conceptualisations of history teaching was not a unique issue, but part
of a longer and much wider debate within history teaching about the relationship
between knowledge and skills (Counsell, 2000; Fordham, 2012). McIntyre (1993)
has commented that practical theorising helps students to ‘find ways of avoiding
the social confrontations to which honest questioning of established ways of doing
things could easily lead’ (p. 60). The process enabled me to depersonalise the sit-
uation and reduce some of the awkwardness I felt about the lack of alignment
between my three sources of knowledge – the university, my own conceptions and
the school’s pedagogical approach.
Secondly, not only was I guided to ‘think through the issues that concerned [me]
as matters of practice’ (McIntyre, 1993, pp. 60–61) but was given the opportunity to
use the process of practical theorising to explicitly explore these tensions through
my final curriculum assignment: an action research project. I was supported to use
a clear structure of identifying the problem and reading and reflecting on texts
written by other teacher practitioners to formulate the design of my intervention: a
five-lesson enquiry sequence during which pupils would develop an understanding
about why certain historical knowledge was valuable. This was achieved through an
activity aimed at engaging their affective desires: researching and writing their own
historical stories about life in a medieval village (see Bateman, 2018). I subsequently
collected evidence, which was used as a basis for critically reflecting on the impli-
cations of the research for my future practice and on wider debates within history
teaching (Hagger & McIntyre, 2006).
62 Jason Todd et al.

Hagger and McIntyre (2006) proposed that action research is fundamentally ‘a

questioning of the preconceptions […] implicit in one’s existing practice’ (p. 175).
The experience of conducting my own action research was central to my realisa-
tion of the values and limits of my own preconceptions, the school’s teaching and
learning initiative and that of the practitioners and authors I had read as part of the
university course. In turn, this reflection enabled me to develop my own nuanced
and tested stance on the issues my project had set out to investigate.
Ultimately, being given the time, space and freedom to fully enact practical the-
orising in a formal, structured way through my curriculum assignment has had
longer-term impacts on my practice. My fluency with the process has enabled me
to use it regularly and informally in my daily experiences as an early career teacher,
particularly when I have experienced similar tensions between sources of knowl-
edge, such as initiatives within my department, my own experiences and other
research carried out by teacher practitioners.

In light of this experience, what is the value of practical theorising as a

model for beginning teachers' professional learning?
Hagger and McIntyre (2006) argue that the Oxford programme is desirable to
beginning teachers because it ‘takes seriously … the problems of developing one’s
identity as a teacher’ (p. 182).The experience of practical theorising throughout my
PGCE year (as outlined above) and into the first years of my career has enabled me
to develop a robust and complex professional identity as a teacher. This develop-
ment has only been possible because, instead of sweeping issues of identity under
the carpet or regarding them as a separate issue to professional development, the
programme as a whole and the process of practical theorising treat them as integral
to the experience of being and becoming a teacher.
The confidence I have in my professional identity is precisely because it was
exposed to challenges, investigation, reflection and adjustment throughout my
PGCE and in my early career. However, these challenges to my own embryonic
teacher identity – and indeed my conception of what it means to be a teacher in
its entirety – could easily have become ‘overwhelming’ in the way McIntyre (1993,
p. 59) describes, had I not been explicitly guided to explore them through practical
theorising, particularly in the form of investigative curriculum assignments. Practical
theorising rendered the experience formative, rather than simply uncomfortable,
and, crucially, demonstrated to me that my professional (and personal) identity will
evolve over time as I critically reflect on and theorise through new experiences,
as indeed it has continued to do as I have faced challenges in my NQT year and
beyond.
Hirst (1990) expressed the concern that this aspect of the programme places
a large amount of pressure on the student-teacher since it imbues them with ‘the
responsibility for forging a way through to a coherent personal view of what teach-
ing for them involves’ (p. 152). In my experience, however, it is precisely because the
student-teacher is given this responsibility that makes the programme and practical
 Practical theorising in learning to teach history 63

theorising meaningful and effective. Even if it were possible, it is not desirable for a
personal view and sense of identity to be straightforwardly transmitted by a subject
tutor or mentor to a student-teacher as if it were a piece of factual information.
Instead, what practical theorising and the programme really develops is the pro-
cess of how to construct a personal view and professional identity through critical
reflection of experiences and sources of knowledge, and an awareness that this con-
struction is ongoing.

Tutor’s concluding commentary

The choice of mentor and student-teacher in this chapter was quite deliberate.
During a mentor meeting, where we discussed lesson observation and feedback,
Eleanor suggested the most critical dimension related to the feedback the stu-
dent-teacher gave her following the observation, giving her an insight into the
student-teacher’s thinking. This contribution revealed a commitment to the process
of practical theorising at odds with more summative approaches based on grad-
ing lessons. Also, in their feedback, student-teachers regularly praised the support
Eleanor gave, especially the degree of autonomy she afforded them. As a tutor, I am
aware that schools are not always in a position to offer such freedom. Chloe’s school
was in the process of change; an experiment of their own. My tutorials with Chloe
revealed that her experience of this experiment was one of tension, constraining her
aspirations regarding history teaching. Chloe’s situation tapped into my concerns,
exemplified by Hirst, that too often we ask too much of the student-teacher, invit-
ing them to reconcile the irreconcilable.
This isn’t simply about the theory-practice divide but how, with the proliferation
of training routes, we have a range of different and often competing conceptual-
isations of what it means to be a teacher, often within the same setting. The sense
of what it means to be a teacher is set against a backdrop of increasing account-
ability measures (Ball, 2013, 2015) that have the impact of focusing on outcomes
rather than process but also arguably narrowing the scope and purpose of schools
(Biesta, 2004, 2010). Teachers are seen increasingly as paraprofessionals with limited
autonomy, whose primary role might be seen as one to deliver a pre-determined
curriculum. These trends sit at odds with the principles of practical theorising and
one wonders if the approach is still fit for purpose.
Yet Eleanor and Chloe’s accounts suggest some enduring value for practical the-
orising but with, perhaps, a need to think more deeply about the emancipatory
considerations. Both Eleanor and Chloe are sensitive to the process of identity con-
struction, of the range of negotiations that have to be made. Eleanor, in part, does
this by recognising herself as a learner too, such that she is still thinking about and
engaging with a broad range of sources and thinking about her teaching, while the
process of practical theorising for Chloe was key to her developing a ‘robust and
complex professional identity as a teacher’.
However, I wonder if it points to a limitation of the process.The threats outlined
above, to a more expanded model of professionalism, suggest more than ever the
64 Jason Todd et al.

need for McIntyre’s call for consideration about wider ethical, social and political
issues. Chloe’s piece points to some of this by negotiating her ‘critical incident’.
What enabled her in this context was the ability not only to historicise what was
happening in her school but also, via her assignment, to engage in a piece of action
research that helped to de-personalise the issue. Nevertheless, this was limited to the
context of the history classroom. Eleanor’s approach was very focused on the needs
of the individual student-teacher, looking to enable them to find their agency. This
is a perfectly reasonable approach, especially in the context of a very busy short
PGCE course. Yet it feels short of emancipation, as McIntyre (1993) himself notes
‘reflecting on one’s own practice, and especially engaging in action research, leads
one to emphasise one’s own agency’ (p. 46). What neither of them really addresses is
the context of their school and its practices or the broader context of schooling and
education. The focus is very much on the individual learner – the student-teacher.
As such, it limits the scope to consider how contexts, history, or more broadly culture
create the conditions in which subjectivities, including teachers’ professional identi-
ties, are made. One possible explanation for this is in relation, perhaps, to how far the
professional development programme, with themes such as social justice, has become
decoupled from both the curriculum programme and the school experience.
Similar to Hirst, my concern was that we had been asking too much of our
teachers. Now I worry we should be asking more of them to enable them further.
That analysis of knowledge is not enough: more must be done to consider how
power operates through that knowledge, through school policies, curriculum and
how these are set in response to national and international agendas.Without this, we
run the risk of individual teachers concluding that they have failed, that they need
to change, rather than thinking more systemically and collectively about change.
Yet both these pieces offer kernels of how this might be enabled by placing
learning as central to the work of both the student-teacher and the mentor. As ‘bell
hooks’ (1994) has said, ‘learning is a place where paradise can be created. The class-
room with all its limitations remains the location of possibility’ (p. 207). She warns
that this involves intellectual and emotional labour enabled by ‘critical incidents’
but only fully realised with collective, integrated support. For the possibilities of
the classroom to be fully realised, teacher training and development needs to resist
reducing its endeavour to a narrow set of competencies that constitutes ‘what works’
(Mockler, 2011) and instead open spaces for broader analysis of contexts that may
realise the emancipatory potential of practical theorising.

Note
1 Public examination reform that introduced new more demanding content coverage

References
Ball, S. J. (2013). The Education Debate (2nd ed.). Bristol: Policy Press.
Ball, S. J. (2015). Governing by numbers: Education, governance, and the tyranny of numbers.
Journal of Education Policy, 30(3), 299–301.
 Practical theorising in learning to teach history 65

Bateman, C. (2018). ‘I need to know’: Creating the conditions that make students want
knowledge. Teaching History, 173, 32–39.
Biesta, G. (2010). Good Education in an Age of Measurement: Ethics, Politics, Democracy. Abingdon:
Routledge.
Biesta, G. J. J. (2004). Education, accountability, and the ethical demand: Can the democratic
potential of accountability be regained? Educational Theory, 54(3), 233–250. doi:10.111
1/j.0013-2004.2004.00017
Cannadine, D. Keating, J., & Sheldon, N. (2011). The Right Kind of History:Teaching the Past in
Twentieth-century England. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Counsell, C. (2000). Historical knowledge and historical skills: A distracting dichotomy. In S.
Capel, J. Davison, J. Arthur, & J. Moss (Series Eds.) J. Arthur & R. Philips (Vol. Eds.), Issues
in Subject Teaching Series. Issues in History Teaching. London: Routledge, 54–71.
Donovan, S. & Bransford, J. (2005). How Students Learn: History in the Classroom. Washington,
DC: National Academies Press, BRAD.
Fordham, M. (2012). Disciplinary history and the situation of history teachers. Education
Sciences, 2, 242–253.
Hagger, H. & McIntyre, D. (2006). Learning Teaching from Teachers: Realising the Potential of
School-based Teacher Education. Maidenhead: Open University Press.
Hall, K. M., Draper, R. J., Smith, L. K., & Bullough Jr, R.V. (2008). More than a place to teach:
Exploring the perceptions of the roles and responsibilities of mentor teachers. Mentoring
and Tutoring, 16(3), 328–345.
Hirst, P. (1990). Internship: A view from outside. In P. Benton (Ed.), The Oxford Internship
Scheme: Integration and partnership in Initial Teacher Education. London: Calouste Gulbenkian
Foundation, 17–41.
hooks, bell. (1994). Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. New York:
Routledge.
Husbands, C. (2011). What do history teachers (need to) know? In I. Davies (Ed.), Debates in
History Teaching. Abingdon: Routledge, 94–95.
Keating, J. & Sheldon, N. (2011). History in education:Trends and themes in history teaching,
1900–2010. In I. Davies (Ed.), Debates in History Teaching. Abingdon: Routledge, 5–17.
McIntyre, D. (1990). Ideas and principles guiding the Internship scheme. In P. Benton (Ed.),
The Oxford Internship Scheme: Integration and Partnership in Initial Teacher Education. London:
Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, 17–41.
McIntyre, D. (1993). Theory, theorizing and reflection in initial teacher education. In J.
Calderhead & P. Gates (Eds.), Conceptualising Reflection in Teacher Development. London:
Routledge, 39–52.
McIntyre, D. (1995). Initial teacher education as practical theorising: A response to Paul Hirst.
British Journal of Educational Studies, 43(4), 365–383.
Mockler, N. (2011). Beyond “what works”: Understanding teacher identity as a practical and
political tool [Article]. Teachers and Teaching, 17(5), 517–528. doi:10.1080/13540602.201
1.602059
Newman, J.M. (2000). Action research: A brief overview. Qualitative Social Research, 1(1).
https://doi.org/10.17169/fqs-1.1.1127
Peal, R. (2014) Progressively Worse: The Burden of Bad Ideas in British Schools. London: Civitas.
https://civitas.org.uk/pdf/ProgressivelyWorsePeal.pdf
Russell, A., Webster, R., & Blatchford, P. (2013). Maximising the Impact of Teaching Assistants:
Guidance for School Leaders and Teachers. Abingdon: Routledge.
Zelditch, M. (1990). Mentor roles. Proceedings of the 32nd Annual Meeting of the Western
Association of Graduate Schools, 11.
4
PRACTICAL THEORISING IN
A CHANGING CONTEXT
Enabling beginning science teachers to negotiate
different expectations in the reality of schools

Judith Hillier, Alison Cullinane, Rachel Harris, Sarah Jakoby,

Ann Childs and Sibel Erduran

Introduction
This chapter uses practical theorising as the theoretical lens through which to explore
how school-based science mentors and university-based science tutors work together
to support the professional learning of student-teachers in the use and assessment of
practical work in science. Since practical work in science is widely recognised as a key
part of science education, it represents a fruitful area of professional practice in which to
consider practical theorising. The chapter begins by drawing on the literature and the
views of mentors to discuss the role of practical work in science education. Next, spe-
cific examples of common practical activities are used to illustrate how student-teach-
ers learn about practical work in science and the role that practical theorising plays
in this learning. The use of practical work in secondary schools in England cannot be
separated from the assessment of practical work, and the following section reviews how
assessment policies have changed over the past 30 years and the subsequent effects on
practice in schools, including the challenges that particular assessment practices pose for
teachers. The mentors and tutors writing this chapter have all been involved in Project
Calibrate, a funded research project to develop a new framework for the assessment of
practical work in science (Childs & Baird, 2020; Cullinane et al., 2019; Erduran et al.,
2020; Erduran & Wooding, 2021). At this point in the chapter, the project is introduced
and its potential benefits to student-teacher learning are discussed, using the theoretical
lens of practical theorising. Finally, the chapter finishes with a focus on the importance
of collaborative teacher education in a changing context.

Practical work and its role in science education

‘Miss, Miss! Are we doing a practical today, Miss?’
Science teachers must have heard those words at the start of a lesson countless times
(obviously using the gender-appropriate honorific and in the language of the school
DOI: 10.4324/9781003183945-7
 Practical theorising in a changing context 67

in question). School students associate secondary school science lessons with doing
practicals. And they are not the only ones – type ‘science lesson’ into any internet
search engine, and numerous images of scientific apparatus (mostly glassware) will
appear. When the status of practical work in science education in England was
challenged in 2014 by proposed changes to its assessment at A-level (the public
examinations taken at age 18+), scientists, such as Adams (2014), vociferously clam-
oured about the fundamental importance of practical work to science. To scientists,
science is nothing without experimentation; the collection and analysis of data. As
Francis Bacon stated,

Observation and experiment for gathering material, induction and deduction

for elaborating it: these are our only good intellectual tools.
(cited in Bernard et al., 1957, p. 6)

However, students in schools are not engaged in scientific discoveries.The practicals

that they are asked to undertake are rarely, if ever, new experiments; they are repeats
of measurements which have been observed and verified many, many times already.
So what is practical work in school? And why is doing practical work so important
for students learning science?
Abrahams and Millar (2008) define practical work as ‘activities in which the
students manipulate and observe real objects and materials’ (p. 1), while three main
arguments have consistently been advanced about the role of practical work in
science education (e.g. Beatty & Woolnough, 1982; Cramman et al., 2019; Kerr,
1963). The first is that practicals provide the concrete reality and exemplification to
support the abstract theories accepted as scientific knowledge, and hence promote
students’ scientific understanding.The second is that by conducting their own prac-
tical work, students both develop some of the critical thinking and experimental
manipulative skills of professional scientists and also gain an understanding of how
scientists work – students learn something of the nature of science. This can be
compared to practising creative writing in English lessons or learning to play a sport
in PE lessons: it is not expected that each and every student should go on and pub-
lish a novel, or play professional sport, or become a scientist, but it is deemed to be
part of the education that every young person should experience. The third argu-
ment is about student engagement and motivation: students spend many lessons at
school reading and writing, and so the novelty value of lessons in which they are up
and about and ‘doing stuff ’ appeals to many students, particularly if it also involves
blowing up or burning something.
Two co-authors of this chapter, Rachel and Sarah, are experienced science teach-
ers and mentors within internship. They both see practical work as a fundamental
aspect of the nature of science as a discipline: ‘It defines what science is, it underpins
everything. It is the ability to test, it is the ability to use data and results to inform
your thinking’ (Rachel). There is a strong link between scientific theories and
practical science, with Rachel recognising that ‘a practical is anything that informs
the topic you’re covering in the lesson’. Sarah commented on the importance of
68 Judith Hillier et al.

practical work in revealing something of the nature of science: ‘I think it is impor-

tant because it makes science a bit more real, it teaches – not necessarily the specific
experiment – but how scientists work, how people find out things and then change
theories and develop hypotheses and the whole what science is, can be put together
in practical science experiments in the classroom’. As science teachers, they see
practical science as crucial to the development of skills, both manipulative skills
and scientific thinking skills: ‘I’m very keen to do as much practical at Year 7 and 8,
because then we have got those skills in place’ (Rachel). They do not let the curric-
ulum limit their use of practical science: ‘I don’t limit it to the required practicals at
all. Where at all possible, I will try and fit a practical in’ (Rachel). They use practical
science to make lessons more engaging for students, to make theoretical ideas less
abstract, and to consolidate students’ learning.
As experienced teachers, both Rachel and Sarah are aware of the tensions inher-
ent in the contexts where they teach. There is a tension between what they would
like their students to achieve in practical work in science lessons and the limitations
of the apparatus available (both in terms of quantity and quality: some experi-
ments only work, as Rachel observes ‘if your ammeters are all perfectly calibrated’).
There is also a tension between the amount of time they would like to spend on
practical work in science and the demands of the content-heavy curriculum they
are required to cover for examination purposes, as Rachel explains: ‘I’m sort of
caught between a rock and a hard place, because the curriculum is so tight’. These
are tensions which they have to reconcile in their own practice as experienced
classroom practitioners, and in their work as teacher mentors, they have to support
their student-teachers in navigating them.These tensions are not unique to the UK
context, but can be found in educational systems around the world (e.g. Babalola
et al., 2020).

Practical theorising about practical work in initial science teacher

education
Having explored the literature related to practical work and the perspectives of
mentors within a particular context, we now consider how tutors and mentors
work with student-teachers to develop their knowledge and professional practice
in relation to the use of practical work in science lessons. We begin by considering
the practical work that most students actually do in school science lessons. Table 4.1
shows three common practicals and the scientific concepts that each one demon-
strates.You may remember them from your own school days!
These practicals are also part of the science curriculum programme within
internship, where each practical that the student-teachers are asked to undertake
serves multiple purposes. The initial purpose is to work through the practicals with
the student-teachers to check that they understand in detail what is happening and
can also offer an explanation, pitched at the appropriate level for school students.
This check ensures that those who need to so develop the necessary subject knowl-
edge, a key part of their ‘foundational knowledge’ as teachers (Rowland et al., 2005),
 Practical theorising in a changing context 69

TABLE 4.1 Practicals commonly used to demonstrate particular scientific concepts

Scientific Concept Practical

discipline
Biology Photosynthesis Starch test
Plants use energy from A plant, often a geranium, has some of its leaves
sunlight, carbon covered with silver foil for a week to stop
dioxide from the photosynthesis happening in these leaves. Pupils
air and water from then soften a leaf which has been covered
both soil and air and a leaf which has been left uncovered in
to make glucose, boiling water, use ethanol to remove the green
which is then chlorophyll and then put iodine on each leaf.
stored in the plant The covered leaf should not change colour,
as starch. but the uncovered leaf should turn blue/black,
indicating the presence of starch, and showing
that photosynthesis has occurred.
Chemistry Conservation of Heating magnesium
Mass Pupils take a piece of magnesium, measure its
In a chemical reaction, mass, put it into a crucible and heat it over a
the sum of the Bunsen burner. The magnesium reacts with the
masses of the oxygen in the air and burns with a bright white
reactants equals the light to form magnesium oxide, and the mass
sum of the masses of the magnesium oxide at the end should be
of the products. greater than the mass of the magnesium at the
beginning.
Physics Kirchoff ’s 1st Law Measuring current in a series circuit
The electrical current, Pupils make a simple series circuit with a cell,
or the rate of flow two bulbs and three wires. They use another
of charge, is the wire and an ammeter to measure the current
same at all points in at the three positions indicated in the circuit
a series circuit. below. Each ammeter reading should be
identical.

Ammeter
position 3
Ammeter
position 1
Ammeter
position 2

and that all of them organise this subject knowledge and construct an explanation
in their own words – a ‘coherent internal account’ (Hillier, 2013; Taylor & Hillier,
2019). For example, to explain the current in a series circuit practical in Table 4.1
requires the student-teachers to be confident about what electrical current is, how
it is different from voltage and how changing the electrical resistance of a circuit
affects the current flowing around it.
70 Judith Hillier et al.

The student-teachers are also asked to examine their beliefs about the role of
practical work in science, since beliefs are also a key part of teachers’ foundational
knowledge, and influence classroom practice (Pajares, 1992). This is done through
practical theorising: the student-teachers draw on their own contextualised observa-
tions of practical work in science lessons in their internship schools, their experiences
of practicals (such as those in Table 4.1) within curriculum sessions and throughout
their own educational careers, and on the decontextualised literature which questions
the rhetoric surrounding the use of the practical work (e.g. Millar, 1998), to discuss
the purposes of practical work and its role in learning science. For example, the starch
test described in Table 4.1 is a complicated practical, requiring hot water, ethanol and
iodine (all of which require risk management for health and safety reasons), and car-
rying out this practical takes a significant proportion of a one-hour lesson.The results
are frequently ambiguous, although the apparatus can be manipulated to ensure a
more observable finding (we know of science technicians who paint the leaves with
starch solution to ensure appropriate results!), and the process that students follow is
very disconnected from the process of photosynthesis. Students are frequently con-
fused by the results, and the practical provides very little evidence of, or explanation
for, photosynthesis. As student-teachers conduct this, and other practicals, and reflect
on these experiences, together with their observations in schools of all the challenges
of practical work (e.g. managing the logistics of distributing and collecting scientific
apparatus safely, enabling all students to complete a practical safely and to analyse
their findings appropriately), discussions ensue between student-teachers, mentors
and tutors. Questions are raised about the point of practical work and how to use it
effectively in lessons to support the learning of science, drawing on both the con-
textualised and decontextualised knowledge made available to the student-teachers
by the mentors and tutors. Student-teachers are not asked to reject their beliefs
about the importance of practical work in science, but rather, through the process of
practical theorising, to consider how to emphasise its importance by using practical
work purposefully; carefully examining the learning aims of the lesson, and whether
the practical actually achieves these aims, or whether another activity might be more
appropriate in this situation. Many of the learning aims supported by practical work
are assessed informally in school and formally through external examinations, and we
now consider the assessment of practical work in science.

Assessment of practical work in a changing context

The changing context in this story is of course the National Curriculum which
was first introduced in England in 1988, and which, in science, built on the long-es-
tablished tradition of practical work (e.g. Buchan & Jenkins, 1992), fostered by ini-
tiatives such as the Nuffield Science Teaching Project which had been launched in
1962 (Waring, 1979). A key part of the National Curriculum was the accompanying
assessment framework which leads ultimately to the award of the General Certificate
of Secondary Education (GCSE) at age 16. The development and evolution of this
 Practical theorising in a changing context 71

TABLE 4.2 Different approaches to the assessment of practical science at GCSE in England

Era Years Performance conditions

1. Coursework assessment
through practical investigations
2. Coursework assessment
through controlled assessments
3. Written examination
From Childs and Baird, 2020.
1992–2006 Conducted through the GCSE course;
in the classroom, as homework or
as a mixture of both
2006–2016 Conducted in the classroom under
supervision
2016–present Examination conditions

framework and the implications of the assessment of practical work are described
by Childs and Baird (2020), with a summary of the three main approaches given in
Table 4.2.
Childs and Baird’s analysis reveals the competing goals of designing a science
curriculum that provides students with the opportunities to develop ‘the skills of
handling the apparatus, working out the nuances, figuring out the problem, prob-
lem-solving’ (Rachel), alongside a high-stake external assessment system – the
General Certificate of Education (GCSE), taken at age 16+. During the first era,
the practical investigations, which were intended to be creative and indicative of
how scientists work, became highly prescriptive assessment exercises which proved
intensive for both teachers and students. They were open to widespread cheating,
due to the involvement of teachers and parents, and became hoop-jumping exer-
cises, due to a plethora of guidance from examinations boards and other organi-
sations. Crucially, they perpetuated a narrow and outdated view of the nature of
science itself (Donnelly et al., 1996), with ‘perhaps as few as 10 different investi-
gations forming the bulk of science GCSE coursework throughout the country’
(House of Lords, 2006, p. 28). The controlled assessments, which were introduced
in the second era, were particularly intended to ameliorate the issues of cheat-
ing. Accompanying a substantial revision of the National Curriculum in secondary
schools, which emphasised the nature and philosophy of science, these new assess-
ments and the way they were set, produced, marked and moderated were subject
to much tighter controls intended to ‘address concerns about the reliability and
authenticity of coursework’ (Ofqual, 2013, p. 3). However, it became apparent that
these reforms had not succeeded, as in the same document, the government Office
for Qualifications (Ofqual) stated:

Despite best efforts, since its introduction, controlled assessment has proved
to be problematic in many ways, and some of those problems are intractable:
it does not always assess those aspects of a subject it was put in place to assess,
it can divert time from teaching and learning and be arduous to organise and
deliver, and too often it is delivered inconsistently.
(p. 2)
72 Judith Hillier et al.

Both Rachel and Sarah recognised that the previous systems had been open to
abuse, for example, through excessive coaching by teachers:

What I found extremely problematic with the controlled assessments was that
so many students cheated horrendously with them and I always felt that our
results were so much worse because we didn’t. And it’s kind of unfair for the
students. We didn’t want to cheat, and therefore their results were lower than
those of other students.
(Sarah)

The third and current era saw the introduction of written examinations to assess
students’ experience, knowledge and understanding of scientific experimentation.
Whilst some early reports suggest that the recent move to written examination of
practical science at A-level has not been accompanied by any negative effect on stu-
dents’ practical skills (Cadwallader, 2019), the reforms to the assessment of practical
science at GCSE took quite a different form, and the ‘harder content and more rig-
orous assessment’ in new GCSEs seem to have increased the educational inequality
between disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged students (Burgess & Thomson, 2019,
p. 5). However, there are also challenges and limitations of the current assessment
approach for practical science. The written questions now have a focus that requires
students to describe ‘how’ they do the practical work, rather than ‘why’; a culture
of ‘teaching to the test’ has stifled any opportunities for true investigative work, and
the teachers questioned the focus of these new assessments:

It’s become rote learning with equipment. Sorry to put it quite like that, but
to my mind it’s become rote learning with equipment. There’s no planning
anymore, there’s no coming up with the experiment anymore, and also there’s
no things like preliminary testing to know what your range is going to be. So
that nuance, that ability to take an experiment from a conceptual stage and
take it all the way through, that’s gone. It’s now, “Here’s your method”.
(Rachel)

They just know they have to learn it … they’re so focused on rote learning
because the sort of specifications we now have, but they can’t think outside
the box, even really good students struggle with that. I think what it doesn’t
do is test the skills. So yes, it’s good for recall, and it’s good for lower level
higher order thinking skills. Sort of “Give a reason why”, “Justify why you
did this and that”, “Why did we have to do this?”, but it doesn’t test the
scientific process, it doesn’t test the real lab skills.
(Sarah)

Clearly the challenge of reliably assessing authentic practical work in science is not
unique to a single point in time but has been present in the English educational
system for the last 30 years. Nor is it limited to England (e.g. Hume & Coll, 2008).
If these are the intractable challenges with which teachers and policy-makers are
 Practical theorising in a changing context 73

grappling in relation to the assessment of practical work in science, then how, as

mentors and tutors, do we support and enable student-teachers in their practical
theorising about this fundamental aspect of science education?

Project Calibrate
The authors of this chapter were all involved in Project Calibrate, a research collab-
oration between the University of Oxford and AQA, one of the UK examination
boards, and jointly funded by the Wellcome Trust, Gatsby Foundation and Royal
Society (www.ProjectCalibrate.web.ox.ac.uk). Project Calibrate took a systemic
approach to the design and implementation of summative assessments in order to
enhance coherence between summative assessment goals, processes and outcomes in
relation to practical science. Key to this was the use of a construct of practical science
as an alternative to the narrow and naïve view of a single scientific method: a frame-
work proposed by Brandon (1994) which, instead, recognises that scientists utilise
a range of methodological approaches. The framework is a matrix (see Table 4.3)
within which investigations or practicals can be categorised according to whether or
not they involve the manipulation of variables, and whether or not they involve the
testing of hypotheses. Given that practical activities are often carried out ‘cookbook’
style, with students given little chance to do authentic investigations but rather fol-
lowing recipes for experiments, we were quite intrigued by Brandon’s Matrix as a
framework. Sibel explains that when she first came across Brandon’s Matrix,

it made me realise that we could use it to go beyond some of the misconcep-

tions about science. For example, often school science creates the impression
that, biology is not a ‘real’ science because it is descriptive and does not involve
rigorous experiments in the way that physics does. The misconception is that
all of science has to follow a certain method which is not the case. As Brandon
explained, all disciplines of science use a range of methods. This diversity of
methods was something that seemed missing in the science curricula.
(Sibel)

TABLE 4.3 Brandon's matrix of types of scientific methods

Manipulation of variables Non-manipulation of variables

Hypothesis Manipulative hypothesis test
testing e.g. investigating how the
length of a piece of wire
affects its resistance
Measure Manipulative description
parameters or measure e.g. using
chromatography to
measure the pigments in
different black inks
From Brandon (1994, p. 63).
Non-manipulative hypothesis test e.g.
measuring the growth of lichens to
see if it is different on the north and
south sides of a tree
Non-manipulative description or
measure e.g. the observation of
dispersion of sunlight through
a prism to form a rainbow or
measuring the pH of seawater
74 Judith Hillier et al.

The Project Calibrate team developed a set of written assessments that can be used
within the current National Curriculum to assess students’ understanding of practi-
cal science, and trialled these with students in schools (El Masri et al., 2021). Another
study, carried out as part of the project, focused on the analysis of chemistry GCSE
examination questions using Brandon’s framework to classify the questions and
revealed that the various methods are represented and marked in a disproportionate
way. For example, in one paper, 21% of items were about non-manipulative param-
eter measurements for 14% of the marks. In contrast, in another paper, 12% of the
items were about manipulative hypothesis testing for 17% of the marks (Cullinane
et al., 2019). These findings suggest that the people writing examination questions
associate different levels of cognitive demand with different practical methods. For
teachers focused on preparing students for these examinations, this association has
implications for the time they spend on each method, and the advice they give stu-
dents about examination techniques.
The Project Calibrate team has also worked with teachers to explore how they
would use the framework to guide their teaching to prepare students to sit the
assessments developed by Project Calibrate: accepting that, in a high-stakes external
assessment system, teachers will teach to the test, the question becomes ‘Is this a
test worth teaching to?’ As experienced science mentors, Rachel and Sarah both
attended workshops about Brandon’s Matrix and used the assessments in lessons
with students, and were then interviewed about their views of the framework and
the extent to which it could be used to support the use and assessment of practical
work in science.
One benefit identified by the teachers would be the use of Brandon’s Matrix
to organise and audit their current use of practical work in science to ensure that
students experienced a wide and balanced set of practicals, giving them a broader
view of science than the one typically covered in lessons. They also saw it as a vehi-
cle to help students think more about the practical work being undertaken: ‘I like
the idea of making them think about the experiment, which is what it did. It made
them think “Does it do that or doesn’t it?” and I like that because we don’t do that
at the moment’ (Rachel). They could also see challenges with making the frame-
work accessible to students: ‘the wording has to be accessible and understandable
by the students. We cannot say “Using this matrix, which one shows this hypothesis
is observable or non-observable?” You might as well talk in Swahili.’ (Rachel). The
teachers recognised that colleagues would need support and professional develop-
ment opportunities to embed the framework fully into their practice, but that this
would be both achievable and worthwhile: ‘because it opens up a path to science
that otherwise children will overlook or will be more likely to overlook, because
they don’t realise that it’s a part of the scientific discovery process’ (Sarah).
Having established that Brandon’s Matrix is a helpful framework for consid-
ering practical work in science and the extent to which students experience a
broad range of practical work, the question arises as to how to introduce it to
student-teachers – how does this become part of the evidence on which interns
can draw in practical theorising about practical work? Engagement in practical
 Practical theorising in a changing context 75

TABLE 4.4 Example of how one practical activity can be positioned in the four quadrants
of Brandon’s Matrix

Manipulation of variables Non-manipulation of variables

Hypothesis Measuring how increasing the Using Newton’s 2nd Law of
testing weight of an object increases Motion (F = ma) to predict
its mass. the weight of an object with a
certain mass (on Earth).
Measure Measuring the weights of Measuring the mass and weight
parameters different objects with different of an object.
masses.

TABLE 4.5 Brandon’s Matrix reworked into more pupil-friendly language, with examples
from the AQA (2018) GCSE Physics Required Practical Handbook (8463)

Dependent and independent variables Variables being measured

Making a prediction Measuring the effect of force on
acceleration at constant mass.
No prediction made Investigating the specific heat
capacity of different metals.
Taken from Hillier and Ioannidou (2021).
Investigating the amount of
infrared radiation radiated
from different surfaces.
Measuring the speed of
waves in a solid.

theorising obviously involves developing the knowledge base of student-teachers.

Project Calibrate found that some science teachers hold naïve views about scientific
methods, assuming that investigations need to involve hypothesis testing or manip-
ulation of variables (Ioannidou & Erduran, 2021). Brandon’s Matrix can be used
to broaden student-teachers’ understanding of the nature of science, for example,
demonstrating how the same practical activity can be positioned in each of the
four quadrants of the matrix in order to achieve different aims with students (see
Table 4.4). Student-teachers could be asked to complete a similar table for a differ-
ent practical activity, perhaps one from each subject discipline. Another helpful task
could be for student-teachers to use Brandon’s Matrix to categorise the practicals
currently required at GCSE. This has been done in Table 4.5 with some physics
examples. Both of these examples are ways to emphasise the diversity of scientific
methods across the sciences, and the types of knowledge yielded by these different
approaches (Hillier & Ioannidou, 2021).
Brandon’s Matrix can also be used to support student-teachers in their teaching:
earlier in Project Calibrate, Rachel had commented that ‘no planning any more,
there’s no coming up with the experiment any more’, and was concerned that
such a crucial skill was no longer integral at GCSE level. Student-teachers can
use Brandon’s Matrix as a tool for thinking about how they would teach practical
work to make it more purposeful for their students. Student-teachers can also use
Table 4.5 as a meta-cognitive device to help students analyse the nature of the
76 Judith Hillier et al.

required practicals being completed, and hence as a framework to help them plan
their own investigations. Note that the language in Table 4.5 has been reworked into
more student-friendly terminology after Rachel pointed out that ‘the wording has
to be accessible and understandable by the students’.
We recognise that use of the matrix does not resolve the tensions inherent in
the use of practical work and its assessment: the quantity and quality of apparatus
available, the time needed for students to accomplish practical work (in contrast to
a teacher demonstration) when a content-heavy curriculum needs to be covered
and the need to ensure that students are appropriately prepared for the current
high-stakes external assessments. Our engagement with it has, however, helped us to
facilitate student-teachers’ engagement in practical theorising, building on the con-
sensus amongst mentors and tutors within Internship that student-teachers should
examine the use of practical work in science lessons. Guided by the framework, we
have together developed a set of activities, with an agreed set of questions to ask
about them and an agreed set of criteria to apply to evaluate their effectiveness. As
tutors, we provide student-teachers with the framework shown in Table 4.6, and
encourage them to discuss these questions with their mentors in school. Mentors
can support student-teachers to consider the purpose of practical work: as Rachel
said:

Practicals have to be relevant to what you’re doing – they are not a bolt on,
that’s the key, making them part of the flow of the lesson, it’s not detracting
from the time where they have to learn the key points or anything like that.
But actually, it’s an integral part of learning that concept.

Sarah also commented that ‘some students learn much, much more when they han-
dle the equipment themselves and try out the measurements, I think that the actual
doing it has much more of a memory reinforcement’.Mentors and tutors also have
a shared focus on the practicalities of practical work: as Rachel noted ‘The key thing

TABLE 4.6 Questions for student-teachers to consider for each practical, with a focus on
how the practical can be used to support pupils' learning
Purpose Instructions
What could the learning objective be for this How would you want to modify the
practical if it was a demonstration? What about a instructions you were given?
class practical?
Relevance Health and safety
How is this phenomenon used in the real world? What controls would you have to
put in place to reduce risk?
Explanation Advice
What is the key idea that this practical demonstrates? What advice would you give to
Can you explain what is happening here? people who are setting this up
for the first time?
Reproduced from Hillier and Ioannidou (2021).
 Practical theorising in a changing context 77

for student-teachers is knowing how to organise a practical, and all the things that
can go wrong’ (Rachel). Judith explains that

We have always been working with mentors to develop student-teachers’

professional thinking and practice: how to make the practical about learning
not just doing, how to make sure that the practical actually works, how to
manage the classroom safely and effectively without wasting time, how to
work with technicians so you get the right equipment and return it all, pref-
erably unbroken! .
(Judith)

New challenges have been presented by the current global pandemic – we have
been faced with the requirement to prepare student-teachers to teach well in the
context of online learning, and also to make sure they know and are able to teach
well in schools once they return to ‘normal’. Clearly, there are a number of tensions
and competing demands, and practice has varied hugely across schools – there has
been no consensus into which student-teachers could be inducted, making the pro-
cess of practical theorising hugely valuable within initial teacher education. Tutors
from Internship have recognised the challenges that Covid-19 poses to the teaching
of practical work, such as those highlighted by Alison:

The challenge for practical work in the Covid-19 pandemic will be the iso-
lated approaches we will now need to use. Our sessions were always largely
collaborative, and the student-teachers learn so much from each other. It
will also be interesting to see if working in smaller, socially distanced groups
diminishes any experience they may have.

As teacher educators who have been involved in research about practical work in
the context of Project Calibrate, as described above, both tutors and mentors have
gained new insights into how student-teachers can be supported through practical
theorising to use practical science for meaningful student learning. Collaboration is
key: ‘It’s about how we collaborate and plan with our school-based colleagues about
what each of the different perspectives from school and university are best placed
(as McIntyre says) to offer in developing student-teachers’ professional thinking and
practice’ (Ann).

Conclusions and implications for collaboration in changing

context
Teacher education is a complex process which takes time. It requires student-teach-
ers, mentors and tutors to examine their beliefs about what ‘good’ science teaching
looks like (Brown & McIntyre, 1993). Student-teachers need to develop their pro-
fessional knowledge in multiple areas, understanding the decontextualised issue in
depth, and also the ways in which that understanding can be applied in different
78 Judith Hillier et al.

contexts. Mentors and tutors have to work together to unpack teachers’ professional
knowledge about the complexity of helping 30 teenagers at a time to learn about
abstract, mathematically involved concepts which use intricate, unfamiliar words
introduced within a detailed and dense curriculum. It is unsurprising that making
this knowledge explicit can be challenging (Brown & McIntyre, 1993). There are
many competing demands, and engaging with these is at the heart of practical the-
orising: ‘the core idea of practical theorising that student-teachers should question,
and test against diverse criteria, whatever ideas for practice are presented to them as
well as those they bring with them’ (McIntyre, 1995, p. 371). There is no consensus
among the science teaching profession about the use of practical work; it varies from
school to school and teacher to teacher, so student-teachers cannot be ‘trained by
initiation into the most defensible practices to date’ (ibid). Institutionalising the pro-
cess of practical theorising (McIntyre, 1993) in the ways described above means that
the recognition of competing tensions is accepted by tutors and mentors; indeed, it
is inherent to the course. Discussing how different schools and teachers reconcile
these challenges in different ways allows student-teachers to better understand the
professional decisions which have been made, and to start to consider the decisions
they will have to make in due course, based on their own professional knowledge.
In this new and emerging context for practical work in science, the knowledge
brought by mentors allows the tutors to adapt the university element of teacher
education to complement the learning of student-teachers in order to facilitate the
practical theorising process.Teacher education is about enabling student-teachers to
identify and understand what is at the core of good teaching, to develop the skills to
embed this into their practice and equip them to keep this at the heart of their prac-
tice no matter what changes occur. Practical theorising facilitates this when tutors
and mentors collaborate to support student-teachers to engage critically with the
ideas and practices presented to them, and thus to make informed decisions about
their own professional practice and development. Collaborating through a research
project, such as Project Calibrate described here, greatly enriches that process by
developing the expertise of both tutors and mentors as they work together.

Acknowledgements
Project Calibrate was jointly funded by the Wellcome Trust, Gatsby Foundation and
Royal Society (Grant number: 209659/Z/17/Z).

References
Abrahams, I. & Millar, R. (2008). Does practical work really work? A study of the effective-
ness of practical work as a teaching and learning method in school science. International
Journal of Science Education, 30 (14), 1945–1969.
Adams, R. (2014). Practical Work Must Remain Part of Science A-Levels, Say Experts, The
Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/education/2014/jan/17/
science-practical-work-experts-lambast
 Practical theorising in a changing context 79

AQA (2018). GCSE Physics Required Practical Handbook. Retrieved from https://filestore.aqa.
org.uk/resources/physics/AQA-8463-PRACTICALS-HB.PDF
Babalola, F.E., Lambourne, R.J., & Swithenby, S.J. (2020). The real aims that shape the teach-
ing of practical physics in sub-Saharan Africa. International Journal of Science and Mathematics
Education, 18, 259–278.
Beatty, J.W. & Woolnough, B.E. (1982). Practical work in 11-13 science: The context, type
and aims of current practice. British Educational Research Journal, 8(1), 23–30.
Bernard, C., Greene, H.C., & Henderson, L.J. (1957). An Introduction to the Study of Experimental
Medicine. New York: Dover Editions.
Brandon, R. (1994). Theory and experiment in evolutionary biology. Synthese, 99, 59–73.
Brown, S. & McIntyre, D. (1993). Making Sense of Teaching. Buckingham, UK: Open University
Press.
Buchan, A.S. & Jenkins, E.W. (1992). The internal assessment of practical skills in science in
England and Wales, 1960–1991: Some issues in historical perspective. International Journal
of Science Education, 14(4), 367–380.
Burgess, S. & Thomson, D. (2019). Making the Grade: The Impact of GCSE Reforms on the
Attainment Gap between Disadvantaged Students and Their Peers, London: The Sutton Trust.
Retrieved from https://www.suttontrust.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Makingthe
Grade2019.pdf
Cadwallader, S. (2019). The Impact of Qualification Reform on the Practical Skills of A-Level Science
Students. Paper 5:The impact of qualification reform on the practical skills of A level science
students. Retrieved from https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/
system/uploads/attachment_data/file/793227/A_level_science_Paper_5FINAL.pdf
Childs, A. & Baird, J.-A. (2020). General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) and
the assessment of science practical work: An historical review of assessment policy. The
Curriculum Journal, 31(3), 357–378.
Cramman, H., Kind, V., Lyth, A., Gray, H., Younger, K., Gemar, A., Eerola, P., Coe, R., &
Kind, P. (2019). Monitoring Practical Science in Schools and Colleges, Project Report. Durham
University, Durham. Retrieved from https://dro.dur.ac.uk/27381/
Cullinane, A., Erduran, S., & Wooding, S. J. (2019). Investigating the diversity of scientific
methods in high-stakes chemistry examinations in England. International Journal of Science
Education, 41(16), 2201– 2217.
Donnelly, J. F., Buchan, A., Jenkins, E.W., Laws, P., & Welford, G. (1996). Investigations by Order:
Policy, Curriculum and Science Teachers’Work under the Education Reform Act. Driffield, Studies
in Education.
El Masri, Y., Erduran, S., & Ioannidou, O. (2021). Designing practical science assessments
in England: Students’ engagement and perceptions. Research in Science and Technological
Education. doi:10.1080/02635143.2021.1872519
Erduran, S., El Masri, Y., Cullinane, A. & Ng, YPD. (2020). Assessment of practical science
in high stakes examinations: A qualitative analysis of high performing English-speaking
countries. International Journal of Science Education, 42(9), 1544–1567.
Erduran, S. & Wooding, S. (2021). Approaches to summative assessment of practical science,
developed by Project Calibrate, which bring together hands-on and minds-on approaches
to make practical work meaningful for 14- to 16-year-old pupils. School Science Review,
381, 71–78.
Hillier, J. (2013). How does that work? Developing pedagogical content knowledge from
subject knowledge. Teacher Education and Practice, 26(2), 321–338.
Hillier, J. & Ioannidou, O. (2021) Using practical work: Strategies to avoid closing down
practice. Science Teacher Education, 89, 27–34.
80 Judith Hillier et al.

House of Lords. (2006). Science Teaching in Schools (HL 2005–2006 (257)). London,The Stationery
Office.
Hume, A. & Coll, R. (2008). Student experiences of carrying out a practical science investi-
gation under direction. International Journal of Science Education, 9(2), 1201–1228.
Ioannidou, O. & Erduran, S. (2021). Beyond hypothesis testing: Investigating the diversity of
scientific methods in science teachers’ understanding. Science & Education, 30, 345–364.
Kerr, J.F. (1963). Practical Work in School Science. Leicester, UK: Leicester University Press.
McIntyre, D. (1993). Theory, theorising and reflection in initial teacher education, in J.
Calderhead & P. Gates (Eds.), Conceptualising Reflection in Teacher Development. London,
UK: Falmer, 39–52.
McIntyre, D. (1995). Initial teacher education as practical theorising: A response to Paul Hirst.
British Journal of Education Studies, 43(4), 365–383.
Millar, R. (1998). Rhetoric and reality: What practical work in science education is really for,
in J. Wellington (Ed.), Practical Work in School Science: Which way now? London: Routledge,
16–32.
Ofqual. (2013). Review of Controlled Assessment in GCSEs. Coventry: Ofqual.
Pajares, M.F. (1992).Teachers’ beliefs and educational research: Cleaning up a messy construct.
Review of Educational Research, 62(3), 307–332.
Rowland, T., Huckstep, P., & Thwaites, A. (2005). Elementary teachers’ mathematics subject
knowledge: The Knowledge Quartet and the case of Naomi. Journal of Mathematics Teacher
Education, 8, 255–281.
Taylor, R. & Hillier, J. (2019). Developing science explanations in the classroom:The role of the
written narrative, in G.J. Stylianides & A. Childs (Eds.), Classroom-based Interventions across
Subject Areas: Research to Understand What Works in Education. Abingdon, UK: Routledge,
73–97.
Waring, M. (1979). Social Pressures and Curriculum Innovation: A Study of the Nuffield Foundation
Science Teaching Project. London: Methuen.
5
DEVELOPING TEACHER AGENCY
THROUGH THE USE OF THEORY
AND REFLECTION WHEN TEACHING
STUDENTS TO PRODUCE WRITTEN
RESPONSES TO TEXT
Ceridwen Owen and Nicole Dingwall

Introduction
Over the last three decades, in the UK and in Australia, neoliberal approaches to
education policy have led to increases in teacher, student and school accountability
(Biesta, 2015; Kostogriz & Doecke, 2011, 2013; Lingard et al., 2017). The result of
this agenda in schools is the rise of standardised forms of curriculum, pedagogy and
assessment, including high-stakes testing.This agenda and these measures have colo-
nised the everyday work of teachers in the UK and Australia and around the world,
and have changed the nature of teaching and the work of students (Kostogriz, 2012;
O’Sullivan & Goodwyn, 2020).
In this chapter, recognising that accountability has always been part of teachers’
work and, to some extent, is a necessary part of schooling (Kostogriz & Doecke,
2013), we inquire into how these conditions are understood and navigated by
student-teachers of English in the UK and early career teachers (ECTs) of English
in Australia. We are interested in the ‘deeply relational, affective, and ethical’
(Kostogriz, 2012, p. 399) work of teachers, and the ways in which they negotiate
competing conceptions of effective teaching. Our purpose is to consider the role
of practical theorising and praxis in English teachers’ everyday work, in particular
the process of negotiating imposed, standardised teaching practices. To do so, we
focus on one fundamental aspect of English teachers’ everyday work; the teaching
of essay writing.

Essay-writing structures
In UK schools, teachers, including student-teachers, are well versed in using scaf-
folds to support the writing of their students (Gibbons 2017). Gibbons (2019) illus-
trated this familiarity by citing the numerous acronyms used to provide structure

DOI: 10.4324/9781003183945-8
82 Ceridwen Owen and Nicole Dingwall

or serve as checklists for written answers to analytical questions in response to

texts: terms ranging from PEE (point, evidence, example), PETAL (point, evidence,
technique, analysis, link) and SPEED (statement, point, evidence, evaluation, devel-
opment) to SQUIDZ (statement, quote, inference, develop, zoom in and out). In
Australia there are similar acronyms, including PEEL (point, evidence, example,
link) and TEEL (topic sentence, evidence, example, linking sentence) (McKnight,
2020).
These structures arguably compromise the value of the essay writing process
(Marshall & Gibbons, 2018). Atherton et al. (2013) highlight that by using scaffolded
approaches to essay writing, students may come to view writing as a ‘product’ (p.
172) rather than an expression of thought that is constructed and reconstructed
through the drafting process. The result is that essay writing becomes a mechanism
used to prepare students for exams, as scaffolds are time-efficient, and to teach stu-
dents to meet assessment criteria, rather than a process that encourages critical and
creative thought. As Enstone (2017) recalls of her experience as a beginning teacher,
scaffolded essay writing ‘was an easy and predictable way to get pupils from point
A and to point B without causing anyone (including myself) to burst into tears’
(p. 32). This illustrates how the use of scaffolded essay writing is not based on any
educational benefit but on the external pressures of high-stakes testing and/or a
desire from teachers, particularly early in their careers, for a settled classroom. For
beginning teachers moving into a context that makes extensive use of such efficien-
cy-based scaffolded approaches to essay writing, it may be difficult even to know
that alternative approaches exist.
Given the common use in schools of scaffolded approaches to essay writing
that have been shown to have serious limitations in terms of the development of
students’ critical and creative engagement in writing, there are good reasons to
encourage beginning teachers at least to examine alternative approaches. This is
where practical theorising and praxis can be useful in teacher development, as they
create contexts that encourage critical thinking and dialogue about theoretically
based practices that beginning teachers can interrogate in light of their own devel-
oping experience and with respect to their own understandings, views, values and
beliefs about education.

The relationship between praxis and practical theorising

The concept of ‘praxis’ as widely discussed in Australia is not interchangeable with
the concept of ‘practical theorising’ as it was expounded by McIntyre (1993), but
it has many similarities. Here we outline praxis as pertinent to the Australian con-
text and practical theorising as specifically promoted in the context of the Oxford
Internship Scheme.
Van de Ven and Doecke (2011) discuss praxis as a process of co-constructing
meaning with ‘others’. Those others may be colleagues or members of professional
development networks. Others may also comprise ideas advanced in educational
 Developing teacher agency through the use of theory 83

literature or theory. Commenting on an example of English educators’ engagement

in praxis van de Ven and Doecke explain how;

Through engaging in conversations with each other [individuals] have all been
obliged to grapple with a sense of difference as much as sameness as they …
sought to appreciate how each understand and enact their identities as teach-
ers of literature. And this sense of difference has thrown their own values and
beliefs into relief, prompting them to identify the intellectual and pedagogical
traditions that mediate their professional practice, as well as to scrutinise the
institutional structures that shape their work as teachers of literature. (p. 221)

The three dimensions of praxis, as highlighted in this quotation, are: the co-con-
struction of meaning with others through focusing on sameness and difference;
inquiry into intellectual and pedagogical traditions, which is often through engage-
ment with education literature; and the scrutiny of institutional structures that shape
teachers’ work.Through the process of critically reflecting on themselves and others
(individuals, literature and institutional structures), teachers develop an understand-
ing of their work, practice, pedagogical position and their philosophy about edu-
cation (Doecke & Parr, 2011; Gill & Illesca, 2011; Parr et al., 2020; van de Ven &
Doecke, 2011).
Practical theorising is an approach to learning that emphasises the value of rele-
vant knowledge drawn from different sources, created and validated in the different
contexts of school and university. The student-teacher is given access to these dif-
ferent sources of knowledge and is encouraged to critique ideas from all sources.
McIntyre (1993) insists knowledge should not be assumed to be valid simply because
of its source but should instead ‘be questioned in relation to valid criteria’ (p. 42).
Both university-based curriculum tutors and school-based mentors are expected
to offer suggestions for practice derived from their distinctive contexts, the exam-
ination of which occurs in discussion and ultimately through e­ xperimentation –
the student-teacher’s practice in the school domain. Recognition of the need for
critical evaluation of suggestions from different sources provides scope for the stu-
dent-teacher to develop an understanding of the different ideologies and perspec-
tives that underpin the recommendations made to them (and that inform their own
assumptions). They are encouraged to identify any conflicts, prompting a question-
ing approach that ultimately supports informed decision-making and an ability to
justify the pedagogical choices that they make within the particular context of their
placement school.
Considered with reference to the principles of praxis, practical theorising can
also be seen to engage the student-teacher in the co-construction of meaning,
through recognition of the insights offered by others: the skilled practitioners who
model and explain particular pedagogical strategies within the school context, and
the university-based teacher educators who offer recommendations rooted in the-
oretical and research-based literature. Like praxis, practical theorising encourages
84 Ceridwen Owen and Nicole Dingwall

individuals within Internship to be critically reflective, scrutinising all sources of

knowledge, whilst accepting their own positionality in the process.Yet, unlike praxis,
practical theorising is specifically identified as a process in which beginning teach-
ers need to learn to engage (McIntyre, 1993). As such, practical theorising is about
establishing a foundation that can lead to teachers engaging in praxis across their
professional careers. The skilled practitioner is required, therefore, to support teach-
ers in the development of critically reflective skills that are not just about reflecting
on their own practice but about constructing new understandings of that practice
in dialogue with others.
We believe that the common focus of the two processes on sustaining criti-
cal engagement in reflection on theory and practice means that the experience of
UK student-teachers engaging in practical theorising and Australian ECTs using a
praxis approach to development permits a useful and fruitful discussion of teachers’
everyday practice and developing educational philosophies within standards-based
education systems. Our examination of how both groups negotiate the structures
of essay writing that they are required to teach is guided by the following questions:

• How do student-teachers and ECTs of English understand essay writing?

• Why and how do they use essay-writing structures?
• What is the role of practical theorising/praxis in negotiating their use of these
structures?

The specific contexts in which this research was conducted

Nicole is a university-based curriculum (subject) tutor on the English PGCE pro-
gramme within Internship, which continues to be underpinned by McIntyre’s
(1993) view of developing critically reflective teachers through practical theorising.
Nicole’s observations of student-teachers over the last few years regularly revealed
their use of formulaic writing structures, prompting conversations about their use.
The student-teachers’ responses demonstrated the tension that they experience in
seeking to negotiate the craft knowledge offered by experienced teachers, working
within a standards-based system and the theoretical knowledge offered by their
university-based tutors.
During the 2019–2020 academic year, Nicole decided to formalise these con-
versations, using a short survey instrument to deepen her knowledge of the tensions
experienced by her student-teachers in their placement schools (all comprehensive
schools, catering for students aged from 11 to 18). All 26 student-teachers enrolled
on the English PGCE responded to the six questions asked, framed around the
following dimensions: the student-teachers’ own experiences with writing during
school and undergraduate studies; their observations of the use of essay scaffolding
structures; the scope that they had to discuss with other teachers the use of the essay
writing structures and their ability to engage in practical theorising.
Ceridwen draws on the data from her PhD study on the everyday work and
becoming of nine ECTs (Owen, 2020). These were teachers of English working in
 Developing teacher agency through the use of theory 85

Victorian secondary schools (with students aged from 12 to 18). The study sought
to understand the learning and development of teachers in their first five years in
the profession, within contexts of standards-based reforms. In the study, Ceridwen
used the term ‘becoming’ (Bakhtin, 1981) to refer to the process of negotiation
and development in which teachers engaged as they considered their views, values,
beliefs and agendas about education in relation to others, including institutions, the
senior leadership team in their schools, and their colleagues within and external to
their schools.
In terms of a praxis approach to development, each of the participants had
attained their initial teaching degree at the same university and had completed the
same English method units. In these units, which occurred across two semesters,
they were introduced to, and engaged explicitly in, praxis. A praxis approach was
also utilised in the university-based learning communities in which they partici-
pated during the PhD study. Using an ethnography-in-education (Green & Bloome,
2005) methodology, Ceridwen worked alongside the nine ECTs for two years. Due
to the focus on the everyday work and development of these teachers, the ethno-
graphic approach included semi-structured interviews; focus groups; observations
and field-notes; reflective writing with and apart from participants; and artefact
and document collection. The discussion in this chapter is based on this work, in
particular on interviews conducted with the participants across the data-generation
stage that considered the teaching of essay writing.

Student-teachers' experiences in the context of practical theorising

At Oxford, it was no surprise to find that the student-teachers’ own experiences of
schooling had shaped their approach to writing and their teaching of writing. As
Gibbons (2019, p. 38) explains, writing structures have been embedded in English
teaching since the 1980s and have been developed further by the ‘process approach’
outlined by Graves (1983), consisting of the generation of ideas before writing, then
drafting, revising, editing and publishing. Twelve of the student-teachers reported
that they had been taught a structure (of varying degrees of prescription) in school.
Since they had gone on to successful undergraduate (or even postgraduate) level
study, it could not be said to have hindered their own ability to write. A few, how-
ever, reported struggling to move beyond formulaic structures at A level (the public
examinations taken at 18+) and at university. It was not until they were exposed
to alternate exemplars that their writing became freer. One student-teacher com-
mented that she was not aware of alternative writing approaches existing beyond
the PEE format.
The observation of English teaching by the student-teachers revealed teachers
using the prescribed structures to ensure that their students achieved examination
success. The student-teachers reported that teachers applied the varying structures,
despite any professional reservations, as ‘that’s what they need to pass exams’;‘the best
way … it works well to get the best grades’. Even where experienced colleagues had
recognised the restrictions imposed by certain structures, prompting departments
86 Ceridwen Owen and Nicole Dingwall

to move away from the rigidity of acronyms such as PEEL, the student-teachers
reported that other formulaic structures had been substituted in their place, such
as ‘Who, What, Why?’. Further, the student-teachers commented that schools had
used a variety of scaffolds informed or justified by reference to Rosenshine’s (2012)
Principles of Instruction.
The student-teachers, reflecting on their observations of teaching commented
on the expectations of students. In some contexts, the structure of PEE, or its equiv-
alent, was embedded in the teaching of 11-year-olds (in their first year of secondary
schooling). The consequence of this early induction of students into such structures
meant that they became habituated to the package and the ‘lock-step’ approach
(Keene & Zimmerman, 2013, p. 603) of the instructions. As one student-teacher
explained, they ‘really want structure and they want sentence starters’. Thus, even
where student-teachers were given the scope to experiment with alternative
approaches, the students resisted because of their reliance on the structure they had
been taught. One student-teacher found the students’ request to be given a struc-
ture ‘annoying’ and was concerned that they did not understand how to produce a
written response without it.
The structures employed to shape writing were discussed in some departments,
yet the pedagogy behind their use was not debated, except in one school where
the rationales offered were to ensure that students did not ‘slack off ’ and to pro-
vide ‘lower ability’ students with a ‘foundational framework’. One student-teacher
noted that individual teachers were also constrained by departmental policies that
sanctioned these models as the way to teach; and for some – more so at GCSE – the
structures were accepted as a ‘necessary evil’; the most efficient method in terms of
‘time and money’. Only seven student-teachers reported that they had been able to
engage in discussions about relevant pedagogy. In one case, a method for teaching
students to respond to texts suggested by the student-teacher had been ‘immediately
shot down by the teachers, citing the importance of [students’] exercise books as
a revision resource’. One student-teacher felt entirely constrained, as the teachers
made clear exactly how writing was to be taught: ‘This is how we do it, I always do
it’. Another student-teacher stated, ‘I didn’t want to go against the grain and chal-
lenge what they were doing’. Another felt that it would be inappropriate for her
as a beginner ‘to challenge accepted ways so soon’, not wanting to create tension
between herself and the mentor.
In contrast, two student-teachers reported being able to discuss their concerns
within a school that insisted on the use of particular scaffolds, regarding their meth-
ods as successful and reliable.While the regular teachers within the department were
not allowed to deviate from them, the student-teachers were permitted to alter parts
of their lessons. In a different school department, student-teachers found it easy to
engage in practical theorising because, as they commented, the vast number of staff
in the English department had completed their initial teaching education within
the Internship scheme. The pedagogical discussions were facilitated by those who
believed in drawing on both theory and practice.
 Developing teacher agency through the use of theory 87

There were also instances where student-teachers had agency to teach using
alternative approaches. In some schools, student-teachers were permitted in the
lower years (before GCSE examination courses had begun) to explore the teaching
of inference via other means, such as creative writing, which one student-teacher
described as ‘promot[ing] intellectual and personal responses’. Another stu-
dent-teacher reported being permitted to use a discussion strategy, giving groups
questions as prompts, to consider both their response as readers and the writer’s
purpose. The students were then able to create their own plans to write in response
to the text. One student-teacher drew on a university-based curriculum session
that had focused on sharing with students the importance of writing as a means
of developing a personal response. This student-teacher posed a question about
Macbeth and encouraged the students to write ‘freely without any constraints’ for
the lesson. Another engaged the students through talk and mind maps, which led to
the writing of poetry in response to the text. In all these cases, the student-teachers
were able to engage in teaching with different structures despite the broader con-
text of the scaffolded approaches used by schools.
In university-based sessions with the English student-teachers, I and other tutors
had sought both to acknowledge the expertise of the experienced teachers with
whom the student-teachers were working in school and to provide a range of
alternative approaches to support students in developing written responses to a text.
We stressed the ‘vast body of professional knowledge … implicit in highly skilled
professional practice’ (McIntyre, 1995, p. 372) of their mentors, but also explored
the literature critical of formulaic structures (discussed earlier in this chapter) and
considered alternative approaches such as free writing, group discussions, whole-
class explorations of texts, drama and literature circles. Yet for the student-teachers
to engage in practical theorising with their mentors and within school departments
could be both a daunting experience and one of learning.
The position of the student-teachers (particularly those who had themselves
been taught to write using such structures) who regularly observed prescribed
structures being used in school, is one of complexity. They are encouraged by the
course both to learn from, but also to think critically about the practices they
observe; they are expected to draw on theoretical knowledge to question the use of
writing scaffolds, when their own experience as learners, and that of their students,
suggest that such methods are very successful. In such a context, it becomes all the
more critical – but simultaneously all the more difficult – for beginning teachers to
embrace practical theorising, allowing them to engage in the ‘critical examination,
development and experimental use of ideas from many sources’ (McIntyre, 1995, p.
366) as they prepare students for writing.
One student-teacher had the confidence to question accepted forms of practice,
yet it appears that the overriding importance of the exams meant that she was not
permitted to try a different path. As Marshall and Gibbons (2018, p. 11) explain,
the ‘thought of exams, the results, and league tables dominate the way in which
teachers approach their lessons’ and indeed – I would add – the development of
88 Ceridwen Owen and Nicole Dingwall

student-teachers. In this environment, even entering into dialogue about routine

practices requires enormous confidence, never mind actually trying to resist the
‘norm’. Despite their theoretical knowledge which might have made it possible to
express concerns or to suggest different ways forward, the student-teachers lacked
any practical experience (or ‘craft knowledge’) of alternative approaches and were
aware of being ‘judged’ by their mentors.
The student-teachers’ reports of the conversations that they did have in school
were entirely consistent with the findings of Gibbons’ (2019) research, that writ-
ing structures were employed as a result of performativity pressures. As Bleiman
(2020) has recently argued, the expectation to teach using prescribed structures
often comes from senior management who view them as efficient.This raises a seri-
ous difficulty for practical theorising as student-teachers would need to question an
approach that is adopted right across a particular school – or group of schools – and
it is the school that judges the student-teacher’s success. In such circumstances, it is
very apparent how the scope for student-teachers learning is contingent not only
on the responsiveness of their particular mentor and other departmental colleagues
but also on wider school-level decision-making. If exam pressures provide the
rationale for teachers’ use of particular writing structures, prescribed not just by the
English department, but by senior leaders, the multiple layers of demand become
even more complex for the student-teachers within Internship, seeking to negotiate
both the practices of the teachers from whom they are expected to learn and the
requirements of Ofsted that drive the school’s curricular and pedagogical choices.
Yet, rather than dismissing practical theorising as impossible in such circum-
stances, it is worth first acknowledging the role it can play in making explicit the
questions and frustrations of the experienced teachers who have their own concerns
about how their context has constrained the practices that they feel obliged (or are
actually required) to employ. A second point worth noting is the scope that can be
found for practical theorising by looking critically at the very pressures to which
teachers claim to be responding in their use of prescribed scaffolds and at the impact
of allowing an intended ‘scaffold’ to become (as many of the student-teachers now
saw it in their school’s practice) a permanent foundation.
The routine adoption of any approach inevitably shapes students’ expectations –
in this case, focusing students’ attention on the required product. Writing in response
to text comes to be seen as the production of a ‘PEE paragraph’ or a ‘PEEL essay’,
with discussion between student and teacher focused on delivering the right form
of words or the appropriate element to address each individual part of the acronym,
rather than on developing a personal response to a text, despite the fact that giving
a personal response is also a requirement of public examinations. Identifying and
focusing simultaneously on this additional demand illustrates the potential space for
practical theorising. By carefully setting out the rationale for their use of scaffolds
and looking together with the student-teachers at the extent to which, or the ways
in which, such scaffolds actually serve to meet their stated objectives, mentors may
find scope to articulate their own concerns and doubts. In considering whether
and how their students have been encouraged to develop a personal response, they
 Developing teacher agency through the use of theory 89

may also be prompted to consider or share their practical experience of alternative

strategies (used in relation to other tasks) intended to evoke and to help students to
express a personal reaction.
In the right environment, the tensions experienced by student-teachers can be
positive, they are able to question their beliefs, question themselves and begin to
formulate their identities as teachers. In fact, Smagorinsky et al. (2004) suggest that
beginning teachers ought to be faced with confronting tensions, since this prepares
them pedagogically to move forward into other schools and to keep asking whether
the familiar practices that they have brought with them – or the new approaches
that they may encounter – are proving effective in meeting the particular demands
of the new context.Within the English PGCE, particularly as they share their expe-
riences together at the university, the student-teachers are regularly confronted
with the knowledge that English departments are not the same; nor are the con-
texts of the schools in which those departments are situated. So it is not surprising
that approaches to writing also differ. But if I am to support those student-teach-
ers in engaging with practical theorising, there are two issues that clearly need to
be addressed within the English PGCE programme. The first is that our teaching
within the university should continually recognise the reality of ‘practice’ in a pre-
scriptive curriculum, making clear why such practices have been adopted, while also
highlighting the tensions and contradictions that may exist within departments as
well as between them. Our teaching certainly needs to offer blue sky thinking but
must also explicitly ensure that student-teachers are aware that teaching is embed-
ded in the reality of English departments and the increasing performativity pressure
that they will encounter in schools. The involvement of school-based mentors in
our planning, and indeed in some aspects of this teaching, may be an important step
in ensuring that schools embrace the student-teachers’ engagement with practical
theorising.
The second is that we need to formally negotiate an explicit agreement with
the English departments that work in partnership with us that our student-teachers
can be permitted to experiment with differing approaches to writing with certain
classes in ways that make it possible for the student-teachers to undertake the design,
teaching and evaluation of at least some alternative approaches. The relationship
between the university-based curriculum tutors and the English mentors requires
regular discussions throughout the course of each academic year regarding both
the principles of practical theorising and the practicalities of ensuring that every
student-teacher can engage in it, at clearly designated points or with specific classes
even if not on regular basis.

Early career English teachers engaging in praxis

In inquiring into ECTs’ experiences in teaching essay writing using imposed para-
graph structures, I (Ceridwen) consider the complex and co-constructed nature of
teaching and meaning-making. I position teaching as an ongoing process of learn-
ing that involves the negotiation of ‘conflicting visions, disparaging considerations,
90 Ceridwen Owen and Nicole Dingwall

and contesting interpretations’ (Britzman, 2003, p. 26). Of the nine participants

with whom I worked over a two-year period none held a static position on the use
of imposed essay writing structures in the teaching of analytical responses. Their
perspectives were ‘multidimensional and layered’, and they experienced ‘a struggle
between these dimensions and layers’ (Parr et al., 2020, p. 249).
To explain the background, I begin by outlining the Australian context, in par-
ticular Victoria, in regard to essay writing structures in the English secondary school
classroom. In Victoria, secondary schooling is divided into Years 7–10 (catering for
students from 12 to 16 years of age), which aligns with the Victorian Curriculum,
and Years 11 and 12 (for students aged 16 to 18), which aligns with the Victorian
Certificate of Education (VCE). The VCE is the Victorian equivalent of the UK’s
A level.
In Victoria, the teaching of essay writing is part of English teachers’ everyday
work. The external assessment for the final year of schooling, as part of the VCE,
includes the genre of the analytical response, which McKnight (2020) points out,
is ‘conducive to a TEEL approach’ (p. 4). TEEL (topic sentence, explanation, evi-
dence and linking sentence) is favoured in Victorian schools and derives from PEEL
(point, explanation, evidence and link), which is used more broadly across Australia
(McKnight, 2020). TEEL is the basic structure for a paragraph, and generally, a
five-paragraph essay (an introduction, three paragraphs in the main body and a con-
clusion) is the expectation at VCE. McKnight (2020) explains that the exact heritage
of TEEL is unknown, but it has become widely used by schools, English faculties
and teachers across Victoria. Within my participants’ schools, the VCE requirements
of an analytical response have had a trickle-down effect to every year level. TEEL is
taught across Years 7 to 10 in English classrooms.
In this section, I consider broadly the experiences of the ECTs in the study to
demonstrate how scaffolded essay structures were understood by teachers before
focusing on how one ECT, Charlotte was making sense of using TEEL and how
she was using it in her classrooms. I focus in particular detail on the role of praxis
in teachers’ developing understandings and positions, through examining the mean-
ing-making processes that Charlotte employed as she negotiated her use of TEEL.

How do ECTs understand essay writing, and how do they use scaffolding
structures?
At different times across the two years of data generation, all the ECTs expressed
frustration about the teaching of essay writing.TEEL was the expected structure for
an essay in every school, particularly in the younger, developing years of Years 7–10.
Theodore found that due to having to teach essay writing, he had to push aside
doing ‘something different’ from the regular grind of the English classroom. He
wanted to explore various ways to examine a text and develop interpretations with
his students but felt he could not do so due to the imposed expectation that students
should produce TEEL structured essays. At times, he felt trapped into the narrow
exploration of a text that occurred because students were trying to find ways for
 Developing teacher agency through the use of theory 91

their analysis to fit into a TEEL structure. The pressure to use TEEL came from his
school but also from his students. He discussed how he felt questioned by some
students, as to ‘why [they] didn’t spend more time writing essays’. Not wanting
to ‘ignore the students’ needs’, he tried to negotiate both their desire for a TEEL
structured essay and his desire to have them delve into the text in a variety of ways
and for a variety of purposes.
Tiffany, equally expressed her reservations about teaching essays through a TEEL
structure. She commented that she ‘would much prefer to build relationships with
students and focus on getting them engaged with English, rather than – “Here’s the
structure of an essay”’. Like Theodore, Tiffany felt that teaching essays took time
from other aspects of English that she thought were more valuable. These included
building relationships, but also giving students space to engage creatively with texts
and explore their relationship to their own lives. Since the TEEL structure was
solely focused on the text, she felt it provided no opportunity for such text-to-self
connections. She regarded it as a product of performative measures, with TEEL-
structured essays driven by the school’s agenda to get ‘good exam results’ in VCE.
Such essays, she argued, did not allow for the development of the ‘great unmeasur-
ables’ – the ‘things you can’t quantify and show off to the world as evidence of …
“growth”’. Tiffany was referring here to the development of affective skills, such as
creativity and critical thinking and to the joy of learning.
Charlotte shared the views of Tiffany, and to some extent those of Theodore. She
believed that a TEEL-structured essay pulled students away from genuine engage-
ment with a text. Sharing her frustration in teaching Romeo and Juliet, where the
essay constrained her students’ developing ideas and excitement, she commented:

My kids have been particularly stuck on the beauty of the language – and the
developments over time which have led us to our contemporary vocabulary,
which they feel is dull and lifeless. The girls and some of the boys have been
swept up by the imagery and the way that Shakespeare is very much alive,
even today … and yet all this is lost when they have to respond to a rank,
closed prompt, in a fucking TEEL essay format.

Charlotte is discussing the lack of scope within a TEEL essay for students to explore
the ideas they had been forming about the ‘imagery’ of Shakespeare’s language and
its current applicability. She takes issue with two parts of such an essay; first, the
prompt, which is ‘closed’, and limiting; and, second, the TEEL structure, which,
she believed prevented her students from exploring the ideas they were forming.
This position is informed by Charlotte’s education philosophy, which prompted her
to oppose the standardisation of her practice, and her students’ achievement. She
believed that education was a localised, individual and contextual experience, and
so, a standard essay question, and a structured imposed response, did not address her
students’ needs. It could not – in Tiffany’s terms – develop the 'great unmeasurables’.
Yet, Charlotte, at other times, recognised the exploratory nature of essay writ-
ing. She explained that in her own practice, she didn’t ‘really understand a text
92 Ceridwen Owen and Nicole Dingwall

until [she’d] written an essay or discussed it’. She valued writing about an idea, or
a text, as the process enabled her to delve into its meanings. Through a structured
approach, she was able to work through ideas. Thus, while she was not opposed to
structured writing, she found that the specific structure of TEEL was not necessarily
compatible with students exploring and developing ideas. There was a tension for
Charlotte between the limitations and the possibilities of essays and the process of
writing in a structured way.
This tension resulted in Charlotte changing her practice over time, both in
response to her avid reading of education literature and as she interacted with other
teachers (her colleagues within school and members of external professional devel-
opment networks) and with her classes. As she continued to work through the
tensions associated with the limitations of TEEL, she found ways, through praxis, to
use the imposed structure to assist her students.
As the following quotation shows, she began to consider how TEEL could be
used at different stages and in different ways to scaffold students’ development of
ideas and nurture their ability to order and explain their thinking:

In Year 7 I use it as a way to help kids overcome ‘essay fear’ and give them
something to cling to. In Year 10 I encourage them to let it go so that they
are embedding quotes with their explanation. In Year 11 I use it as a reminder
that VCAA markers need to see a really good topic sentence so they can
swiftly pop you into the 80% and above category before they actually engage
with reading the essay properly.

In this way, Charlotte used the structure of TEEL (or ‘TEEEEEEL’ as she described
it because she didn’t want her students to ‘simply explain one idea and then back it
up with evidence’) to scaffold her students’ developing ability to write and respond
analytically to a text. To help overcome younger students’ fear of writing, she used
TEEL to provide an initial structure and prevent them feeling overwhelmed.
Charlotte believed that removing the ‘fear’ of writing enabled her students to focus
on critical thinking and creativity. As they became more comfortable and capable,
she ‘encourage[d] them to let it go’; to move beyond TEEL – which could now
genuinely serve as a scaffold, rather than an imposed assessment structure. She used
the analogy of growing peas to describe this supporting role:

[Students] need little, tiny, twiggy sticks with lots of branches to climb on as
soon as they emerge from the earth, but once they get going they can cling to
something bigger and straighter, like a cane. After a while you can even pinch
off tendrils that are heading in the wrong direction or reaching too high with-
out creating enough flowers/pods. This makes the plant stronger – it forces
energy into the body of the plant. I like my kids to flower and produce pods.

The structure of TEEL for Charlotte, therefore, was less about controlling students,
and restricting their creativity; it was less about mandated assessment to measure
 Developing teacher agency through the use of theory 93

students; and more about scaffolding their learning, providing supports and then
removing them when the students were strong enough to write on their own.
Through this process, from viewing TEEL-structured essays as confining through
to considering other possibilities and uses of the imposed structure, Charlotte was
engaging in praxis. She was critically engaging with, and reflecting on: the school’s
agenda, the structures it provided, the needs of her students and her own education
philosophy.

The role of praxis

The tensions faced by Charlotte as she negotiated her use of, and position on,
TEEL-structured essays is, McKnight (2020) argues, a ‘familiar battle’ of process
versus genre (p. 3). Process is the development of ‘personal growth, authentic writ-
ing, experimental approaches’, while genre is the ‘mastery of textual forms through
explicit instruction’ (p. 3). Charlotte’s comment about the limitations of ‘a fucking
TEEL essay format’ when her students were ‘stuck on the beauty of the language’,
while also using TEEL to help with ‘essay fear’ is an example of this tension.
As McKnight (2020) identifies, the purpose of exploring teachers’ ideas about
structured essay writing should not be to reinforce the binary of process versus
genre, but rather to ‘illustrate the tensions [that] the synthesis of these discourses
creates for teachers in practice’ (p. 3). Charlotte was not engaging in binary thinking;
rather she was attempting to make sense of the purposes and possibilities of a struc-
tured TEEL essay. This included the purpose – as set out within government policy
and curriculum, as defined by her school and colleagues, and as she understood it, in
light of her own views, values, beliefs and experiences. In considering the purpose
and the possibilities, and in working through these ideas into practice, Charlotte was
engaging in praxis.

Conclusions
Student-teachers and ECTs in the UK and Australia are learning to teach in neo-
liberal education environments. In neoliberal contexts, professional knowledge, skill
and development are often measured according to standardised metrics. This can
limit teachers’ engagement and development in their practice. We have argued in
this chapter for student-teachers and ECTs to have the opportunity to become
critically reflective practitioners and that this opportunity should begin during their
initial teaching degree.
While there are differences in the contexts of the UK and Australia, and nuances
in approach (practical theorising and praxis), the aim remains the same: the develop-
ment of practitioners who will not just accept the norm but question how it aligns
with their understanding of education and education theories.The student-teachers
discussed here who are encouraged to engage in practical theorising and the ECTs
who engage in praxis not only question the specific practice of using essay writ-
ing scaffolds but also are able to critically engage with the reasons for their unease
94 Ceridwen Owen and Nicole Dingwall

about such structures, as well with as the possibilities inherent in their use and the
rationales advanced for their adoption. Practical theorising, as promoted (although
not always permitted) within Internship, and praxis, as understood in the Australian
context, are ways for teachers to have agency in their work and to resist the pressure
of standards-based reforms to conform.
Through the two examples, we have shown the role and importance of teacher
education in developing teachers’ knowledge and ability to engage in such pro-
cesses. While Nicole highlighted the difficulties that student-teachers encounter in
engaging in practical theorising within narrow systems of education that do not
always value critical reflection, Ceridwen’s example illustrates how ECTs who had
engaged in praxis at university were including it as part of their ongoing practice
in schools.
Ceridwen’s example supports McIntyre’s (1993) framework of practical theoris-
ing.While the ECTs did not engage in practical theorising, they were exposed to and
taught a praxis approach at university that they were then able to continue to use and
develop as part of their everyday practice. Despite the difficulties raised by Nicole
and elsewhere in this collection, the experience of Charlotte, Tiffany and Theodore
are illustrations of why it is important; rather than accepting what was being asked of
them and being resentful, these teachers, particularly Charlotte, were able to engage
critically with the tension and find ways to work that they found valuable.
Yet, it is important not just to show how praxis can be beneficial for teachers
but also to address some of the difficulties. In response to the difficulty that Nicole
observed, with student-teachers feeling that they had to use the scaffolded approach
to essay writing that had been adopted school-wide, Charlotte offers an example
of how this situation can be negotiated. Through engaging in praxis, she was able
to steer a route between the mandated approach of her school and her own beliefs
about the teaching of essay writing.
Other difficulties that Nicole observed – a lack of confidence and compari-
son with more experienced teachers – highlight where there needs to be more
attention paid in teacher education. McIntyre (1993) positions practical theorising
within ITE as a process in which student-teachers need to learn how to engage.
There is perhaps scope, therefore, for the issues of confidence and comparison to
be addressed in this process of learning. Student-teachers need to be introduced
very deliberately to practical theorising and also alerted to the difficulties that they
should expect to face as they learn to engage in it.
Despite these difficulties, which we believe can be overcome, we argue that there
is an obligation for the English PGCE to continue with practical theorising so that
when student-teachers becomes ECTs, they are able to engage confidently in it as
they navigate the school curriculum, the needs of their students and their own ped-
agogy. Ceridwen’s example shows the benefits for teachers and their students of this
continued critical engagement with their practice and the practices of the schools
in which they work. Practical theorising and praxis assist in preparing ­teachers
for the reality of teaching in pressurised, standardised and neoliberal environments.
Through the practical theorising and praxis process, teachers are equipped with
 Developing teacher agency through the use of theory 95

the skill and knowledge to consider and form their own approach and ideas about
imposed structures, such as scaffolded approaches to essay writing. Practical theo-
rising should serve as a mechanism that affords student-teachers the opportunity
to ask critical questions and we hope that it would be valued in a community of
teachers who share some of the same concerns and questions. The fact that this did
not appear to be the case in Nicole’s context highlights the continued need for
regular negotiation in the context of teacher education partnerships to ensure that
the nature of the process is understood and that student-teachers are supported and
encouraged to engage in it.

References
Atherton, C., Green, A., & Snapper, G. (2013). Teaching English Literature 16–19 An Essential
Guide. Abingdon: Routledge, NATE.
Bakhtin, M.M. (1981). The Dialogic Imagination: Four essays (C. Emerson & M. Holquist,
Trans.). Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.
Biesta, G. (2015). What is education for? On good education, teacher judgement, and educa-
tional professionalism. European Journal of Education, 50(1), 75–87.
Bleiman, B. (2020). What Matters in English Teaching. London: English and Media Centre.
Britzman, D.P. (2003). Practice Makes Practice: A Critical Study of Learning to Teach. Albany: State
University of New York Press.
Doecke, B. & Parr, G. (2011). The national mapping of teacher professional learning project:
A multi-dimensional space? English in Australia, 46(2), 9–19.
Enstone, L. (2017). Time to stop ‘PEE’-ing? Teaching English 13, 33–36.
Gibbons, S. (2017). English and Its Teachers: A History of Policy, Pedagogy and Practice. Oxford:
Routledge.
Gibbons, S. (2019). ‘Death by PEEL?’The teaching of writing in the secondary English class-
room in England, English in Education, 53(1), 36–45.
Gill, P. & Illesca, B. (2011). Literary conversation: An Australian classroom. In P.-H. van de Ven
& B. Doecke (Eds.), Literary Praxis: A Conversational Inquiry into the Teaching of Literature (pp.
23–42). The Netherlands: Sense Publishers.
Graves, D. (1983). Writing:Teachers and Children at Work. Exeter, NH: Heinemann Educational
Books.
Green, J. & Bloome, D. (2005). Ethnography and ethnographers of and in education: A
situated perspective. In J. Flood, S.B. Heath, & D. Lapp (Eds.), Handbook of Research on
Teaching Literacy through the Communicative and Visual Arts. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum
Associates, 181–202.
Keene, O.E. & Zimmerman, S. (2013). Years later, comprehension strategies still at work
International Literacy Association, 66(8), 601–606.
Kostogriz, A. (2012). Accountability and the affective labour of teachers: A Marxist–
Vygotskian perspective. The Australian Educational Researcher, 39(4), 397–412.
Kostogriz, A. & Doecke, B. (2011). Standards-based accountability: Reification, responsibility
and the ethical subject. Teaching Education, 22(4), 397–412. doi:10.1080/10476210.2011
.587870
Kostogriz, A. & Doecke, B. (2013).The ethical practice of teaching literacy: Accountability or
responsibility? Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, 36(2), 90–98.
Lingard, B., Sellar, S., & Lewis, S. (2017). Accountabilities in schools and school systems.
Oxford Research Encyclopedias. doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780190264093.013.74
96 Ceridwen Owen and Nicole Dingwall

Marshall, B. & Gibbons, S. (2018). Assessing English: A comparison between Canada and
England’s assessment procedures. Education Sciences, 8(2), 211–224.
McIntyre, D. (1993). Theory, theorizing and reflection in initial teacher education. In
J. Calderhead & P. Gates (Eds.), Conceptualising Reflection in Teacher Development (39–52).
London: Falmer Press.
McIntyre, D. (1995). Initial teacher education as practical theorising: A response to Paul Hirst.
British Journal of Educational Studies, 43(4), 365–383
McKnight, L. (2020). Since feeling is first: The art of teaching to write paragraphs. English in
Education, 55 (1), 37–52.
Owen, C.C. (2020). Becoming an English Teacher:The Shaping of Everyday Professional Experiences
in Early Career Teaching. Doctoral thesis, Monash University. https://doi.org/10.26180/
13210970.v1
O’Sullivan, K.A., & Goodwyn,A. (2020). Contested territories: English teachers in Australia and
England remaining resilient and creative in constraining times. English in Education, 54(3),
224–238.
Parr, G., Bulfin, S., Diamond, F., Wood, N., & Owen, C. (2020). The becoming of English
teacher educators in Australia: A cross-generational reflexive inquiry. Oxford Review of
Education, 46(2), 238–256.
Rosenshine, B. (2012). Principles of instruction: research-based strategies that all teachers
should know. The Education Digest 78(3), 30–40.
Smagorinsky, P., Cook, L. S., Moore, C., Jackson, A.Y. & Fry, P. G. (2004). Tensions in learning
to teach: accommodation and the development of a teaching identity. Journal of Teacher
Education, 55(1), 8–24.
van de Ven, P.-H., & Doecke, B. (2011). Literary praxis: (A concluding essay). In P.-H. van
de Ven & B. Doecke (Eds.), Literary Praxis: A Conversational Inquiry into the Teaching of
Literature. Boston, MA: SensePublishers.
6
PRESERVICE TEACHERS’ WAYS
OF ADDRESSING CHALLENGES
WHEN TEACHING REASONING-
AND-PROVING IN THEIR MENTOR
TEACHERS’ MATHEMATICS
CLASSROOMS
Gabriel J. Stylianides and Andreas J. Stylianides

Introduction
In this chapter, we use the hyphenated term reasoning-and-proving (Stylianides, 2009)
to describe the overarching mathematical activity that encompasses some impor-
tant activities that are frequently involved in the process of making sense of and
establishing new mathematical knowledge, both in the discipline and in school
mathematics. These activities include identifying patterns, making conjectures, and
providing arguments for or against mathematical claims some of which may qualify
as proofs. The reason for grouping the aforementioned activities under a hyphen-
ated term is to emphasise their relatedness in mathematical practice that investigates
mathematical phenomena in search for a proof.
The activity of reasoning-and-proving is not only at the heart of mathemat-
ical sense-making but also important for all students’ learning of mathematics as
early as the primary school (e.g., Ball & Bass, 2000; Department for Education,
2013; NCTM, 2000; Stylianides, 2016). Engagement with reasoning-and-proving
can allow the members of a school mathematics classroom community to be active
participants in establishing new (for the students) mathematical knowledge based on
reason and logic rather than by appeal to the authority of the teacher or the text-
book. Yet, despite its importance, reasoning-and-proving tends to have a marginal
place in school mathematics practice in different countries around the world, as can
be seen, for example, from the findings of the 1995 and 1999 TIMSS Video Studies
(see, respectively, Manaster (1998) and Hiebert et al. (2003)).
The situation tends to be worse in primary school than in secondary school
partly because many primary teachers often have (1) weaker mathematical (sub-
ject-matter) knowledge about reasoning-and-proving than secondary mathematics
teachers and (2) counterproductive beliefs about teaching reasoning-and-proving
and its appropriateness for primary students (see Stylianides, Stylianides, & Weber,

DOI: 10.4324/9781003183945-9
98 Gabriel J. Stylianides and Andreas J. Stylianides

2017, for a review). Mathematics teacher education has an important role to play in
helping primary teachers become better prepared to engage their students in reason-
ing-and-proving. Following up on an intervention study that helped a group of pre-
service primary teachers make significant progress in overcoming these two major
obstacles to teaching reasoning-and-proving (see, e.g., Stylianides & Stylianides,
2009a, 2014), we examined (1) the challenges three preservice teachers identified
that they faced as they planned and taught lessons related to reasoning-and-proving
in their mentor teachers’ classrooms during their field-based experience in schools
and (2) the ways in which they reported going about addressing each of those
challenges.
In Stylianides, Stylianides, and Shilling-Traina (2013), we reported the challenges
that the three preservice teachers identified, broadly clustered around the following:
(1) challenges related to teaching in their mentor teachers’ classrooms (e.g., class-
room norms, students’ habits of mind); (2) challenges related to preservice teachers’
lesson planning and implementation (e.g., teaching high-level tasks, having a sense
of effectiveness); and (3) challenges related to preservice teachers’ knowledge (e.g.,
knowledge of students or the curriculum). In this chapter, we focus on the first clus-
ter of challenges elaborated in Table 6.1, related to classroom norms and students’
habits of mind, and we examine the ways in which the three preservice teachers
reported trying, or wanting to try, in order to address the specific challenges in the
future. With regard to students’ habits of mind, we follow Cuoco, Goldenberg, and
Mark (1996) in viewing these as “mental habits that allow students to develop a
repertoire of general heuristics and approaches that can be applied in many different
situations” (p. 378). In mathematics, habits of mind can take different forms such
as generalising, developing relations, reasoning with relationships, and investigating
invariants (e.g., Lehrer, Kobiela, & Weinberg, 2013).
The research we report herein illustrates McIntyre’s (1995, 2009) notion of the
practical theorising dialectic and Berliner’s (2001) notion of adaptive expertise whereby
preservice teachers need to develop knowledge/skills and reflective abilities/­habits
to manage the uncertain demands of classroom contexts as they try to teach a
mathematical activity that, although key from a disciplinary perspective, is not part
of established norms or students’ ways of thinking in ordinary school mathematics
classrooms. We take, however, a slightly different stance than McIntyre (1995) to

TABLE 6.1 Challenges related to preservice teachers’ teaching lessons related to reasoning-
and-proving in their mentor teachers’ classrooms

Cluster of challenges Specific challenges

Challenges related to - Classroom norms: The classroom norms in mentor teachers’
mentor teachers’ classrooms do not promote exploring and thinking about
classrooms mathematical ideas (including reasoning-and-proving).
- Students’ habits of mind: The students in mentor teachers’
classrooms are lacking the habits of mind necessary to engage
in exploring and thinking about mathematical ideas.
 Preservice teachers’ ways of addressing challenges 99

preservice teachers’ learning through reflection on their own practice. McIntyre

noted the following:

While reflection on their own experience is likely to be experienced teachers’ most

important way of learning professionally, it is likely to offer a very limited basis for
the learning of beginning teachers. Initial teacher education should be concerned
with the critical examination, development and experimental use of ideas
from many sources, including both the elucidated practice of experienced
teachers and also a diverse theoretical and research-based literature, i.e. with
theorising about practice.
(McIntyre, 1995, pp. 366–367; emphasis added)

So, while McIntyre (1993, 1995) expected preservice to learn how their teaching is
shaped by the web of institutional and societal structures that surround this teach-
ing, he did not consider it a viable way of learning professionally for preservice to
try to examine these issues through a reflective focus on their own practice. This is
because McIntyre viewed this kind of ‘reflective practice’ as dependent on a store
of tacit knowledge not yet possessed by preservice teachers. In our study, preservice
teachers’ reflective focus on their own practice was a major element.
In more detail, we conceptualised the notion of ‘challenges’ in teaching math-
ematics within the context of Dewey’s (1933) framework of reflective thinking as
adapted and used by Mewborn (1999) in her study of four preservice primary
teachers during their field-based experiences in a teacher education programme.
The framework allows examination not only of what preservice teachers find chal-
lenging (i.e., problematic) in their mentor teachers’ classrooms, but also of how they
go about trying to resolve these challenges which is our focus herein. The frame-
work includes five main phases of reflective thought and a preservice teacher may
cycle through any of the phases, and in any order, before moving on to a different
phase. The five phases are to (1) identify a challenge (i.e., a problematic situation)
and recognise what is problematic about it, (2) generate hypotheses about possible
solutions, (3) reason about hypotheses that have been generated and possibly reject
some, (4) test hypotheses, and (5) generate solutions. The research we report in this
chapter relates primarily to preservice teachers’ engagement with phases 2–5. Our
findings inform ways in which teacher education programmes can develop preser-
vice teachers’ capacity to engage in practical theorising by supporting them to deal
with instances of misalignment between priorities across coursework at university
and the reality of field-based experience in schools.

Research context
In this chapter, we report findings from the same study as the one we reported
in Stylianides, Stylianides, and Shilling-Traina (2013). In this section, we describe
briefly the study’s research context and refer readers to Stylianides, Stylianides, and
Shilling-Traina (2013) for more information.
100 Gabriel J. Stylianides and Andreas J. Stylianides

The research we report herein is part of the second of two studies that aimed to
contribute research knowledge about the professional education of preservice primary
teachers so that they are better prepared to engage their students in authentic math-
ematical activities, with particular attention to reasoning-and-proving. The first study,
organised as a four-year design experiment (see, e.g., Cobb, Confrey, diSessa, Lehrer, &
Schauble, 2003), aimed to develop theoretical and practical tools for promoting pre-
service teachers’ ‘mathematical knowledge for teaching’ (see, e.g., Ball & Bass, 2000;
Hill, Rowan, & Ball, 2005) with particular attention to teachers’ knowledge about rea-
soning-and-proving (e.g., Stylianides & Ball, 2008).The last of the five research cycles
of the design experiment was conducted in two sections of an undergraduate math-
ematics course that was attended by a total of 39 preservice teachers, including the
three who participated also in the second study. Below we offer further information
about the design experiment (original study) so as to provide necessary background
about the three preservice teachers’ experiences in the mathematics course, which
prepared them to participate in the follow-up (focal) study.
The course participants met three hours per week for a semester. The course
was prerequisite for admission to the masters-level primary teacher education pro-
gramme in a large state university in the United States, was taught by the first
author, and was the only mathematics course that the students who completed
the teacher education programme were required to take, so it covered a range of
mathematical topics. The instructional approach we followed in the course to pro-
mote preservice teachers’ understanding of reasoning-and-proving, as well as the
corresponding theoretical framework that underpinned its design, evolved from
one research cycle to the next during the design experiment, culminating in the last
research cycle in a five-feature approach that we discussed elsewhere (see Stylianides
& Stylianides, 2009b, 2014a, 2014b).
The data sources in the last research cycle of the design experiment included
the following: tests of preservice teachers’ mathematical knowledge and surveys of
their beliefs about reasoning-and-proving at different stages in the course, videos
and fieldnotes of all course sessions, and post-course interviews with all preser-
vice teachers. Analysis of the test data showed overall notable improvements in pre-
service teachers’ mathematical knowledge about reasoning-and-proving (see, e.g.,
Stylianides & Stylianides, 2009a, 2009b). Furthermore, analysis of the survey and
interview data showed overall notable changes in preservice teachers’ beliefs about
reasoning-and-proving, such as their appreciation of the importance and feasibility
of engaging primary students in reasoning-and-proving (Stylianides & Stylianides,
2022).
In the follow-up study, we focused on a select group of three preservice teachers
who took the aforementioned mathematics course in the last research cycle of the
design experiment. Specifically, we followed these preservice teachers into the pri-
mary teacher education programme in order to examine the challenges they faced
as they tried to engage the students in their mentor teachers’ classrooms in reason-
ing-and-proving, which were the classrooms in which the preservice teachers spent
the bulk of their time while in school. Evidence from the design experiment had
 Preservice teachers’ ways of addressing challenges 101

suggested that these three preservice teachers had good mathematical knowledge
and beliefs about reasoning-and-proving, which was a major reason for their inclu-
sion in the follow-up study. In addition to documenting the challenges identified by
the three preservice teachers (the focus of Stylianides, Stylianides, & Shilling-Traina,
2013), we examined the ways in which they tried, or wanted to try, to address these
challenges (the focus of this chapter, with attention to the particular cluster of chal-
lenges in Table 6.1). In designing the follow-up study, and similarly to Mewborn
(1999), we aimed to create a supportive setting for the preservice teachers to engage
in reflective thinking as we explained earlier. This included individual meetings
between each preservice teacher and a teacher educator (first author), as well as a
focus group comprising the three preservice teachers and the teacher educator dur-
ing which the preservice teachers were “encouraged to analyze their experiences
and problems rather than defend a particular position” (Mewborn, 1999, p. 319).

Method
This section follows closely the respective section in Stylianides, Stylianides, and
Shilling-Traina (2013) due to the reported research deriving from the same study.

Process and data sources

Each preservice teacher individually completed two assignments, which were inte-
grated into existing course requirements in the teacher education programme. The
assignments aimed to engage, in a structured way, preservice teachers in teaching
and reflecting on two lessons related to reasoning-and-proving in their mentor
teachers’ classrooms. For each assignment, the preservice teachers were asked to do
the following:

1. Design and teach a lesson aiming to engage the students in their mentor teachers’
classrooms in at least one of the activities that are part of reasoning-and-proving.
2. Audiotape or videotape the lesson.
3. Complete a write-up to include:
• an annotated lesson plan, with a statement of the lesson’s learning goals,
challenges that the preservice teachers anticipated they would face in
teaching the lesson, and consideration of possible ways for addressing those
challenges;
• a lesson narrative using the audio/video records of the lesson; and
• reflections on the implementation of the lesson (e.g., challenges they actu-
ally faced, efforts they made to address the challenges, and goals for their
future professional growth).

Before teaching each lesson, the preservice teachers met individually with a
teacher educator (first author) who confirmed that the focus of the lessons was
indeed related to reasoning-and-proving.The teacher educator also gave them some
102 Gabriel J. Stylianides and Andreas J. Stylianides

top-level feedback on their lesson plans and helped them consider (by asking prob-
ing questions) possible challenges they might encounter when teaching the lessons.
The three preservice teachers and the teacher educator also met as a group
after the completion of each assignment to debrief the lessons and discuss actual
challenges the preservice teachers faced when teaching their lessons and possible
ways of addressing the challenges in future lessons. The teacher educator started
each of the group meetings by asking the preservice teachers to take a few minutes
individually to think and write down specific challenges they faced as they planned
and taught the lessons; this ensured that all preservice teachers had an opportunity
to identify challenges that they personally experienced, without being influenced
or feeling constrained by their peers’ experiences. Next, each preservice teacher
described briefly to the group the challenges they wrote down. After that, the dis-
cussion focused on specific challenges identified by the preservice teachers and on
possible ways that the preservice teachers thought about addressing these challenges.
Before the second group meeting, which happened at the end of the one-
year teacher education programme, we also conducted semi-structured interviews
(Merriam, 1988) to probe, on an individual basis, each preservice teacher’s views
and experiences related to the issues of interest to our research. The two group dis-
cussions and all three individual interviews were fully transcribed.

Unit of analysis
Using a similar approach to our data analysis of preservice teachers’ challenges in
Stylianides, Stylianides and Shilling-Traina (2013), we defined the unit of analysis to be
each self-contained segment of a transcript that included description by a preservice
teacher of at least one way of trying, or wanting to try, to address one of the specific
challenges in Table 6.1. Specifically, whenever a preservice teacher described a way of
addressing a challenge, her whole description counted as one occurrence of that par-
ticular way. If a second preservice teacher followed up on the first preservice teacher’s
description of a way of addressing the challenge, this by itself would not justify recording
another occurrence of the way. To count another occurrence, the follow-up comment
had to explicitly show that the second preservice teacher tried, or wanted to try, the
same way of addressing the challenge by providing also some elaboration on this way.
Finally, if a preservice teacher elaborated on a previously expressed way of
addressing a challenge (perhaps using different words) at a different stage during
a group meeting or an individual interview, a new occurrence of addressing the
challenge would be recorded. Repeated occurrences of the same way of addressing
a challenge were viewed as an indication of how important that way was for the
preservice teachers.

Developing the analytic framework

In Table 6.2, we present the analytic framework that served as the coding scheme
for our analysis of the ways in which the preservice teachers reported trying, or
 Preservice teachers’ ways of addressing challenges 103

TABLE 6.2 Analytic framework for coding the ways in which preservice teachers reported
trying, or wanting to try, in order to address challenges

Ways of addressing the challenges

1. Managing challenging classroom
situations (e.g., unanticipated student
contributions)
2. Promoting productive student habits
of mind
3. Creating a safe classroom environment 3.1 Enhancing student confidence (e.g., by
4. Facilitating co-operation among
students
5. Other (e.g., working with the mentor
teacher or other teachers)
1.1 Postponing action for preparation
1.2 Involving the class in thinking about /
resolving a situation
1.3 Being prepared for a situation (e.g., by
carefully managing classroom time or
by anticipating student contributions
and planning in advance how to scaffold
students’ work)
1.4 Learning from other teachers’ experiences
2.1 Asking students to think why an answer
made sense
2.2 Promoting perseverance among students
helping them experience success or trust
the teacher)
3.2 Shifting the focus away from the
correctness of an answer
4.1 Having students work in groups
4.2 Having students share their ideas in the
whole group

wanting to try, to address the challenges of interest to us in this chapter. To develop

the framework, we used a combined deductive/inductive approach that comprised
four stages.
In the first stage, a research assistant identified all segments of transcript from
the two group meetings and the individual interviews that potentially included
reference to ways identified by the prospective teachers for addressing challenges
they faced in their mentor teachers’ classrooms. The two authors then used those
segments to develop a preliminary coding scheme that the research assistant sub-
sequently applied and the two authors individually reviewed. In this stage, we fol-
lowed a constant comparative method (Glaser & Strauss, 1967): we compared the
descriptions of the codes in the preliminary coding scheme with the segments of
the transcript to see whether the features of a way of addressing a challenge indi-
cated mismatches that could lead to generation of new codes or adjustment of
existing codes to better account for those features.
In the second stage, the research assistant applied the preliminary coding scheme
from the first stage in order to code the identified segments of transcript. In the
third stage, the two authors independently reviewed all segments of transcript and
the corresponding codes that the research assistant had assigned to them, and made
further revisions to the coding scheme. In the new (final) coding scheme that
104 Gabriel J. Stylianides and Andreas J. Stylianides

emerged (Table 6.2), the ways of addressing the challenges were organised into
broader categories with clearer distinctions both between and within categories.
In the fourth stage, the research assistant used the final coding scheme to code
again all the transcripts. This scheme adequately captured the expressed ways of
addressing challenges, so our attention shifted to ensuring consistency in our coding.
Each of us independently reviewed the research assistant’s coding of the transcripts;
we discussed all disagreements and reached a consensus code for each of them.

Findings
We organise the results of our analysis in three tables (Tables 6.3–6.5). Table 6.3
summarises the frequencies of occurrences of the various ways in which the pre-
service teachers in our study reported trying (numbers outside of parentheses), or
wanting to try (numbers in parentheses), to address challenges related to their men-
tor teachers’ classrooms with particular attention to classroom norms and students’
habits of mind.
Three cells in the bottom row of Table 6.3 stand out, which we marked in italics
for easy reference. The following represent the most popular ways in which the
preservice teachers reported addressing the challenges:

(1) managing challenging classroom situations by being prepared for a situation, e.g.,
by carefully managing classroom time or by anticipating student contributions
and planning in advance how to scaffold students’ work (way 1.3 in Table 6.2);
(2) promoting productive student habits of mind by asking students to think why
an answer made sense (way 2.1); and
(3) creating a safe classroom environment by enhancing students’ confidence, e.g.,
by helping them experience success or trust the teacher (way 3.1).

The three ways mentioned above, along with all the other ways of addressing
challenges reported by the preservice teachers and were part of our coding scheme,
are exemplified in Tables 6.4 and 6.5 (all preservice teachers’ names are pseudo-
nyms). Specifically, Table 6.4 provides illustrative excerpts for ways in which the
preservice teachers reported trying to address challenges related to their mentor
teachers’ classrooms, while Table 6.5 offers illustrative excerpts for ways in which
the preservice teachers reported wanting to try to address challenges related to their
mentor teachers’ classrooms. Next, we summarise a few responses in Tables 6.4 and
6.5 that relate to the three ways we listed above.
Regarding way 1.3, Tiffany mentioned that she was setting out some guidelines
and rules for the students, such as when they had to sit at their desk and not get up,
and she was also trying to be better prepared to respond to students’ questions (see
Table 6.4). Similarly, Shannon said she would have liked to be able to script out her
explanations so as to be better prepared to respond to students. Shannon also wanted
to be able to allow herself more time to cover particular mathematical topics as she
felt pressed by time on some occasions (see Table 6.5).
TABLE 6.3 Summary of findings: frequencies of occurrences of the various ways in which preservice teachers reported trying, or wanting to try, in order
to address challenges related to their mentor teachers' classrooms

Ways of addressing the challengesa, b, c

1. Managing challenging classroom 2. Promoting productive 3. Creating a safe 4. Facilitating co-operation

Preservice teachers’ ways of addressing challenges 105

situations student habits of mind classroom environment among students 5. Other
Challenges related to mentor teachers’
classrooms 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 2.1 2.2 3.1 3.2 4.1 4.2
- Classroom norms (1) (4) (2) (1) 1 1 4 (3)
- Students’ habits of mind 1 (1) 2 (1) 5 (2) 5 (1) 3 4 (3) 3 (1) 2 1 1 (2)
Total frequencies 1 (1) 2 (2) 5 (6) (2) 5 (2) 3 5 (3) 3 (1) 2 2 5 (5)
a See Table 6.2 for description of breakdowns of ways of addressing the challenges.
bThe numbers outside of parentheses represent frequencies of occurrences of the various ways in which preservice teachers reported trying in order to address each challenge.
c
The numbers inside parentheses represent frequencies of occurrences of the various ways in which preservice teachers reported wanting to try in order to address each
challenge.
106 Gabriel J. Stylianides and Andreas J. Stylianides

TABLE 6.4 Illustrative excerpts for ways in which preservice teachers reported trying to
address challenges related to their mentor teachers’ classrooms

Ways of addressing the Illustrative excerptsa

challenges
1. Managing Laura: “They’re still looking at you as being the expert and
challenging sometimes I didn’t know what the heck I was doing or I’d get
classroom something from a student and really I had to think about it. So
situations (e.g., that was just my way of dealing with it, was ‘well, that’s really
unanticipated interesting, let me take that home and think about it’ and then I’d
student come in the next day.” (way 1.1)
contributions) Laura: “I took the problem and I posed a bunch of questions that
actually kind of stepped them through how to solve it. So what
I did was that I first just had them look through the problem
individually and start to write in their student packet anything
that they thought about it, if they started to notice any way
they could start to figure out their rectangles and they had their
manipulatives… I had them get with a partner or with their table
groups and actually start to share just so they could get into that
conversation again. And after that, I had them actually make some
predictions collectively and I just kind of charted those so that
we’d have a sense of, is there anything I need to clarify?... So I
scaffolded them through the process of the problem, but I never
gave them the answer, you know what I mean? So I think that
would enable them to get through it and I’m hoping that if I
do another problem like this I’m going to have to scaffold their
problem solving a lot less as we go through it cause they’ll start to
figure out how she wants us to look at this.” (ways 1.2 & 1.3)
Tiffany: “[T]his time I set out some guidelines and some rules
for them to just sit at their desk and to not get up, just some
procedures. And also I was better prepared to respond to their
questions…” (way 1.3)
2. Promoting Shannon: “I tried to do that in everything I taught, just to get them
productive thinking why is that the answer. I agree, it’s a different way of
student habits of thinking and it’s very important to do that outside of math,
mind everywhere, it just really gets them to evaluate their answers. A lot
of times they think ‘oh yeah, this could be the answer’ and write
it down, but if you really think about the answer you can see why
this is right or why this close or not, it really helps them in many
different ways. […] I thought that was extremely important to get
them to think about why they answered the way that they did,
why they’re doing what they’re doing. To self-evaluate, to reflect
on themselves.” (way 2.1)
Laura: “So I think that’s the payoff, you have to not give them the
right answer, and if they do have a wrong answer […] using that as
a teaching moment… I think it’s definitely more rewarding to not
give them that answer, to let them keep struggling through it and
proving it, saying this is how I know my answer is right.” (way 2.2)
(Continued )
 Preservice teachers’ ways of addressing challenges 107

TABLE 6.4 (Continued)

3. Creating a Laura: “I felt that I needed to give those little successes on the way, so
safe classroom their confidence was built up along the way. I also spent a lot of
environment time at the beginning telling them I don’t care about getting the
right or wrong answer.” (ways 3.1 & 3.2)
4. Facilitating Tiffany: “[I]n the second part of the task, I tried to pair them up and
co-operation keep kids who did really well on it and kids who didn’t really do
among students so well on it…” (way 4.1)
Laura: “[A] good strategy that I used was to let kids work by
themselves first, let them get their thoughts organized and be
confident, then do maybe a partner share, and then let them go to
a more cooperative work group, so then it was this progression of
sharing and allowing them to get confidence in their idea of how
they solved it versus trying to do it collectively because the kids
would get overwhelmed. There was one student who really was a
leader, he or she would push the other kids into a way of solving
it. So for me, that worked out to be a good way of approaching it
with the kids.” (ways 4.1 & 4.2)
5. Other (e.g., Shannon: “We had a math coach in our class, but she was only there
working with the for maybe a half hour once or twice a week, and she would sit
mentor teacher back and kind of observe the one day and then teach a lesson
or other teachers) that was totally different from what was going on another week,
but she was really resourceful. If I needed to talk to her, I could
and she would help me understand, so she was probably the
most helpful. My teacher wasn’t, though, because he didn’t even
think there should be multiple ways of doing anything. He just
wasn’t helpful, and [I] leave it at that.”
a I n parentheses, at the end of each excerpt, we note the respective way (from the breakdown presented
in Table 6.2) that the excerpt illustrates.

Regarding way 2.1, Shannon said that she tried, in everything that she taught,
to get students thinking why a certain answer was correct (see Table 6.4). She
acknowledged that this way of thinking was new to the students but also important.
In her own words: “I thought that was extremely important to get them to think
about why they answered the way that they did, why they’re doing what they’re
doing. To self-evaluate, to reflect on themselves.” Laura mentioned that she would
like to use problem solving to help students make connections between different
topics, such as area and perimeter (see Table 6.5). She anticipated some resistance
from her mentor teacher when putting this strategy into action, but she felt that it
was important for her to use it as much as possible because it would help students
“[keep] away from just memorising” thereby allowing them to develop a deeper
understanding of the mathematics.
Regarding way 3.1, Laura said that she tried to give her students ‘little successes’
so that their confidence would build up gradually. She also spent a lot of time at the
beginning reassuring the students that she was not interested in the correctness of
108 Gabriel J. Stylianides and Andreas J. Stylianides

TABLE 6.5 Illustrative excerpts for ways in which preservice teachers reported wanting to
try to address challenges related to their mentor teachers’ classrooms

Ways of addressing Illustrative excerptsa

the challenges
1. Managing Shannon: “When they would say something, I would just be like ‘Wow,
challenging I don’t know, I have to think about this.’ And I think that would be
classroom an excellent way, say ‘You know think about it, I’ll take it home and
situations (e.g., think about it.’” (way 1.1)
unanticipated Laura: “What I decided that I’m going to do is I’m going to make a
student big poster and put the problem and put everybody’s…something
contributions) from each group work on there with my feedback of how I
really liked the way you were thinking and that kind of stuff,
and we’re going to hang that in the room, or actually out in the
hallway, so that way […] trying to encourage them that it’s okay
if you don’t get the right answer, and it’s good to actually have
your conversations because that’s where a lot of good thinking
comes out of it. So I think the more you talk about it, the more
I acknowledge it publicly, they’re going to get more comfortable
with me, with what I expect and how to do things.” (way 1.2)
Shannon: “I should have scripted it out better to know exactly what I
was going to say about that, but I was trying to fit that in and how
it related to repeated addition, multiplication, and I feel that there
wasn’t enough time. I crammed too much information in, so if I
would draw that out into a longer time period […]” (way 1.3)
Laura: “I think maybe one of the things in our classroom work might
be to watch more videotapes of teachers actually teaching this way
so that I can see more by example how they address those kinds
of issues. Where a student brings up a way and the teacher doesn’t
know… But some strategies like that, of issues teaching this way for
preservice teachers, little tricks of the trade that help you address
those kinds of issues because you don’t have the experience. I think
that could have been pretty valuable to me if I could have maybe
watched more video or had a teacher that has successfully used
Everyday Math or Investigations actually come in and do a lesson
for us where we can see how it actually works and the kinds of
things that kids actually come up with.” (way 1.4)
2. Promoting Laura: “[Y]ou can say, okay, I have to teach area, perimeter, and something
productive else. Instead of teaching just area and just perimeter, I could do one
student habits problem that allowed me to teach area, perimeter, and also allowed
of mind me to come up with a relationship between them. I don’t know if
in that first year I’d be able to go out and do that, but what I might
do is set a goal of each nine weeks try to get one or two of those
kinds of lessons in and just use whatever curriculum they have until
I get more comfortable with this grade level and […] the content
they need to know and how to relate them.That would probably be,
to me, reasonable and I think I could do that. But I would stick to
my guns any time we would have conversations [with the mentor
teacher] about staying out of the traditional approach, why [I am]
doing that, trying to have that conversation as much as possible so it
keeps kids away from just memorising.” (way 2.1; also way 1.3)
(Continued )
 Preservice teachers’ ways of addressing challenges 109

TABLE 6.5 (Continued)

3. Creating a Laura: “I’m hoping that the more I keep saying to them that I’m not
safe classroom concerned with the right or wrong answer, I want to know how
environment you think, that they’ll get more trusting of me, that I’m not trying
to humiliate them.” (ways 3.1 & 3.2; also way 2.1)
4. Facilitating No examples for this code; there were not any instances of it in the interview
co-operation data.
among students

5. Other (e.g., Shannon: “That’s a great idea [agreeing with Laura who suggested
working with earlier that she can try and show her mentor teacher how she get
the mentor through all of the content through problem solving activities],
teacher or other that would really satisfy both, that’s exactly what I’d like to do. I’d
teachers) like to try to bring some of mine in but I know that the teacher
wouldn’t like that the whole time, so still it would be working
with him [the mentor], it’s a good solution.”
a I n parentheses, at the end of each excerpt, we note the respective way (from the breakdown presented
in Table 6.2) that the excerpt illustrates.

their answer so as to make them comfortable to share their ideas and thinking (see
Table 6.4). She indicated that she planned to continue to reiterate to the students that
she was more interested in students’ thinking rather than in whether they had the
right answer, hoping that this would make students trust her more and understand
that she was not going to humiliate them if they got a wrong answer (see Table 6.5).

Discussion
In this chapter, we examined the ways in which a group of preservice primary
school teachers tried to address challenges they faced in engaging primary school
students in the fundamental mathematical activity of reasoning-and-proving, which,
despite its importance for students’ learning, tends to have a marginal place in math-
ematics classrooms internationally, even at the secondary school level (Stylianides,
Stylianides, & Weber, 2017). Indeed, engaging students in reasoning-and-proving is
challenging not only for primary teachers, but also for secondary teachers as dis-
cussed, for example, by Buchbinder and McCrone (2020).
Our research illustrated McIntyre’s (1995, 2009) notion of the practical theorising
dialectic and Berliner’s (2001) notion of adaptive expertise whereby preservice teach-
ers need to develop knowledge/skills and reflective abilities/habits to manage the
uncertain demands of classroom contexts as they try to engage the students in their
mentor teachers’ classrooms in the activity of reasoning-and-proving. Application
of the notions of practical theorising and adaptive expertise in the particular con-
text of reasoning-and-proving is particularly challenging for preservice teachers,
because reasoning-and-proving is not typically a part of the established norms
or students’ ways of thinking in ordinary mathematics classrooms in the primary
110 Gabriel J. Stylianides and Andreas J. Stylianides

school (Stylianides, Stylianides, & Weber, 2017), including the classrooms of the
teachers where the three preservice teachers in our study taught (Stylianides,
Stylianides, & Shilling-Traina, 2013).
Indeed, the preservice teachers had to actively engage with the theoretical and
practical knowledge they developed in the intervention study they had participated
in prior to their field experience, which helped them make significant progress
in their mathematical (subject-matter) knowledge about reasoning-and-proving
and their beliefs about the appropriateness of teaching reasoning-and-proving to
primary school students, and critically scrutinise that knowledge. This scrutiny, as
shown in the rich excerpts we provided in the previous section, meant not only
considering how to engage students in an activity that even experienced teachers
find difficult to teach, but also critically evaluating the local constraints of the norms
and values already established in the classrooms of the mentor teachers that formed
the context of their experimentation and evaluation of different strategies so as to
address the challenges they faced.
In our study, however, the preservice teachers’ reflective focus on their own
practice was a major element, which marked a slightly different stance from that of
McIntyre (1993) to preservice teachers’ learning through reflection on their own
practice. Specifically, as we explained in the Introduction, McIntyre did not consider
it a viable way of professional learning for preservice teachers to engage in a reflec-
tive focus on their own practice, because he viewed this kind of ‘reflective practice’
as depending on a store of tacit knowledge not yet possessed by preservice teachers.
Our analysis of the ways in which the three preservice teachers engaged in practical
theorising through a process of reflective thinking (as introduced by Dewey (1933)
and adapted by Mewborn (1999)), while they tried to address the challenges they
faced related to teaching reasoning-and-proving in their mentor teachers’ class-
rooms, suggests that these preservice teachers might have possessed higher levels of
‘reflective practice’ knowledge than one might have expected based on McIntyre’s
(1993) ideas.This observation does not refute McIntyre’s approach to initial teacher
education. After all, the preservice teachers in our study were not a typical group
due to their prior participation in the intervention study that might have helped
plant the seeds for reflective practice knowledge.
For example, a key feature of our instructional design in the intervention study
was our use of what we called conceptual awareness pillars (Stylianides & Stylianides
2009b) or simply pillars: these are instructional activities that aimed to direct pre-
service teachers’ attention to key issues in a mathematical task or a (simulated)
classroom situation, with a consequential (potential) increase in preservice teach-
ers’ awareness of their conceptions (epistemological, pedagogical, etc.) about those
issues. The notion of pillars embodies a relationship between attention and aware-
ness whereby “[b]eing aware is a state in which attention is directed to whatever it is
that one is aware of ” (Mason, 1998, p. 254). Pillars took different forms in the inter-
vention such as a teacher educator’s question for preservice teachers to consider or
reflect on an issue that was raised as a result of preservice teachers’ engagement with
a mathematical task, an actual or simulated primary school student talk or dialogue
 Preservice teachers’ ways of addressing challenges 111

that raised a particular issue and created a context for productive discussion about or
reflection on the issue among preservice teachers, and so on. Although the interven-
tion study was conducted in a mathematics rather than a pedagogy course, at least
some of the pillars that we implemented in that study created powerful opportu-
nities for preservice teachers to turn their tacit awareness of pedagogical issues into
an explicit pedagogical awareness intertwined with relevant mathematical (subject
matter) knowledge, thus equipping them with intellectual tools to engage both in
practical theorising (McIntyre, 1993) and in reflective thinking (Mewborn, 1999).
To conclude, our findings inform ways in which teacher education can develop
preservice teachers’ capacity to engage in practical theorising by supporting them to
develop and productively engage in the process of reflective thinking. This, in turn,
can help preservice teachers develop ways to deal with instances of misalignment of
priorities across coursework at university and the reality of field-based experiences
in schools, as in the case of the activity of reasoning-and-proving in mathematics.

Acknowledgements
The research reported in this chapter was supported by two grants from the Spencer
Foundation (grant numbers: 200700100, 200800104). The opinions expressed in
the chapter are ours and do not necessarily reflect the position, policy, or endorse-
ment of the Spencer Foundation.

References
Ball, D. L. & Bass, H. (2000). Interweaving content and pedagogy in teaching and learning to
teach: Knowing and using mathematics. In J. Boaler (Ed.), Multiple perspectives on mathemat-
ics teaching and learning (pp. 83–104). Westport, CT: Ablex Publishing.
Berliner, D. C. (2001). Learning about and learning from expert teachers. International Journal
of Educational Research, 35(5), 463–482.
Buchbinder, O. & McCrone, S. (2020). Preservice teachers learning to teach proof through
classroom implementation: Successes and challenges. Journal of Mathematical Behavior, 58.
doi:10.1016/j.jmathb.2020.100779
Cobb, P., Confrey, J., diSessa, A., Lehrer, R., & Schauble, L. (2003). Design experiments in
educational research. Educational Researcher, 32(1), 9–13.
Cuoco, A., Goldenberg, E. A., & Mark, J. (1996). Habits of mind: An organizing principle for
mathematics curricula. Journal of Mathematical Behavior, 15, 375–402.
Department for Education. (2013). Mathematics programmes of study: Key Stages 1-2 [National
Curriculum in England]. Retrieved from: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/
system/uploads/attachment_data/file/239129/PRIMARY_national_curriculum_-_
Mathematics.pdf
Dewey, J. (1933). How we think: A restatement of the relation of reflective thinking to the educative
process. Boston, MA: Heath.
Glaser, B. G., & Strauss, A. L. (1967). The discovery of grounded theory: Strategies for qualitative
research. New York: Aldine Publishing Company
Hiebert, J., Gallimore, R., Garnier, H., Givvin, K. B., Hollingsworth, H., Jacobs, J., Chui, A.
M., Wearne, D., Smith, M., Kersting, N., Manaster, A., Tseng, E., Etterbeek, W., Manaster,
C., Gonzales, P., & Stigler, J. (2003). Teaching mathematics in seven countries: Results from
112 Gabriel J. Stylianides and Andreas J. Stylianides

the TIMSS 1999 Video Study. NCES 2003-013. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of
Education, Institute of Education Sciences.
Hill, H. C., Rowan, B., & Ball, D. (2005). Effects of teachers’ mathematical knowledge for
teaching on student achievement. American Educational Research Journal, 42, 371–406.
Lehrer, R., Kobiela, M., & Weinberg, P. J. (2013). Cultivating inquiry about space in a middle
school mathematics classroom. ZDM Mathematics Education, 45(3), 365–376.
Manaster, A. B. (1998). Some characteristics of eighth grade mathematics classes in the TIMSS
videotape study. American Mathematical Monthly, 105(9), 793–805.
Mason, J. (1998). Enabling teachers to be real teachers: Necessary levels of awareness and
structure of attention. Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education, 1, 243–267.
McIntyre, D. (1993). Theory, theorising and reflection in initial teacher education. In
J. Calderhead & P. Gates (Eds.), Conceptualising reflection in teacher development (pp. 39–53).
London: Falmer.
McIntyre, D. (1995). Initial teacher education as practical theorising: A response to Paul Hirst.
British Journal of Educational Studies, 43(4), 365–383.
McIntyre, D. (2009). The difficulties of inclusive pedagogy for initial teacher education and
some thoughts on the way forward. Teaching and Teacher Education, 25(4), 602–608.
Merriam, S. B. (1988). Case study research in education: A qualitative approach. San Francisco:
Jossey-Bass.
Mewborn, D. S. (1999). Reflective thinking among preservice elementary mathematics
teachers. Journal for Research in Mathematics Education, 30(3), 316–341.
National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (2000). Principles and standards for school mathe-
matics. Reston,VA: National Council of Teachers of Mathematics.
Stylianides, G. J. (2009). Reasoning-and-proving in school mathematics textbooks.
Mathematical Thinking and Learning, 11(4), 258–288.
Stylianides, A. J. (2016). Proving in the elementary mathematics classroom. Oxford, UK: Oxford
University Press.
Stylianides, A. J., & Ball, D. L. (2008). Understanding and describing mathematical knowledge
for teaching: Knowledge about proof for engaging students in the activity of proving.
Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education, 11(4), 307–332.
Stylianides, A. J. & Stylianides, G. J. (2009a). Proof constructions and evaluations. Educational
Studies in Mathematics, 72(2), 237–253.
Stylianides, G. J. & Stylianides, A. J. (2009b). Facilitating the transition from empirical argu-
ments to proof. Journal for Research in Mathematics Education, 40(3), 314–352.
Stylianides, A. J. & Stylianides, G. J. (2014a).Viewing “mathematics for teaching” as a form of
applied mathematics: Implications for the mathematical preparation of teachers. Notices of
the American Mathematical Society, 61(3), 266–276.
Stylianides, A. J. & Stylianides, G. J. (2014b). Impacting positively on students’ mathemat-
ical problem solving beliefs: An instructional intervention of short duration. Journal of
Mathematical Behavior, 33, 8–29.
Stylianides, A. J. & Stylianides, G. J. (2022). A learning trajectory for introducing both students
and prospective teachers to the notion of proof in mathematics. Journal of Mathematical
Behavior. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jmathb.2022.100957
Stylianides, G. J., Stylianides, A. J., & Shilling-Traina, L. N. (2013). Prospective teachers’ chal-
lenges in teaching reasoning-and-proving. International Journal of Science and Mathematics
Education, 11(6), 1463–1490.
Stylianides, G. J., Stylianides, A. J., & Weber, K. (2017). Research on the teaching and learning
of proof:Taking stock and moving forward. In J. Cai (Ed.), Compendium for research in math-
ematics education (pp. 237–266). Reston,VA: National Council of Teachers of Mathematics.
7
THEORISING PRACTICES OF
INCLUSIVE PEDAGOGY
A challenge for initial teacher education

Margaret Mulholland, Ian Thompson and Jason Todd

Introduction
The concept of inclusion, and the associated pedagogies of inclusion relating to
working with children and young people with special needs and disabilities (SEND)
within classrooms, have long been central to social justice concerns within initial
teacher education (ITE). Yet despite widespread recognition of the importance for
preservice teachers to learn about effective pedagogies for all students, including
those with SEND, it remains challenging for them to do so. Concepts such as ‘inclu-
sion’ and ‘inclusive pedagogy’ are associated with a range of diverse and sometimes
conflicting interpretations and practices that are difficult to cover within the curric-
ulum time constraints of one-year secondary ITE courses with school placements
in mainstream schools.
Preservice and early career teachers are confronted with an evolving picture of
the ways such needs are characterised, ranging from specific diagnosis, such as autism
to broader consideration related to issues such as working memory. Labels offer a
shorthand to conditions but the headlines can obscure ways in which co-occurring
conditions, including social factors, work in concert or generate false associations,
such as autism being associated with intellectual disability. From the perspective of
the preservice teacher, the range of labels present a daunting array of issues. What is
clear is that the classrooms that teachers are entering are increasingly complex, with
many individual needs lacking clear diagnosis.
Moreover, limiting any preparation to teach SEND students in mainstream class-
rooms to instrumental or technical solutions prevents the possibility of understand-
ing the broader context in which the needs of different groups and individuals are
met. ITE programmes have been criticised for providing insufficient opportuni-
ties for preservice teachers to learn from the specialist craft knowledge of teach-
ers who work with SEND students outside mainstream education (Ofsted, 2008).

DOI: 10.4324/9781003183945-10
114 Margaret Mulholland et al.

For example, national surveys of primary and secondary PGCE courses by Ofsted
(2008) and Nash and Norwich (2010) identified issues of varied practices across
school placements and coordinating problems in organising SEND experiences.
More recently, the 2015 Carter Review of Initial Teacher Training (ITT) acknowl-
edged the challenges of addressing SEND effectively, especially within short ITE
programmes. Carter (2015) concluded that this involved SEND experience in both
mainstream and special school settings.
However, experience of a special school environment does not in itself guarantee
an understanding of what inclusive education means or even the roles played by
these schools or other forms of alternative within the educational system as a whole.
Research has revealed, for example, how difficult it is to challenge the pre-con-
ceived views of some preservice teachers in relation to issues of social justice in
education (Thompson et al., 2016). Simply providing particular opportunities will
not, therefore, necessarily develop an understanding of inclusive pedagogy.
The dialectical concept of practical theorising (McIntyre, 1995) was designed
to challenge preservice teachers’ preconceptions, develop their pedagogical think-
ing and enable them to navigate complex classroom contexts. The aim of practical
theorising within the Oxford Internship Scheme in challenging preconceptions
includes the intention that opening up both theoretical and practical sources of
knowledge to explicit scrutiny will also encourage preservice teachers to subject
their own prior beliefs to the same vigorous examination. This process involves
McIntyre’s (1995) three levels of theorising; technical, practical and emancipatory.
For McIntyre (2009), engaging in practical theorising involves preservice teachers
learning to understand and respect the professional craft knowledge of experienced
and successful school teachers as well as valuing theoretical and research-based
forms of professional knowledge and teaching and learning. These two forms of
knowledge, experience-based and academic, impinge on the perspectives and prac-
tices of the preservice teachers in emancipatory ways that are intended to prepare
them for continued learning as teachers.
Within the context of initial teacher education, McIntyre (2009) wrote of the
particular difficulties of addressing inclusive pedagogy through practical theorising
given the contested nature of the concept of inclusion, the variety of different
types of SEND and the varied contexts experienced by preservice teachers. Equally,
preservice teachers’ classroom experience of attempts at inclusion often focuses on
difficulties that they face due to perceptions of challenging student behaviour or
a lack of training and resources (Ellis et al., 2008; Saloviita, 2020). This poses a
challenge to the ideal of learning about inclusive pedagogy from teacher exper-
tise or craft knowledge. If the ‘knowledge’ of inclusion in mainstream schools is
based on contested deficit ideologies that persist in some mainstream schools, then
opportunities for practical theorising may be limited. Similarly, if the persistence
of the idea that teaching students with SEND is someone else’s specialty or that
inclusion is impossible without better resources then the various theoretical con-
structions around inclusion may not be brought into particular focus in mainstream
school placements. There is also an inherent danger in sending preservice teachers
 Theorising practices of inclusive pedagogy 115

to outstanding special schools where they may be simultaneously impressed and

over-awed by the skill and knowledge of specialist SEND teachers.
This chapter addresses some of the tensions and challenges involved in practical
theorising on inclusive pedagogy within the contexts of the contradictions found
around issues of inclusion and SEND policy and practice. These contradictions will
be further explored in the next section in order to illustrate this particular problem.
The chapter will then go on to explore a specific example from the Internship
Scheme in which student-teachers are placed in a special needs provision as a way
of exploring practices within SEND schools and the types of practical theorising
these practices are subjected to.

SEND and inclusion: policy and practice

Historically, policies and practices in the field of SEND have been complex and
contested. Throughout this history, there has been a vigorous debate around the
issue of how far SEND students need a distinct pedagogy, whether SEND peda-
gogy needs additional preparation and indeed whether or not there is such a thing
as inclusive pedagogy (Lewis & Norwich, 2004; Slee, 2018). Both the conception
and practices of inclusive education in the United Kingdom have been marked
by tensions and dilemmas between policy pressures on schools to perform well
academically and policies designed to be genuinely inclusive of all learners. The
1978 Warnock Report made the case for integration and support for students with
special educational needs (SEN) and the 1981 Education Act regulated important
practices such as the establishment of SEN co-coordinators in schools. However, a
discourse change towards inclusion rather than integration coincided with the 1988
Education Act that introduced a system of league table competition between schools
driven by indices of attainment (Norwich, 2013).This increased competition has led
to perverse incentives for schools to follow exclusionary practices particularly in
England. Students with SEN and social, emotional and mental health difficulties
are disproportionately excluded as a result of unintended consequences of policies
designed to encourage competition (Daniels et al., 2019; Thompson et al., 2021).
This creates particular difficulties for a practical theorising approach to learning
about inclusive pedagogies as if schools feel pushed into adopting an exclusionary
approach then preservice teachers will not have a practice-based context in which
to explore the idea at all.
Inclusion, rather than integration or the fitting in of young people with SEN
into an existing system, suggests the need to both design and develop new inclusive
systems. In this vein, Booth and Ainscow (2002) have argued for broad definitions of
inclusion that cover all young people in school. Nevertheless, the discourse around
inclusion, and increasingly educational legislation in England, tends to refer to stu-
dents with SEND. Despite stated commitments to both accountability and inclusion
over the past 20 years, the commitment to accountability in England appears to have
overridden practices of inclusion (Daniels et al., 2019; Thompson et al., 2021). A
notable exemplification of this relates to the tiering of learning objectives in lessons
116 Margaret Mulholland et al.

where a desire to be seen to differentiate transcends consideration of the impact.

In the context of ITE, awareness is needed in relation to the idea of the teacher
standards and how they are operationalised. As Lewis and Norwich (2004) argue,
‘a key aspect of professional education and training will include, but also go beyond,
a competency model based on practical knowledge and skill’ (p. 218).
Lloyd (2008) argues that: ‘the quest for inclusion through removing barriers
to learning perpetuates deficit models of the child within an exclusive curricu-
lum in which success is equated with achieving norm-related standards’ (p. 234).
The introduction of Progress 8 as a measure of school accountability exemplifies
this trend. Inclusion has been focused on integration and acceptance rather than
access to equitable learning opportunities.Tomlinson (2014) has described the ‘SEN
industry’ of expanded alternative provision designed to provide provision for those
who fall outside the standards agenda. The expansion of academies and free schools
in England has increased this industry and also put pressure on individual school
finances as they are now directly responsible for buying in a proportion of SEN
support.
Inclusion is open to a wide degree of interpretation by a range of stakehold-
ers involved in education. For example, Avramidis and Norwich (2002) identified
different interpretations of the idea of inclusive education on the part of parents,
children, practitioners, teachers and leaders. Ellis et al. (2008), in a review of the lit-
erature, point out that inclusion has been linked to: an ideology or aspiration; a place
in either special or mainstream school; government policy; personal experience of
inclusion; and professional practices associated with inclusion (p. 9).
Problems persist around uneven and discriminatory practices involved in both
the characterisation and diagnosis of particular types of SEN. Tomlinson (2014) has
long argued that some discriminatory practices of special education have avoided
critique under a veneer of ‘benevolent humanitarianism’ (p. 16). Opening up critical
discussion with student-teachers about the process of labelling is an important first
step to a fuller consideration of the role of an inclusive pedagogy in supporting all
vulnerable learners.
The educational culture of testing and league tables which followed the intro-
duction of a national curriculum had little focus on the teaching and learning
provision of special education for students with severe and profound learning
difficulties. Even today, when successive governments issue very clear guidelines
regarding expectations of attainment for typically developing children, there are
rather less clear expectations for all students with SEND who are working signif-
icantly below levels expected for their age. In the absence of such national expec-
tations, many special schools have developed their own child-centred or focused
expectations. Special schools share a willingness and obligation to strive for genu-
ine inclusion which can involve being creative in developing the curriculum and
embracing inclusive initiatives that work in their particular contexts. In the context
of special school placements, this suggests that there is a risk that student-teach-
ers might dismiss what they observed within them as irrelevant to a mainstream
school setting.
 Theorising practices of inclusive pedagogy 117

One of the problems of focusing on inclusive pedagogy within ITE is that has
been hard to specify what inclusive practices in the classroom actually look like
(Mintz & Wyse, 2015; Norwich, 2014) and how they might differ from pedagog-
ical practice or reflective practice in general. Black-Hawkins and Florian (2012)
focussed on craft knowledge as a suggested way of bridging literature and practice
whilst, more recently, Mintz (2019) has addressed the issue through a focus on the
perceived self-efficacy of preservice and early career teachers to work effectively
with SEND students. The work of Florian and colleagues encapsulates the strong
social justice impetus behind theories of inclusive pedagogy. For example, Pantić
and Florian (2015) argue for a need to combine theories of inclusive pedagogy and
teacher agency in teacher education as a way of producing agents of inclusion and
social justice.
Challenging negative preconceptions of SEND is particularly difficult in one-
year courses. In contrast, in a Scottish study involving a four-year Bachelor of
Education programme in Scotland, Sosu et al. (2010) report significant changes
in preservice teachers’ attitudes to and understaffing of inclusion. Nevertheless,
they also concluded that there was a need for further practical experience. In
other Scottish studies, Florian and Linklater (2010) and Florian and Rouse (2009)
reported that explicitly introducing inclusive pedagogy in ITE programmes can
help preservice teachers to focus on their developing pedagogic skills to help
learners when they experience difficulty. These results are encouraging yet, as
McCluskey et al. (2019) point out, Scotland has in general a more inclusive educa-
tional culture than England. The challenge is to find ways of challenging miscon-
ceptions within the complex and changing landscapes of the English educational
system. Recognition must be given that these misconceptions may be held across
initial teacher education partnership schools and that inclusive pedagogy presents
huge challenges to schools and consequently to the preservice teachers in these
schools.
Learning to respond to student needs can be viewed as the preserve of the
expert, particularly when a student’s behaviours are viewed as unusual, difficult or
exceptional. The notion of an expert teacher suggests that developing capacity to
respond and adapt to the needs of the individual is something that develops only
with experience and, by implication, time. The challenge therefore is how to learn
from the distributed expertise available in school settings in order to avoid the social
exclusion of young people with different needs (Edwards, 2004). The nature of
collaboration and team work in special school classrooms supports the sharing of
expertise. Teams work generates creativity and innovation as staff develop new ways
of working. The experience of co-teaching encourages in the moment reflection
and responsive teaching. In these ways, the special school placement encourages
practical theorising within a complex but supportive school environment.
The explicit development of adaptive skills is part of the meta dialogue discussed
with preservice teachers during their school placements. An important distinction
between procedural and adaptive skills (Hatano & Inagaki, 1986) highlights that
where teachers had developed routine expertise they were outstanding in terms of
118 Margaret Mulholland et al.

speed and accuracy but lacked the flexibility to adjust their knowledge to situations
beyond the familiar. The danger here for a preservice teacher is that training does
not prefix routine and procedure before developing the capacity to respond to
the novel or the individual. Berliner (2001) suggests expertise develops in stages.
The notion of expertise as linear and time-bound risks lowering the expectation
of teachers, especially preservice and early career teachers, to teach students with
non-typical learning profiles. In effect, this process de-skills them from responding
effectively in non-typical learning environments. Practical theorising challenges the
notion of teaching to the typical.
Evidence suggests that more students with complex learning profiles are being
encountered in mainstream classrooms more frequently. This is not simply a reflec-
tion of post Warnock SEND policies for greater inclusivity but reflects the rise in
the number of young people with complex learning profiles.There is a case, beyond
the moral imperative of inclusivity, for expedience to meet the changing profile of
needs in mainstream classrooms.To thrive in a mainstream classroom, preservice and
early career teachers must be adaptive.This means that they are enabled to recognise
and respond to the challenge that one teaching strategy will not suit all children. To
be able to adapt in response to the individual needs of young people is vital to qual-
ity teaching in the dynamic and unpredictable context of the classroom. Developing
adaptive skill, and the recognition that this develops with increased knowledge of
the learner, can build the confidence of the preservice teacher.
Practical theorising as clinical reasoning directly supports the development of
adaptive skills that supports teachers to problematise as they encounter new learn-
ing experiences with the support of an experienced teacher. A literature review
for the UK Ministry of Defence by Ward et al. (2018) describes learning adaptive
skill as the condition sine qua non of expertise. Ward et al. were exploring adaptive
skill in relation to new soldiers going into a war zone. Here, traditional notions of
developing routine and procedural expertise before being trained to develop adap-
tive skills simply wouldn’t make sense. You cannot go into a warzone and predict
accurately every time where an attack will come from. You have to learn quickly
and from the very beginning of training how to apply knowledge to a range
of situations. In complex operational environments that are ever-changing and
unpredictable, Ward et al. (2018) argue that practitioners need to be both skilful
in carrying out routine aspects of their work and adaptive in unexpected or novel
situations. The soldier going into a warzone is perhaps an uncomfortable analogy
for a preservice teacher going into the classroom but frankly, for both, accelerat-
ing proficiency is highly desirable. The special school offers preservice teachers
a learning environment where complexity is an intrinsic part of the experience
and allows them the opportunity to encounter and teach children with atypical
profiles. Teacher training through complexity preservation must be central if pre-
service and early career teachers are to develop the confidence and capacity to
expect learner diversity. Practical theorising as part of their long-term toolkit for
responding to the diversity of learner profiles in special and mainstream schools
requires recognition.
 Theorising practices of inclusive pedagogy 119

The special school placement

Inclusive pedagogy, as outlined by Florian and Black-Hawkins (2011), shifts the
emphasis from some students with needs to thinking about everybody in the class-
room. This focus on the craft knowledge of teachers’ inclusive pedagogy offered a
way of framing the Oxford Internship Scheme’s extended learning opportunities
(ELO), which involves the placement of student-teachers in a range of alternative
provision settings for a week before they transition to their second mainstream
placement.The ELO week is intended to provide an opportunity for them to safely
explore complexity; working with unusual and challenging situations, from com-
plex learning difficulties to manifestations of extreme behaviour. The placement is
constructed to support student-teachers’ practical theorising in a context in which
they might very easily feel overwhelmed and to promote transfer into other con-
texts. The aim is to move away from a focus on a perceived ‘war zone’ through
observation and discussion with colleagues about craft knowledge; the principles of
inclusive pedagogy, along with possible strategies; and curriculum issues.
The ELO week is designed as a means of questioning student-teachers’ under-
standings of inclusive pedagogy within mainstream schools. It is an intensive oppor-
tunity for reflection on theory and newly established mainstream practices. It is not
an experience premised on learning about special education or to understand more
about complex learners through a ‘different’ experience; quite the opposite.There is
a clear ambition to use the ELO experience in a special school to strengthen teach-
ing within mainstream classrooms. The placement is tailored to make links between
the ELO/SEND placement experience and student-teachers’ mainstream experi-
ence, looking at what makes effective teaching in the special school and what/how
this learning can usefully transfer to the mainstream classroom. The experience is
framed as learning from complexity rather than as an experience of a special school
and special children.
The focus is therefore placed on the student-teachers’ learning, prompting
consideration of issues beyond the curriculum and inclusion, to a point of recon-
ceptualising the teacher as learner. Practical theorising combined with insights
from inclusive pedagogy offers an approach that focuses on the student-teachers’
acquisition of adaptive skills, developed and underpinned by careful scrutiny of
the ideas offered to them. The cultivation of a disposition to ask questions enables
student-teachers to interrogate the labels used about SEND and inclusion and can
be a catalyst for the emancipatory thinking for which McIntyre argued.
The ELO placement week then is designed to provide a new practicum for
student-teachers in which to review their own principles and emergent practice
and to understand to what extent this has been influenced by their own life experi-
ences as well as the values and expectations of the school where they have had their
substantive school placement. The value of the ELO for strengthening teaching is
dependent upon the efficacy of the bridging experience and in understanding how
transferable the principles established as part of the core curriculum programme
connect with the placement experience. For maximum impact on each teacher’s
120 Margaret Mulholland et al.

development, the placement has to be established as an integral part of learning to

teach, rather than as a ‘bolt on’, an experience afforded to student-teachers for the
sole purpose of learning about students with SEND. The ‘bolt-on’ view risks the
danger of student-teachers seeing SEND as something teachers learn about after
they have developed the fundamentals of good teaching. This establishes another
dangerous set of beliefs in motion for preservice teachers who might feel better
equipped to teach their notion of a ‘typical’ child but see a non-typical child as the
responsibility of the SENCO or the Teaching Assistant assigned to their support. In
effect, the notion of needing an ‘additional body of knowledge’ (e.g. what is autism
and how to identify it) alongside expertise to support a diagnosis effectively de-skills
student teachers. The ELO is designed to challenge this mindset and reestablish
their confidence to feel they don’t need to bring solutions or prior knowledge
but that their expertise for teaching all students is dependent upon a methodology
of inquiry, problem-solving and the incremental process of getting to know the
individual. The aim then is to move away from thinking how ITE prepares stu-
dent-teachers to teach students with SEND to how ITE can equip student-teachers
to teach students who learn differently. Student-teachers working in special school
settings can develop the flexibility, creativity and resilience to extend their knowl-
edge and understanding of pedagogy, to sharpen their forensic teaching skills and to
participate in inquiry-based practice to find the best way forward for the individual
children and young people whom they teach. This expertise or craft knowledge of
inclusive pedagogy (Florian & Black-Hawkins, 2011), prevalent in special schools,
is potentially very applicable for students with SEND in mainstream schools and
settings.
Alongside the classroom enactment is the framing of this experience by the
school leaders (hosts) encouraging the student-teachers to frame this classroom
experience not as different but as core experience that will be of real relevance to
teaching and learning in mainstream settings. The priority for the ELO week is to
identify the similarities rather than the differences to their mainstream classroom.
To give a specific example, at one inner city special school (ages 2–19), the
pivotal view of special education is that it is about the ‘individual’; when thinking
about SEN and disability, there is a limited place for terms such as typical, usual,
average or regular. Classes at this school are not organised by grouping of students
with similar diagnostic labels. Learner profiles are very varied and therefore lesson
planning is tailored to individuals. In fact, in one classroom, there may be several
different curricula in action. Progress is reflective of personal progress and not com-
parable performance. This challenges the student-teachers’ views of planning for
a child who is stuck and can’t move forward. Student-teachers describe how they
usually plan with the majority of their students in mind and then simplify for those
who have learning difficulties and consider extension activities for higher attainers.
Here, the student-teachers experience a challenge to this approach in recognising
that having a cognitive difficulty doesn’t mean everything needs simplifying.
At the end of each day, student-teachers discuss together how the teachers in
the school attempt to remove barriers or break down a task into chunks making
 Theorising practices of inclusive pedagogy 121

manageable for a learner who has memory difficulties, but without reducing expec-
tations. These reflections are linked to their reading around bell curve thinking. For
example, student-teachers might say ‘I am starting to see how I have lower expec-
tations of my SEN students and sometimes prevent them from engaging in tasks
they may well be capable of mastering with the right support’. These insights are
linked back to their reading of research on inclusive pedagogy as part of their initial
consideration of inclusivity and diversity through the Professional Development
Programme.
On the first day of their placement week, student-teachers are told that this is not
an experience intended to ensure that they know and understand what happens in
a particular special school. This is an opportunity to look at the process of how chil-
dren learn through a magnifying glass. For example, student-teachers may encounter
students with extremely complex and multiple learning difficulties. The preservice
teachers observe the skills of experienced practitioners as they work through the
acute challenges involved in teaching these young people. In these lessons, the teach-
ing teams articulate the dilemmas and share these with the students. For example,‘we
are really struggling to tie those laces today, perhaps we’ll try a different approach,
what do you think? Let’s have a go at using one hand at a time first’. The students
are viewed by the school as partners in the learning process and the meta dialogue
is intended to help them recognise how they are learning. It emphasises the ‘doing
with’ not ‘doing to’, but for a preservice teacher, this exposure to the methodology
is incredibly powerful. The tacit knowledge of the teachers is being shared, reflected
upon constantly and the problem-solving process modelled in real time.
Where a special need arises from a learning difficulty, the path to successful
learning is far less clear; working effectively with children with SEN in a special
school setting requires a great deal of creativity from practitioners; the intellectual
demands of supporting learning in a child and young person for whom there is no
readily prescribed curriculum or pedagogy are key element of teaching students
with SEND, both in terms of meeting individual needs and meeting the needs
of a changing and evolving demographic. The student-teachers’ brief for the final
afternoon is to present to their peers what they have learnt from their time at the
specialist setting, and how they plan to apply this in their future teaching.

Learning from special education

The ELO week is an intensive learning experience within the context of practi-
cal theorising in terms of challenging any preconceptions about SEND, developing
inclusive pedagogy and tackling complexity through adaptive teaching. Learning
from a special educational setting provides a unique opportunity to explore com-
plexity in the classroom involving learners with SEN and disabilities. However, the
placement is also designed to help student-teachers reflect on ways that all children
might learn in inclusive settings.This involves attending to both the technical and the
practical considerations of inclusive pedagogy with a view to the emancipatory posi-
tion that no longer sees the teaching of SEND students as the preserve of the expert.
122 Margaret Mulholland et al.

Observation of the special school setting allows student-teachers to witness how

SEND teachers engage in a process of inquiry about the learner.Teachers who work
autonomously with students who face severe challenges to learning can recognise
how to navigate and overcome these barriers by adapting their planning to support
the learners in taking each cognitive step to further their understanding. During
the placement, student-teachers focus on how effective classrooms create effective
learning opportunities for students of all shapes, sizes and abilities. This experience
is intended to disrupt and challenge the student-teachers’ trajectory as teachers in
order to refocus their attention on: their own learning rather than their teaching;
observation and noticing; hypothesising and problem-solving; and learning through
collaboration and reflection.

Learning to observe/to notice

A special school experience has the potential to liberate student-teachers, allowing
them to focus their full attention on the students, and exposes these preservice
teachers to abstraction and innovation. The ELO placement experience is designed
to be both a challenge and a liberation for student-teachers; a week when they
can ‘flip’ their focus from ‘what am I teaching’ to ‘who am I teaching’. They learn
skills to better understand the individual through explicit observation, co-teaching,
ongoing reflective dialogue with a team of practitioners and, most importantly, the
idea of the teacher as a problem solver. These experiences support the preservice
teachers towards considering new and innovative approaches to their teaching.
One of the skills that is particularly encouraged as part of the placement experi-
ence is ‘noticing’. Observation as part of a PGCE experience is always encouraged
in new contexts but the special school experience goes further. Student-teachers
are asked to conduct a ‘close child observation’. The task is explained as part of the
process of ‘getting to know and understand your learners’.They are asked to identify
a child who puzzles them or makes them feel particularly uncomfortable. Having
identified this child, they are asked to observe the child beyond the usual classroom
interactions; perhaps outside at playtime, or eating at lunch or when their parent/
carer comes to collect them. The student-teacher is then asked to reflect on their
observation not in relation to the behaviour of the child but their own reaction to
that behaviour. What makes them feel worried about this learner, what do they feel
when they see him/her interact with others, how does this compare with their own
interactions, what do they find difficult or challenging about their own feelings? For
some student-teachers, this is the first time they have been encouraged to consider
their own discomfort about forming relationships with students. To explore this is
difficult and the process of reflection is carefully navigated part way through the
week using circle time principles. By this time, it is hoped the student-teachers feel
safe to share their reflections with their peers and with the host who facilitates this
sharing of observation and emotions they evoke.
Experienced teachers’ ability to notice individual characteristics becomes part of
their tacit knowledge. With experience and reflection good teachers build noticing
 Theorising practices of inclusive pedagogy 123

skills which allow them make relationships, to pre-empt behaviour problems, max-
imise motivation and cater to each child. The opportunity for student-teachers to
observe learners in the special school is almost an incubator experience. The inten-
sity of the special classrooms with its small number of students and their acute needs
accelerates the learning trajectory.

Learning to hypothesise and problem-solve

As the student-teachers become comfortable with understanding more about ‘who’
they are teaching there is an important role for the school hosts to support reflec-
tions on ‘how’ this growing knowledge of the individual learners is developed. In
the particular special school placement of our example, the student-teacher is intro-
duced at the start of the week to the graduated cycle of formative assessment. This
meta learning is given import from the outset. A Code of Practice is introduced
at the start of the placement week where the cycle of assess, plan, do, review is
explained as a process of learning that is used to ‘get to know and understand
your students’. The school likens this process of inquiry to ‘being a detective in the
classroom’. Through the week, the student-teachers collect examples of small steps
formative assessment through: watching, asking, testing and observing. For example,
with a child who is still learning to explore new foods, the student-teacher may sit
with them at snack time and try a range of strategies to encourage curiosity about
new textures. They might start by simply presenting the food and if this doesn’t
promote interest, try hiding the food under a bowl or allowing the child to play
with the food first to build confidence with the texture. Smearing yogurt across the
table at an initial stage is trialled and the value of curiosity is celebrated. Through
processes such as this the student-teachers learn though the complexity of teaching
children with acute needs rather than teaching to their previous conceptions of the
‘typical’.

Conclusion
The experience of practical theorising within a special school SEND context may
help student-teachers to significantly challenge and sometimes modify their think-
ing about both inclusion and their practice as teachers in mainstream schools. In
particular, the student-teachers are asked to reconceptualise what is meant by inclu-
sion in pedagogic terms in thinking about the ways in which potential is assessed
and developed. The experience of the ELO week suggests the importance of dis-
rupting the practicum experience of teaching in mainstream schools.This also raises
challenges for further research to consider to what extent do teachers’ attitudes
towards difference and institutional ethos help shape inclusive pedagogy.
There is a useful distinction to be made between what preservice teachers can
learn from questioning systems of schooling (understanding how the tensions
between accountability and inclusion create pressures for schools) and what they
learn at the level of classroom-based decision-making. There is also an inherent
124 Margaret Mulholland et al.

tension for preservice teachers who question systems and yet have to work in
schools that are more concerned with accountability than inclusion. Whilst the
ELO is intended to offer an incubator experience through complex case studies of
children with learning difficulties, it is important to recognise that development of
flexible decision-making in the classroom cannot develop in isolation during the
ELO week. The ELO must build on the experiences of their first school placement
and be further developed through their final placement. Key questions this raises is
whether and to what extent is the student teachers’ learning transformational and
how is this learning reflected in the way they approach their second placement?
Further research is needed in this area.
Integrating inclusive pedagogy and practical theorising offers scope to ena-
ble a student teacher in a changing policy environment to cultivate the adaptive
skills needed. The approach preserves the complexity needed to meet acute SEND
needs but more broadly facilitates student teachers to commit to an inquiry-based
approach that supports their learning and ask bigger questions about context. In
this sense, the ELO week is a potential catalyst of more emancipatory practical
theorising.
However, important questions remain for ITE and inclusive pedagogy. The
structure and nature of PGCE programmes are still linear and not conducive to
cultivation of a more graduated/circular approach. Even within the context of prac-
tical theorising, it is also important to consider just how context dependent the
‘craft knowledge’ student teachers may be. The danger is that these encounters in
special schools is a consideration that might be inhibiting as well as useful. It may
be that the practical theorising actually happens elsewhere such that the key is how
the discussion is facilitated across sites, the ELO placement, the university sessions
and the mainstream placement. McIntyre (2009) argued that the English system of
ITE was primarily a ‘preparation for the status quo’ (603), limiting scope for the
adoption of inclusive pedagogies approaches that offer a critique. He suggested
practical theorising in the context of the Oxford Internship offered an alternative
way forward based on informed partnership where ideas such as inclusive pedagogy
were embraced by both university and schools. Any such ideas needed to be ‘clearly
conceptualised and rigorously justified’ so that student teachers would have the
‘opportunity in school to explore their feasibility and to debate its merits and their
practicability’ (McIntyre, 2009, p. 605). Unless this agreement is sought, the benefits
of the ELO week may be limited. As Hagger and McIntyre (2006) argued, putting
professional craft knowledge into practice is a complex business not least because it
needs to engage with the preconceptions and prior experience of both preservice
and experienced teachers.
Preservice teachers need to be supported to look both inwards and outwards.
Looking inwards involves a consideration of their own practice in light of what
they have seen both in the alternative setting and their mainstream setting which
is why the positioning of the ELO is key. McIntyre (1993) notes that ‘reflecting on
one’s own practice, and especially engaging in action research, leads one to empha-
sise one’s own agency’ (p. 46). But if we are to enable preservice teachers to move
 Theorising practices of inclusive pedagogy 125

beyond practical and technical, we need to allow them to consider how their own
attitudes are shaped by their experiences and their institutions. This turn outwards
forces a consideration of the institutional and societal contexts that have shaped
practice. However, caution is needed in characterising preservice teachers as the sole
agents of inclusion and thought also needs to be given to how this is interpreted
across university and school ITE partnerships.

References
Avramidis, E. & Norwich, B. (2002). Teachers’ attitudes towards integration/inclusion: A
review of the literature. European Journal of Special Needs Education, 17, 129–147.
Berliner, D. C. (2001). Learning about and learning from expert teachers. International Journal
of Educational Research, 35, 463–482.
Black-Hawkins, K. & Florian, L. (2012). Classroom teachers’ craft knowledge of their inclu-
sive practice. Teachers and Teaching, 18(5), 567–584.
Booth, T. & Ainscow, M. (2002). Index for Inclusion: Developing Learning and Participation in
Schools. Canterbury: Centre for Studies on Inclusive Education.
Carter,A. (2015.) Carter Review of Initial Teacher Training (ITT). London: Department of Education.
Daniels, H., Thompson, I., & Tawell, A. (2019). After Warnock: The effects of perverse
incentives in policies in England for students with special educational needs. Frontiers in
Education, 4, 36. doi:10.3389/feduc.2019.00036
Edwards A. (2004). The new multi-agency working: Collaborating to prevent the social
exclusion of children and families. Journal of Integrated Care, 12, 3–9.
Ellis, S., Tod, J., & Graham-Matheson. L. (2008). Special Educational Needs and Inclusion:
Reflection and Renewal. London: NASUWT.
Florian, L. & Black-Hawkins, K. (2011). Exploring inclusive pedagogy. British Educational
Research Journal, 37(5), 813–828.
Florian, L. & Linklater, H. (2010). Preparing teachers for inclusive education: Using inclusive
pedagogy to enhance teaching and learning for all. Cambridge Journal of Education, 40(4),
369–386.
Florian, L. & Rouse, M. (2009). The inclusive practice project in Scotland: Teacher education
for inclusive education. Teaching and Teacher Education, 25, 594–601.
Hagger, H. & McIntyre, D. (2006). Learning Teaching from Teachers. Maidenhead: Open
University Press.
Hatano, G. & Inagaki, K. (1986). Two courses of expertise. In H. Stevenson, H. Azuma, &
K. Hakuta (Eds.), Child Development and Education in Japan. New York: W. H. Freeman,
262–272.
Lewis, A. & Norwich, B. (Eds.) (2004). Special Teaching for Special Children?: Pedagogies for
Inclusion. Maidenhead: Open University Press.
Lloyd, C. (2008). Removing barriers to achievement: A strategy for inclusion or exclusion?
International Journal of Inclusive Education, 12(2), 221–236.
McCluskey, G., Cole, T., Daniels, H., Thompson, I., & Tawell, A. (2019). Exclusion from
school in Scotland and across the UK: Contrasts and questions. British Educational Research
Journal, 45(6), 1140–1159.
McIntyre, D. (1993). Theory, theorizing and reflection in initial teacher education. In
J. Calderhead & P. Gates (Eds.), Conceptualising Reflection in Teacher Development. London:
Falmer, 39–52.
McIntyre, D. (1995). Initial teacher education as practical theorising: A response to Paul Hirst.
British Journal of Educational Studies, 43(4), 365–383.
126 Margaret Mulholland et al.

McIntyre, D. (2009). The difficulties of inclusive pedagogy for initial teacher education and
some thoughts on the way forward. Teaching and Teacher Education, 25(4), 602–608.
Mintz, J. (2019). A comparative study of the impact of enhanced input on inclusion at pre-­
service and induction phases on the self-efficacy of beginning teachers to work effectively
with children with special educational needs. British Educational Research Journal, 45(2),
254–274.
Mintz, J. & Wyse, D. (2015) Inclusive pedagogy and knowledge in special education:Addressing
the tension. International Journal of Inclusive Education, 11, 1161–1171.
Nash, T. & Norwich, B. (2010). The initial training of teachers to teach children with special
educational needs: A national survey of English Post Graduate Certificate of Education
programmes. Teaching and Teacher Education, 26, 1471–1480.
Norwich, B. (2013). Addressing Tensions and Dilemmas in Inclusive Education – Living with
Uncertainty. London: Routledge.
Norwich, B. (2014). Changing policy and legislation and its radical effects on inclusive and
special education in England. British Journal of Special Education, 41(4), 404–425.
Ofsted (2008). How Well New Teachers are Prepared to Teach Students with Learning Difficulties
and/or Disabilities. Reference no: 070223. London: Ofsted.
Pantić, N. & Florian, L. (2015). Developing teachers as agents of inclusion and social justice.
Education Inquiry, 6(3), 333–351.
Saloviita, T. (2020). Teacher attitudes towards the inclusion of students with support needs.
Journal of Research in Special Educational Needs, 20(1), 64–73.
Slee, R. (2018). Paper commissioned for the 2020 Global Education Monitoring Report, Inclusion
and Education. Paris: UNESCO.
Sosu, E. M., Mtika, P., & Colucci-Gray, L. (2010). Does initial teacher education make a
difference? The impact of teacher preparation on student teachers’ attitudes towards edu-
cational inclusion. Journal of Education for Teaching, 36(4), 389–405.
Thompson, I., McNicholl, J., & Menter, I. (2016). Student teachers’ perceptions of poverty
and educational achievement. Oxford Review of Education, 42(2), 214–229.
Thompson, I., Tawell, A., & Daniels, H. (2021). Conflicts in professional concern and the
exclusion of students with SEMH in England. Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties. doi:1
0.1080/13632752.2021.1898769
Tomlinson, S. (2014). The Politics of Race, Class and Special Education:The Selected Works of Sally
Tomlinson. London: Routledge.
Ward, P., Gore, J., Hutton, R., Conway, G. E., & Hoffman, R. R. (2018). Adaptive skill as the
conditio sine qua non of expertise. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, 7,
35–50.
SECTION 3
Tools to support practical
theorising
8
THE USE OF VISUAL MODELS TO
SUPPORT PRACTICAL THEORISING
IN MATHEMATICS
Nick Andrews, Jenni Ingram and Lucy Dasgupta

Introduction
In an early description of the Oxford Internship Scheme, McIntyre (1990) empha-
sises how its design places the student-teacher at the centre. He notes the signifi-
cance of the ‘individual nature of concerns’ (p. 23) of the student-teacher and how
these necessarily determine the ‘tasks of learning and doing upon which his or
her energies will be focussed’ (p. 24). Our role as tutors then is, partly, to support
student-teachers in becoming the teacher they want to be. The caveat here is that it
is also our role to promote critique of the envisaged practice; to provoke considera-
tion of alternative possibilities; to provide a language in which the student-teachers
can articulate their perceptions of practice, and help them to understand better the
practices of teaching colleagues whose vision appears different. Practical theorising
is the means to achieving these ends.
Practical theorising focuses on ‘theory as intellectual process’ (Alexander, 1984,
p. 145), which includes bringing together various representations of teaching and
learning. These include representations of enacted practice (such as reflections on
teaching, observations of other teachers, and video recordings of teaching) and rep-
resentations drawn from research, professional literature, and the advice of experi-
enced teachers in a process of theorising, the outcomes of which are implications
for future practice. Practical theorising is, therefore, a process of change (McIntyre,
1995). In our experience, conceptualising change and possibilities for acting dif-
ferently can be problematic for student-teachers. On one hand, student-teachers’
increasing awareness of the complexity of teaching gives a sense of the limitless pos-
sibilities of change. But on the other hand, as McIntyre recognised, student-teachers
often have relatively few contrasting experiences of enacted practice on which to
draw, which can constrain the possibilities.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003183945-12
130 Nick Andrews et al.

This chapter focuses on two visual models of practice derived from mathematics
education research that we offer to student-teachers of mathematics within the
Oxford Internship Scheme, to complement the other available representations of
practice. These are images arising from empirical research, which can capture some
of the complexity of the practice of mathematics teaching. But they can also suc-
cinctly capture not only the student-teacher’s own current practice, but also their
interpretations of the practices that they observe other teachers enacting, and their
envisaging of what their own practice could be as a result of change. The visual
models can support and promote practical theorising, provide a shared language
to discuss practice, and serve a monitoring function through the process of change.
They share these affordances with other categorical models of practice that could be
offered, but we propose that their visual nature is a distinctive and significant feature,
an issue to which we shall return through the chapter.
After first reflecting on our experiences as teacher educators, and on the
theories that influence our own understanding of student-teacher learning, we
articulate the challenges that student-teachers face in bringing together ideas
from theory and practice in mathematics. We then present two examples of the
visual models that we offer to student-teachers in the early stages of their devel-
opment. The first is a quadrant model that captures the sequencing of ‘lesson
events’, a term and a unit by which to analyse mathematics classrooms around
the world, proposed by Clarke, Emanuelsson, Jablonka, and Mok (2006). The
second is a triangular model based on Swan (2007) and Askew (1997) that cap-
tures beliefs and values related to mathematics and its learning and teaching.
We then report on interviews with four student-teachers, who use the models
in articulating their early classroom experiences on the course and stating their
envisaged future practice, along with the developmental implications of achiev-
ing this vision. Analysis of these interviews gives a sense of: (i) the range of
enacted practices that inform the student-teacher’s theorising; (ii) the accounts
that students-teachers offer for these practices using the two models; and (iii) the
degree of alignment between the vision they have for their teaching and these
enacted practices. This analysis prompts our own reflection as teacher educators
on: how, in offering such models, we enable student-teachers to engage in prac-
tical theorising; the additional contribution of the visual nature of the models;
and the changing role of these models during the course as the student-teachers’
practice develops.

The complexity of mathematics teaching and its implications for

student-teachers’ developing practice
Mathematics teaching is a complex activity. It is also a contested activity, with debate
over educational aims, curricula, and pedagogy (Jaworski, 2006), as well as debates
about what mathematics actually is (Noyes, 2006).These debates are often treated as
value-laden dichotomies; relational vs instrumental understanding or procedural vs
conceptual understanding; traditional vs progressive teaching; mathematics as a set
 Visual models to support practical theorising in mathematics 131

of universal truths vs mathematics as socially constructed and evolving (e.g. Davis

et al., 2020).
The concept of teacher beliefs has relevance in these debates about mathemat-
ics and mathematics teaching. Teacher beliefs have been widely researched over
many years, but as a concept, it has been considered elusive and poorly defined (e.g.
Yurekli et al. 2020). More sharply defined and relevant to the implications of these
debates for a student-teacher’s developing practice, is, however, the notion of ‘vision’
(Hammerness, 2003) and more specifically ‘instructional vision’ (Jansen, Gallivan
& Miller, 2020). Defined both as ‘a teacher’s ideali[s]ed image of teaching practice’
(Jansen, Gallivan & Miller, 2020, p. 183) and ‘the type of teaching they intend or
hope to enact in the future’ (ibid, p. 185), instructional vision is forward-looking
and yet grounded in what the teacher considers to be possible. A development of
Jansen, Gallivan, and Miller’s (2020) use of the term instructional vision that seems
productive to us, is to distinguish between instructional vision at the lesson level
and instructional vision over time, for example over a lesson series, a school term, a
year, or, less specifically, the future.We shall return to consider this distinction in due
course, but unless otherwise indicated we use Jansen, Gallivan, and Miller’s (2020)
definition for now.
Student-teachers come to initial teacher education (ITE) with established pre-
conceptions about teaching and learning mathematics, and about the nature of
mathematics itself, often based on the false dichotomies set out above. These pre-
conceptions shape a student-teacher’s early instructional vision. Hammerness (2004)
describes vision as powerful, vivid, and concrete, and from our own experience of
working with student-teachers, it is likely that early instructional visions are visceral
and difficult to express in any nuanced way. Rather, vision is likely to be simply
instantiated with reference to an experienced teacher’s practice (or in contrast to
an experienced teacher’s practice) or categorised using the binary labels of the false
dichotomies.
As teacher educators, it is our intention that through the course of the ITE
programme, there is a shift away from the visceral sense of an instructional vision
towards one that it more clearly defined and articulated, that can be justified by the
student-teacher, and that acknowledges complexity. Our stance, aligning with the
principles of Internship set out in Chapter 1, is to promote practical theorising as
a means for student-teachers to begin to engage with the complexity of instruc-
tional vision. Whilst this may involve us offering simplified, theory-based models
for aspects of teaching in order to support student-teachers in making sense of
mathematics learning and teaching, these are ‘models-for-now’ and are explicitly
introduced as such, in the expectation that they will be subject to scrutiny and, over
time, refined.
In the taught component of our mathematics course, the learning and teach-
ing of specific topics from the school mathematics curriculum are integrated with
pedagogical issues such as lesson planning, inclusive practices and the affordances
of digital technologies. For example, we present a sequence of three taught sessions
towards the beginning of the course that combines a focus on lesson planning
132 Nick Andrews et al.

with the learning and teaching of algebra. Of significance in terms of the focus
of this chapter is a number of other sessions early in the taught course devoted to
‘developing reflective teaching’. These sessions explicitly acknowledge the complex and
contested nature of mathematics and mathematics teaching and provide opportu-
nities for student-teachers to examine their current instructional visions in light of
this. At this early stage of the course, our role as teacher educators is to transform
(Shulman, 1986) what we know about this complexity and represent it in a way that
is comprehensible to our student-teachers and usable by them in their subsequent
theorising about mathematics learning and teaching. It is through such ‘representa-
tions of practice’ that student-teachers can:

Immerse themselves in a particular situation and establish cognitive and emo-

tional connection with it in ways that might not be possible at the rapid rate
of actual classroom interaction.
(Buchbinder & Kuntze, 2018, p. 2)

Visual models as representations of practice

A particular feature of the way we begin to engage student-teachers in theorising
about their instructional vision is through the use of visual models. In mathematics
education research there are a range of representations that model mathematics
teaching, but here we focus on just two of these.
The first is a quadrant model, designed by the first author but informed by the
work of Clarke et al. (2006). The model focuses attention on ‘lesson events’, namely
teacher exposition, whole class discussion, group work, and individual work (see
Figure 8.1), and particularly their sequencing within lessons. The quadrant model
considers two dimensions of activity structures used in lessons: activity that takes
place as a whole class vs. activity that takes place at students’ desk; and the opportu-
nities and use of, or absence of, student talk and interaction. Drawing attention to
these two dimensions of possible variation (Marton & Booth, 1997) and the range
of permissible change associated with each (Watson & Mason, 2006) opens up a
conversation about pedagogical choice. We use this representation at the begin-
ning of the course as it enables us to begin by talking about observable aspects
of teaching, often described as giving ‘accounts of ’ (Mason & Davis, 2013) and

Student talk
Class discussion Group work
Classwork

Seatwork

(WCD) (GWK)

Teacher exposition Individual work

(TEX) (IWK)

No student talk

FIGURE 8.1 Quadrant model of activity structures.

 Visual models to support practical theorising in mathematics 133

to introduce the idea of sequencing activities so as to achieve different goals. The

model therefore provides a way for describing lessons that have been observed in
school and prompts discussion of associations between the sequencing of activities
and specific goals. But it also offers one way of articulating instructional vision, so
that student-teachers can begin to engage with this concept at an analytical rather
than visceral level. It is noticeable to us as tutors how providing a publicly available
image of the model supports student-teacher’s articulation of instructional vision to
each other during university sessions, through gesturing.The visual model therefore
has affordances that go beyond the four categories of lesson events simply providing
a shared vocabulary.
The quadrant model can be used to represent both individual lessons, for exam-
ple in the form of a sequence of lesson events, and also teaching over time, for
example in the form of the percentage of time allocated to each lesson event across
a lesson series. It therefore supports analysis of instructional vision at the lesson level
and over time.
The second representation of practice we offer student-teachers is a triangular
model based on Swan (2007) and Askew et al. (1997) that captures beliefs and val-
ues about mathematics and its learning and teaching, namely transmission, connec-
tionist, and discovery orientations (see Figure 8.2). These orientations ‘shape rather
than directly control behaviour’ when teaching (Askew et al., 1997, p. 29). Typically,
teachers teach over time in ways that align with more than one orientation, but
these ways can vary, depending on both the mathematical topic and the particu-
lar stage within a topic where the lesson falls (Andrews, 2020). These orientations
reflect contrasting beliefs and webs of association (Davis et al. 2020) about the
nature of mathematics as a school subject, about what it means to do mathematics
(e.g. Cuoco et al. 1996), and about the nature of mathematics teaching. The trian-
gular model provides a way of representing the relative emphasis placed on each of

2 10

Increasing 4 8
Increasing
discovery transmission
6 6

8 4

10 2

2 4 6 8 10
Increasing
connectionist

FIGURE 8.2 Triangular model of mathematics teaching orientations (Adapted from

Swan (2007)).
134 Nick Andrews et al.

the three orientations over time. This representation supports us in transitioning to

‘accounting for accounts of ’ (Mason & Davis, 2013), as it offers both a model and
language to describe lessons, and teaching more generally, and allows us to begin
to ask why teachers, student-teachers, or teacher-educators might choose particular
actions and why activities may be sequenced in particular ways. We highlight the
introduction of the second model as a deliberate pedagogical move we choose to
make as teacher educators. The affordances of the second model are greater, but we
assert that they are less likely to be realised without student-teachers having first
experienced the range of permissible practices that can be captured through the
quadrant model.
The emphasis we place from the outset of the course on instructional vision is
intended not only to promote student-teacher theorising about the ‘teacher they
want to be’ but also to offer a critical lens to view other aspects of practice about
which theories are being constructed. Practical theorising can be understood as a
spiralling sequence of changes in knowledge and practice through action and reflec-
tion. For example, when a student-teacher is deliberately working on an aspect of
their practice, changes to that aspect that are tried out in a lesson and the feedback,
both in terms of student outcomes and the comments of an observing teacher, may
be synthesised and integrated with what is already known, so as to develop further
what the student-teacher holds to be true around that aspect of practice. But at the
same time, there is a monitoring mechanism associated with the student-teacher’s
instructional vision. Do changes in practice or what is held to be true align with
their current vision? If not, there is tension. This tension may remain unresolved,
and, if so, would represent a significant obstacle to practical theorising affording
teacher learning. A resolution can come either with the changes being abandoned
or with a refinement of the student-teacher’s vision.
Both the close detail to specific choices that they make in the classroom and the
wider view of instructional vision are very much concerns for student-teachers.The
two models that we offer support a multi-layered analysis, looking first at observable
actions, before reflecting upon instructional vision. They also allow observed and
enacted practices to be treated as positions and paths in a quadrant or on a con-
tinuum along the three dimensions of transmission, connectionist, and discovery.
The triangle representation, in particular, supports student-teachers in reflecting on
enacted practice that can be viewed as comprising combinations of, and movements
between, different orientations, rather than treating each orientation as a specific
style, challenging some of the prevalent dichotomous categorisations of practice.
The models in combination offer opportunities to examine ‘why practices that have
surface similarities may result in different learner outcomes’ (Askew et al., 1997),
opening up yet further possibilities for practical theorising.

Examples of student-teachers working with the two models

We now turn to focus on the use of these two diagrammatic representations by
four student-teachers. The diagrammatic representations are embedded within the
 Visual models to support practical theorising in mathematics 135

mathematics programme and are used explicitly (at all stages of the course) in ses-
sions that include a focus on reflection and student-teacher learning. These four
student-teachers volunteered to be interviewed about their recent teaching expe-
riences and their observations of teaching in their first placement at the point in
the course where most student-teachers are just beginning to teach lessons with
one class. At this stage of the course, these representations are offered as ways for
­student-teachers to make sense of the lessons they are observing in school and of
their own early lessons. The models are returned to at later points in the course,
when they are subject to more critical interrogation but may also become integrated
within the student-teachers’ ongoing practice. The interviews reveal the range of
enacted practices that inform student-teachers’ theorising; the ways in which the
two diagrammatic tools supported student-teachers’ accounts of and accounts for
these practices; and the use that the student-teachers made of them to talk about
their aspirations for their own teaching.
The interviews were carried out at the end of a university-based session when
the student teachers had completed a third of the course (spending two or three
days each week in their partnership school, and the others in university-based ses-
sions). They had each begun teaching at least one mathematics class and had been
given frequent and regular opportunities to observe the teaching of a range of
experienced mathematics teachers, as well as meeting weekly with a school-based
mathematics mentor.
The interviews were conducted by a university-based curriculum tutor, but not
one that worked on the mathematics programme. The four student-teachers were
initially interviewed as a group and then as individuals. The interviews focused on
four areas: a reflection on a lesson that the student-teacher had recently taught; how
they made sense of this lesson using the diagrammatic representations; similarities
and differences between their teaching and the teaching of the teachers in their
placement school; and discussion – with reference to the models – of their aspira-
tions for their future teaching.These interviews were then analysed using a thematic
analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006) that focused on the student-teachers’ use of each of
the labels within both models (with reference both to their own teaching and to the
teaching they had observed). In the discussions below we have used quotations to
indicate where we are using the words of the student-teachers themselves.

Results
When describing teaching that the student-teachers had observed (both in their
placement school and in videos of classroom practice) and their own teaching, the
four activity structures from the quadrant model were drawn upon spontaneously.
Each student-teacher described similar patterns across all the lessons they observed.
Lessons often started with individual work, followed by teacher exposition, ‘a small
amount’ of whole class discussion, followed by individual work and ending with
either teacher exposition or whole class discussion. These patterns were connected
to the purposes and stages of the observed lessons. The starts of lessons involved
136 Nick Andrews et al.

students working individually and these were seen as involving activities that settled
the class and supported the students in revising previous learning, sometimes con-
nected to the focus of the upcoming lesson.Teacher exposition then introduced the
topic of the lesson or a new procedure, which was followed by a brief whole-class
discussion in which the teacher assessed how comfortable students were with the
new topic or procedure, before students worked individually, practising questions on
the topic. The lessons ended with the teacher reviewing the lesson or sharing stu-
dents’ answers to the questions. This pattern of teaching in mathematics classrooms
in England is very common (Ingram et al., 2020).
However, there were differences in how the student-teachers used the labels, and
the boundaries between whole-class discussion and teacher exposition, as well as
between individual work and group work, were not clearly defined, and in many
cases were blurry. For some, teacher exposition could be interactive and involve
contributions from students, for others this would be considered whole-class discus-
sion. One student-teacher made the distinction depending upon whether the dis-
cussion was based on students’ ideas or whether the teacher had control of the topic
of the discussion. Similarly, individual work was used by some to describe activities
where students worked on questions that were ‘meant’ to be completed individually
but where students could talk with other students. However, one student-teacher
initially described individual work as work that was completed in silence, which was
a common practice in their placement school, but was then less clear about whether
work during which students could talk to one another was group work or individ-
ual work, questioning whether the talk needed to be focused on the task or not.
When describing their own teaching, the student-teachers drew on the trian-
gle model, but some used the language of transmission, connectionist and discov-
ery orientations to describe their lesson as a whole, while others used these labels
to describe individual strategies and behaviours within their lessons. There were
also differences in the meanings associated with each of the orientations. The stu-
dent-teachers’ descriptions initially focused on a dichotomy between transmission
and discovery. The lessons or strategies were described as ‘transmissionist’ or ‘more
transmission’, or ‘discovery’ or ‘more discovery’. None of the student-teachers’
descriptions of a lesson that they had recently taught contained any references to a
connectionist orientation, nor any explicit use of the word connection, even though
they did describe tasks as building on prior learning, working with multiple rep-
resentations, or working with students’ ideas. When prompted to plot their teach-
ing on the diagrammatic representation, however, all of the student-teachers talked
about connectionist teaching and two explicitly positioned themselves as including
both transmission and connectionist aspects in their lesson (see Figure 8.3).
Three of the four student-teachers talked about how they had used the tri-
angle-based representation to support their observations of other teachers and in
reflecting upon their own planning and teaching on a regular basis.Yet they used the
representation in different ways.
Kim talked about being constrained by the prior knowledge of the students and
needing to teach in a transmission style when introducing a topic, which not only
 Visual models to support practical theorising in mathematics 137

Transmission Transmission

Discovery Connectionist Discovery Connectionist

Jan Kim

Transmission Transmission

Discovery Connectionist Discovery Connectionist

Lynn Mo

FIGURE 8.3 Student-teachers’ representation of a lesson they had taught (black triangle)
and their instructional vision (white circle).

applied to topics that were new to the students but also to topics that they had pre-
viously studied but about which they were unable to answer questions. He talked
about ‘having to’ teach in a particular way because of the students he was working
with. Kim connected the orientations to the four ways of working in the quadrant
model. Activities that involved the whole class working together were associated
with a transmission orientation, with individual work being seen as the context
within which students could discover through practice; while independent work
when there were also opportunities to discuss the activity was treated as having a
connectionist orientation. For Kim, the different orientations were fluid through-
out a lesson and related to the ways in which students were working, but it was the
nature of the activity, not the nature of the task or the mathematics, that character-
ised the orientation.
Both Jan and Lynn were more assertive, applying an essentially fixed or static
description to their own teaching, defining their lesson quickly and succinctly as
‘transmissionist’ or ‘more transmissionist’. Lynn expanded a little, adding that there
may have been small parts of the discussions in lessons that were connectionist.
Mo also identified parts of lessons as adopting one orientation or another, but
this was based on the stage of the lesson as well as the nature of the tasks. She
described the start of the lesson as transmission because the students were recap-
ping the previous lesson. She saw the main focus of the lesson as about the students
making connections between this prior knowledge and the new questions they had
been given, and the outcome as being for students to discover for themselves the
138 Nick Andrews et al.

connections between their work on dot patterns and square numbers, generalising
to other indices. Although Mo only once used the word connection explicitly in
the description of her lesson, in terms of connecting pictures of squares of dots
and square numbers, she did talk about the patterns within the tasks, and what she
wanted students to notice, and the generalisations that she was working towards.
Mo also moved fluidly between the connectionist and discovery vertices when
gesturing towards the triangle representation of the orientations. She described her
teacher expositions as interactive, but it was not until students were sharing their
own thinking that she described this interaction as a discussion. For Mo, the use of
planned examples that students could work with to find patterns or make connec-
tions were ‘discovery’ but the discussions around students’ thinking were transmis-
sion because she maintained control of the focus of the discussion.
How each of the student-teachers conceptualised the three orientations is also
evident in their descriptions of how they would like to teach when they had fin-
ished their ITE course. Kim wanted to be in the middle and to ‘avoid any bias’
towards the vertices. However, he described Swan’s (2007) research as showing that
the constraints of school and the examination system meant that he would have to
adopt a transmission orientation, describing these constraints as ‘preventing a con-
nectionist approach’. Jan saw her teaching as needing to change depending on what
topics and classes she was teaching. Some lessons would ‘need to be more transmis-
sion’, but she wanted to develop a more connectionist orientation. Both Lynn and
Mo described transmissionist teaching as being ‘easiest to do’ with Lynn saying that
she could teach lessons now in that way. Lynn described wanting to move towards
the middle while Mo wanted her approach to be more towards the discovery vertex,
but stating that ‘discovery is difficult to do well’ as there is a lot to think about: a
need to find the right tasks, and behaviour needs managing more. Mo’s description
of discovery included making connections within and between topics and provid-
ing contextualisation – i.e. making connections between mathematical concepts
and the mathematical or real-world contexts in which they can arise. For lessons
to be engaging, she argued that ‘they need contextualising and opportunities to do
mathematics, which means to think about mathematics’. Transmission approaches
were useful when summarising or recapping a mathematics idea or procedure but
were also easy to fall back on. Both Lynn and Mo talked about needing to work
on making connections and finding or designing tasks that would enable a more
discovery-oriented approach.
When speaking about the teachers whom they had observed teaching, the stu-
dent-teachers described their teaching as transmission, but also contextualised this
in terms of the constraints that teachers faced.They talked about discovery teaching
taking more planning and thus requiring more time, and explained that teachers
therefore only did this when they had the time. There was also a discussion about
students’ prior attainment, with the student-teachers reporting that lower-attaining
students received or needed more transmissionist teaching. In contrast, three of the
student-teachers had experienced lessons with advanced or higher-attaining stu-
dents that involved aspects of discovery teaching. One student-teacher contrasted
 Visual models to support practical theorising in mathematics 139

Transmission Transmission

Discovery Connectionist Discovery Connectionist

Jan Kim

Transmission Transmission

Discovery Connectionist Discovery Connectionist

Lynn Mo

FIGURE 8.4 Student-teachers’ representation of lesson(s) they had observed. Multiple

positions in the same triangle are when different teachers’ lessons are represented.

this with one teacher she had observed whose teaching she would describe as inter-
active and connectionist with the lowest attaining classes, but she also positioned this
teacher as being very different from the others that she had observed (Figure 8.4).
When describing the teaching they had observed, the student-teachers drew on
both the quadrant model and the triangle model, but connections between these
models were limited. Just one of the student-teachers in their individual interview
spoke of how the different quadrants in the quadrant model could be used with
different orientations, describing how a whole class discussion could be either trans-
missionist or discovery.
The three vertices of the triangle model are used by both Swan (2007) and Askew
et al. (1997) to describe teachers’ beliefs as well as practices. The student-teachers’
use of this model also made their beliefs about the nature of mathematics and the
nature of mathematics learning visible. For example, Kim spoke only about his stu-
dents’ knowledge and skills and how he planned and adapted his teaching depending
upon what his students did or did not know. For this student-teacher, a ‘transmission
teacher exposition’ is needed for introducing new knowledge, but there was an
element of ‘discovery’ when students worked individually on worksheets specifi-
cally prepared for the lesson. Kim only spoke about mathematical knowledge, and
what students knew. He described lessons as about teachers presenting a fact and
students practising until they ‘knew it’. In contrast, Mo spoke about mathematics
in terms of behaviours, such as pattern spotting, conjecturing, and generalising. For
this student-teacher, teacher exposition was needed to ensure that the examples
140 Nick Andrews et al.

would provide students with the opportunities to find patterns and generalise in a
way that was consistent with the objectives for the lesson. While Jan and Lynn also
talked about knowledge and practice, particularly in describing their own teaching,
they also talked about ‘other ways of doing mathematics’ but without specific details
about what these ways might be.

Implications for our practice as teacher educators

The diagrammatic representations that we used were based on our experiences as
mathematics teacher educators, drawing from theories of mathematics teaching and
learning and recent research. This small-scale study was a first step towards building
empirical evidence of how such representations mediate practical theorising and
support student-teachers in making sense of mathematics classrooms, and how the
use of these representations can support student-teacher learning.
We offer these visual models to enable student-teachers to engage in practi-
cal theorising. These models provide university-based curriculum tutors and stu-
dent-teachers with a shared language for discussing teaching, both teaching as
enacted practices and teaching as future possibilities for action.The four case studies
described in this chapter illustrate the range of meanings and interpretations that
different student-teachers have for the models, even when they have read the same
readings and attended the same workshops that introduce and work with them.
This is part of the sense-making, interrogation, and interpretation of research and
theory process. These different meanings and interpretations enable different per-
spectives on mathematics teaching to be examined and tried out and allow some
student-teachers to make sense of the lessons they observe, and to consider how
they might be similar to, or different from, the lessons they wish to teach themselves.
In this chapter, we have only considered student-teachers’ use of these models in the
very early stages of their teaching careers. Over the course of their ITE mathemat-
ics programme, these models are returned to in order to allow these meanings and
interpretations to evolve further.
By focusing on dimensions and orientations rather than dichotomies, discussions
around teaching and student-teacher learning keep away from evaluation of practices
as good or bad, effective or ineffective, and right or wrong. Instead, these discussions
focus on sequencing between aspects or orientations and potential sequences and
ways of acting in the future. Yet the dichotomy between traditional and progressive
or transmission and discovery still featured in the student-teacher’s discussions.Those
student-teachers who were able to describe their observations in schools using dif-
ferent orientations, for example by seeing a lesson they could describe as connec-
tionist as well as a lesson they could describe as transmissionist, also talked about their
own teaching in flexible ways. This was particularly evident in Mo’s descriptions of
her own teaching and the teacher she wanted to be. This suggests that the tools in
themselves are not sufficient to help student-teachers make sense of what they expe-
rience in schools, if they do not perceive or do not experience variation in terms of
the practices that the tools are intended to distinguish between.
 Visual models to support practical theorising in mathematics 141

Questions remain as to whether, over time, there emerges a ‘centre of gravity’

within the triangle representation, for student-teachers, for experienced teachers, and
for mathematics teachers within a community such as a department, or on an ITE
course. Three of the student-teachers positioned the ‘teacher they want to be’ closer
to the centre of the triangle compared to where they were now, as well as closer to
the centre than where they positioned the experienced teachers with whom they
were working. This raises a question as to whether the student-teachers’ imaginings
were the wistful intentions of idealists, or the principled goals of agents for change.
What this use of visual models to support practical theorising in mathematics
does bring are tools to support student-teachers to both articulate their visions and
gain a deeper understanding of who they want to be as a teacher. These models
also support teacher educators to work with these student-teachers to examine
how they might achieve this vision both during their ITE and in their careers as
mathematics teachers.

References
Alexander, R. J. (1984). Innovation and continuity in the Initial Teacher Education curricu-
lum. In R. J. Alexander, M. Craft, & J. Lynch (Eds.), Change in Teacher Education. London:
Holt, Rinehard and Winston, 104–160.
Andrews, N. (2020). Characterising the shape of mathematics teaching decisions made over
time:An application of tri-polar analysis, Research in Mathematics Education, 22 (3), 329–346.
Askew, M., Brown, M., Rhodes, V., Wiliam, D., & Johnson, D. (1997). Effective Teachers of
Numeracy: Report of a Study Carried Out for the Teacher Training Agency. London: King’s
College, University of London.
Braun V. & Clarke, V. (2006) Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative Research in
Psychology, 3(2), 77–101.
Buchbinder, O. & Kuntze, S. (2018). Representations of practice in teacher education and
research – Spotlights on different approaches. In O. Buchbinder & S. Kuntze (Eds.),
Mathematics Teachers Engaging with Representations of Practice: A Dynamically Evolving Field.
Cham, Switzerland: Springer, 1–8.
Clarke, D., Emanuelsson, J., Jablonka, E., & Mok, I. (2006). Making Connections: Comparing
Mathematics Classrooms around the World. Rotterdam, Netherlands: Sense Publishers.
Cuoco, A., Goldenberg, E.P., & Mark, J. (1996). Habits of mind: An organizing principle for
mathematics curricula. Journal of Mathematical Behavior, 15, 375–402.
Davis, B., Towers, J., Chapman, O., Drefs, M., & Friesen, S. (2020). Exploring the relationship
between mathematics teachers’ implicit associations and their enacted practices. Journal of
Mathematics Teacher Education, 23, 407–428.
Hammerness, K. (2003). Learning to hope, or hoping to learn? The role of vision in the early
professional life of teachers. Journal of Teacher Education, 54(1), 43–56.
Hammerness, K. (2004). Teaching with vision: How one teacher negotiates the tension
between high ideals and standardized testing. Teacher Education Quarterly, 31(4), 33–43.
Ingram, J. (2020). Epistemic management in mathematics classroom interactions: Students
claims of not knowing or not understanding. Journal of Mathematical Behavior 58.
DOI:10.1016/j.jmathb.2019.100754
Ingram, J., Lindorff, A., Sammons, P., Mitchell, P., McDermott, T., Smith, K., & Voss, M.
(2020). TALIS Video Study National Report. London: Df E.
142 Nick Andrews et al.

Jansen, A., Gallivan, H. R., & Miller, E. (2020). Early-career teachers’ instructional visions
for mathematics teaching: Impact of elementary teacher education. Journal of Mathematics
Teacher Education 23, 183–207.
Jaworski, B. (2006). Theory and practice in mathematics teaching development: Critical
inquiry as a mode of learning in teaching. Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education 9,
187–211.
Marton, F. & Booth, S. (1997). Learning and Awareness. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Mason, J. & Davis, B. (2013). The importance of teachers’ mathematical awareness for
in-the-moment pedagogy. Canadian Journal of Science, Mathematics and Technology Education
13(2), 182–197.
McIntyre, D. (1990). Ideas and principles guiding the internship Scheme. In P. Benton (Ed.),
The Oxford Internship Scheme: Integration and Partnership in Initial Teacher Education. London:
Calouste Gulbenkium Foundation, 17–34.
McIntyre, D. (1993). Theory, theorizing and reflection in initial teacher education. In
J. Calderhead & P. Gates (Eds.), Conceptualizing Reflection in Teacher Development. London:
Falmer, 39–52.
McIntyre, D. (1995). Initial teacher education as practical theorising: A response to Paul Hirst.
British Journal of Educational Studies, 43(4), 365–383.
Noyes, A. (2006). Using metaphor in mathematics teacher preparation. Teaching and Teacher
Education 22, 898–909.
Shulman, L. S. (1986). Those who understand: Knowledge growth in teaching. Educational
Researcher, 15(2), 4–14.
Swan, M. (2007). The impact of task-based professional development on teachers’ practices
and beliefs: A design research study. Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education, 10 (4–6),
217–237.
Watson, A. & Mason, J. (2006) Seeing an exercise as a single mathematical object: Using vari-
ation to structure sense-making. Mathematical Thinking and Learning, 8(2), 91–111.
Yurekli, B., Stein, M. K., Correnti, R., & Kisa, Z. (2020). Teaching mathematics for concep-
tual understanding: Teachers’ beliefs and practices and the role of constraints. Journal for
Research in Mathematics Education, 51(2), 234–247.
9
ASSIGNMENTS AS TOOLS FOR
PRACTICAL THEORISING
An exploration of affordances, limitations and
possibilities

Robert Woore, Trevor Mutton and Laura Molway

Introduction
Student-teachers in Modern Languages (ML) from one recent Postgraduate
Certificate in Education (PGCE) cohort were asked to tell us about their expe-
riences of completing a subject-specific ‘curriculum assignment’ as part of their
course. When prompted to comment on any aspects that they found easy, challeng-
ing, enjoyable, or less enjoyable, their reflections varied:

It was good to practise being more deliberate with experimentation in my

teaching (rather than doing it a little half-heartedly and not thinking too
much about it).
(Jenny)

I began each assignment with good intentions, but ended up implementing

things like the lessons, literature review and collection of data in quite a for-
mulaic way in order to meet the criteria.
(Jack)

For the assignment in question, the student-teachers were asked to plan, teach and
systematically evaluate a lesson designed to improve the quality of target language
interaction in their own classroom, drawing on evidence from both the academic
literature and their own systematic investigation of pupils’ perspectives (e.g. pupils’
views; their classroom experiences; or the amount and nature of their linguistic
output in lessons). While each individual student-teacher was able to select a more
precise focus within this broader theme, all assignments followed the same assign-
ment rubric.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003183945-13
144 Robert Woore et al.

Across the whole PGCE course, assignments are seen as one of the tools for pro-
moting practical theorising, in that each curriculum assignment, regardless of subject
area, requires the individual student-teacher to draw on multiple sources of evidence
to inform their developing thinking and classroom practice. Furthermore, a critical
examination of such evidence is required, reflecting a model of research-informed
clinical practice (Burn & Mutton, 2015). Drawing on such a model, the assignment
is therefore one of the means whereby the course aims:

(a) to facilitate and deepen the interplay between the different kinds of knowl-
edge generated and validated within the different contexts of school and
university; and
(b) to provide scope for the beginning teacher to interrogate each [kind of
knowledge] in light of the other, bringing them both to bear in interpret-
ing and responding to their classroom experiences.
(Burn & Mutton, 2015, p. 219)

Our purpose in this chapter is to examine the extent to which an assignment of this
nature is really able to fulfil these two aims. We take as our starting point Donald
McIntyre’s view that, at its core, practical theorising requires

that student-teachers should question, and test against diverse criteria, what-
ever ideas for practice are presented to them as well as those which they bring
with them.
(McIntyre, 1995, p. 371)

This view is central to the principles underpinning our PGCE course itself and
the ML programme within it, the explicit aim of both being to create ‘thinking’,
questioning classroom practitioners who make well-informed pedagogical deci-
sions, which they can rationally defend. Student-teachers are expected to engage
critically both with practices observed in school and with the ideas they encoun-
ter in the literature, using each to interrogate the other in light of factors such as:
Second Language Acquisition theory; their own conceptions of language learning;
their past experiences as learners (and also, where appropriate, as teachers); their
current classroom experiences; and the knowledge they acquire from experienced
colleagues with whom they are working in school on a day-to-day basis. This is
recognised as a potentially discomforting position to be in, since it challenges any
acceptance of the status quo.
Curriculum assignments are seen as a ‘crystallisation’ of this learning model: they
require student-teachers to draw on a diverse range of sources, both theoretical and
practical, and to synthesise all that they have learned through the process, in order
to identify appropriate implications for their own future practice, which are well
founded and evidence-informed. The formal status of the assignments, along with
the detailed rubric and marking criteria, mean that (ideally) all the necessary steps
in collecting and evaluating diverse forms of evidence must be completed, and an
 Assignments as tools for practical theorising 145

appropriate level of critical analysis undertaken. Furthermore, there is no expec-

tation that consensus be reached: tensions both between and within theoretical
and practical perspectives are seen as productive in terms of the potential for new
learning that they afford.
Such an approach is not, however, without its challenges. Practical theoris-
ing requires sufficient time, motivation and mental resources for student-teach-
ers to engage fully with what is being learned from a range of different sources
and to interrogate this knowledge systematically and effectively. Furthermore, the
supposedly productive tensions mentioned above may, in reality, be complex and
personally difficult (even highly stressful) for student-teachers to navigate. Such
difficulties might be reflected in: pressures to conform in school; a perceived need
to adopt a position which will ‘please’ university tutors (and which may conflict
with what is seen in school); the need to meet academic criteria, which may be
seen as irrelevant to classroom concerns; and perhaps – in the case of assignments –
a lack of understanding of their purpose or even a rejection thereof, with a view
that they can be completed in a formulaic way simply to meet the assessment
criteria (Lawes, 2004).
The assignments cannot, therefore, be seen as separate from the wider context in
which the student-teachers’ professional learning is taking place.The difficulties that
some of them might encounter need to be understood as potential misalignments
within each student-teacher’s social situation of development (see Tatto et al., 2017).
For example, there might be tensions between the individual’s view of what consti-
tutes effective teaching and learning on the one hand, and the policies and practices
of their placement school on the other; or between the university-based programme
and the views of the school. Such misalignments can potentially be debilitating,
but can also afford opportunities for development, if the student-teacher recognises
them as such (and if the student-teacher is appropriately supported). The curricu-
lum assignment throws any such misalignments into sharp focus and, while this may
result in the student-teacher having to navigate potentially difficult contradictions,
the process of being required to acknowledge such contradictions can be the cata-
lyst for fruitful professional learning to occur.
It is against this backdrop that we, as teacher educators within the ML pro-
gramme, wished to open up our curriculum assignments to genuine critical scrutiny.
To what extent are they fulfilling what we want them to achieve? Are they an appro-
priate vehicle for student-teachers to engage in the process of practical theorising
in a meaningful way? If the assignments really do this, then we would expect to see
our student-teachers rigorously testing out their key beliefs against diverse criteria,
drawing on systematic evidence and finally synthesising the rich learning which this
opportunity can afford. It is not important to us whether student-teachers confirm
their original beliefs or whether they reject or modify these beliefs in light of new
evidence; what matters is that they emerge which have better-­informed beliefs,
which have more rigorous and robust underpinnings.
The current chapter presents the fruits of this critical examination of our assign-
ments. Furthermore, the chapter itself aims to exemplify the process of practical
146 Robert Woore et al.

theorising, as outlined in McIntyre’s (1995) statement above: that is, we aim to

question, and test against diverse criteria, both our existing beliefs and the further
evidence and ideas that we gather, from reading the literature and our own empiri-
cal investigation. We came to this task with a conception of the essential validity of
the assignments as a tool for promoting learning within the course, and specifically
for promoting practical theorising. Rather than simply accept the status quo, we
wished to test this belief rigorously. Just as with the interns’ conceptions (intended
to be tested against diverse criteria through their assignment work), so too, through
the investigation reported in this chapter, we looked for evidence that might either
confirm our beliefs in the value of the assignments as they stand, or challenge us to
reconsider their design to improve their value as tools for practical theorising.

Outline of the chapter

Having explored some of the background to the role of assignments in our PGCE
programme, we offer below three vignettes of student-teachers from a recent year’s
cohort, focussed on the work they carried out for their second curriculum assign-
ment (CA2). The subsequent discussion draws on the vignettes as well as on ques-
tionnaire responses given by student-teachers in the same cohort. We conclude by
highlighting what we consider to be some key tensions in the use of assignments as
tools to promote practical theorising and by proposing some ideas which may help
to maximise the learning opportunities which assignments can afford.

Vignette 1 – Joanna
Joanna’s assignment achieved a low mark of 50, indicating that it only just reached
the requirements for a pass at Master’s Level. It is therefore interesting to judge the
extent to which the assignment provides evidence of effective practical theorising,
despite its limitations as a piece of examined work.
Joanna’s introduction highlights the lack of consensus in the academic and policy
literature with regards to teachers’ use of the target language (TL) – the language
being taught – often also referred to as ‘L2’, to mean the students’ second language.
However, it is not made clear why the lesson that she subsequently taught as part of
the assignment ‘focussed on increasing the use of L2 in classroom conversation’. She
states that the assignment will ‘specifically focus on students’ confidence using L2 in
the classroom’, which she identifies as a key challenge in her placement school.This
may well be so, but no evidence is put forward to support this claim.
Joanna’s literature review includes many relevant sources. These are, however,
dealt with only briefly, and some of them are idiosyncratic choices, based in con-
texts very different from UK ML classrooms. The review lacks a coherent thread of
argument and there is a sense that Joanna has, perhaps, ‘jumped through a series of
hoops’ required by the conventions of academic work.
Joanna next reports on her ‘baseline’ classroom investigation, which highlights
the lack of spontaneous TL use by students in all year groups in her placement
 Assignments as tools for practical theorising 147

school. Much of the evidence in this section is rather impressionistic. More con-
crete evidence is gathered via a survey with a Year 9 German class, exploring their
perceptions of barriers to using the TL, but there is no systematic presentation of
the findings. Rather, students’ individual responses are listed, from which Joanna
concludes that ‘it is clear that perceived language skill and confidence were two
key factors’. To us, however, it is rather unclear how these ‘key factors’ have been
identified, as they are not necessarily the ones that seem to emerge from the data.
The lesson includes tasks designed to increase students’ use of the TL. They are
taught ‘key classroom language phrases’. They then use the phrase ‘wie sagt man …
auf Englisch’ (how do you say … in English) to ask the meanings of a list of words
displayed on the board; some of these words then come up in a reading exercise
which the students complete. Joanna and the observing teacher act as ‘language
police’, issuing first yellow and then red cards as sanctions for pupils who are ‘caught’
using English.
Joanna justifies the design of the tasks in her lesson through appeal to some of the
key theories (covered in the literature review) relating to oral interaction in the TL,
although how well-aligned the lesson actually is to these theories is questionable.
For example, there seems to be little provision of extensive TL input, pitched at a
level just above what the students can currently produce themselves; and there are
few opportunities for genuine communication in the L2, in which students over-
come potential barriers to communication. Both of these are instructional features
which would follow from the theoretical positions that Joanna has explored.
In order to evaluate her lesson, Joanna administers a questionnaire to students
before and after the teaching, with a focus on students’ self-reported confidence in
producing the TL. The teacher observing the lesson was also asked to keep a record
of students’ use of their first language (L1) and the L2. In an honest account of the
unfolding of the lesson, we learn that some students started to subvert the lesson’s
aims: for example, they said ‘random’ phrases in German, made excessive use of
gesture or simply remained silent – thus managing to avoid being ‘caught’ using L1
by the ‘language police’, whilst not actually completing the task as intended. On the
other hand, the lesson does seem to have had some success: overall, ‘the majority of
students appeared to have so much fun using the language in ridiculous ways, that
they managed to quite successfully use the phrases by the end of the lesson’.
In the ‘Discussion’ section of Joanna’s assignment, again, the lack of a clear, over-
arching narrative is apparent, and some contradictory comments are made about
how effective the lesson was. On the one hand, Joanna argues that ‘My experience
of teaching this lesson led me to conclude that … it is possible to conduct a lesson
almost entirely in the L2’. On the other hand, she notes here (for the first time) that
the observing teacher had to step in and explain tasks to the students in English, as
they were confused about what to do. In contradiction to her previous ‘pro-immer-
sion’ conclusion, Joanna uses this observation to note the value of using L1 in an L2
lesson and relates this point back to the literature. Joanna also notes the success of
the language police idea, even though her previous account of the lesson suggested
that this had generated some rather chaotic scenes in the classroom.
148 Robert Woore et al.

In summary, we would note that Joanna does seem to have reached a deeper
understanding of the role of both L1 and L2 in language learning, and of how rela-
tively simple interventions can have a large impact on the linguistic environment of
the classroom. However, the extent and nature of her professional learning does not
seem to have been brought out particularly clearly within the constraints of writing
up the assignment.

Vignette 2 – Molly
Molly’s assignment explores the issue of anxiety as a barrier to students’ use of the
TL and investigates the teaching of phonics to increase students’ confidence. It
was awarded a mark of 73 (a lower-level Distinction), indicating that it was highly
effective in meeting the assessment criteria. Typically, a Distinction-level mark is
achieved by around 10% of each cohort.
Molly opens with a hypothesis that poor pronunciation and poor decoding
skills may fuel students’ anxiety about speaking and that explicit teaching of phon-
ics may therefore improve their confidence. She cites an Ofsted report from 2011
that reported: ‘where students did not understand the conventions between sounds
and spelling, commonly known as sound-spelling links, pronunciation and reading
aloud were often weak and a barrier to communication’ (p. 24).
In her literature review, Molly builds a well-structured argument for the interre-
lated nature of linguistic proficiency, confidence, motivation and anxiety. Developing
secure knowledge of Grapheme-Phoneme Correspondences (GPC) is then intro-
duced as a possible means to impact positively on pronunciation and speaking skills,
alongside building students’ confidence. Molly frequently evaluates the degree to
which the studies she discusses might be relevant for her own classroom.
For her baseline investigation, Molly observed two Year 7 classes and noted each
time a student responded in English when asked for a response in TL. She asked a
selection of these students why they had not spoken in TL and they reported ‘neg-
ative self-perceptions as learners, feeling that other students would laugh at them
and not being confident enough to try because they knew they would be corrected,
which would negatively impact their self-esteem’.
The planned lesson focuses on a list of famous French footballers, whose names
contain useful French GPC. For example, the former Premier League player, Bacary
Sagna, is used to exemplify the French grapheme <gn>, pronounced ‘ny’ (as in lasa-
gne). The students engage in choral repetition of each footballer’s name before try-
ing to work out the pronunciation of new (unfamiliar) words containing the same
GPC (e.g. champignon, ‘mushroom’). Finally, as a vocabulary development exercise,
students looked up English words in a dictionary and used their knowledge of the
footballers’ names to pronounce their French translations.
Interestingly, rather than drawing on the literature previously reviewed, what
is cited as having most influenced the planning of the lesson is a blog post by a
well-known ML practitioner, advocating a particular strategy for developing pro-
nunciation by using gestures to represent L2 sounds. Molly also discusses with her
 Assignments as tools for practical theorising 149

mentor contrasting viewpoints from the literature around the use of the phonetic
alphabet. Her mentor suggests this is best avoided, particularly because it might be
problematic for learners who do not have English as their first language. Overall, the
references to factors which influenced the lesson planning are mostly at the level of
practical strategies rather than theoretically-driven rationales. The hypothesis that
greater knowledge of French phonics will reduce students’ anxiety about speaking
in French is not examined in any critical depth. Rather, the planned lesson enables
an investigation of whether students will feel less anxious than usual when carrying
out a specific task that focuses on pronouncing written words.
In order to evaluate the lesson, Molly asked her students to complete a version
of Horwitz, Horwitz and Cope’s 1986 Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale,
which was administered at the start and end of the lesson. The data indicate some
reduction in anxiety, but issues with the questionnaire led to some responses being
discarded. It is, of course, difficult to measure learner anxiety and Molly’s method is
not particularly targeted to her teaching approach. The theory of change discussed
in the literature review was that explicit phonics teaching might lead to increased
competence in phonological decoding of text, in turn resulting in lower anxiety
levels. However, Molly does not measure the accuracy of her students’ decoding.
Instead, the success of the phonics intervention is measured simply in terms of stu-
dents’ anxiety, missing out the change-initiating element of increased competence
in decoding skills. This issue is not acknowledged in the assignment.
In her discussion and conclusions, Molly demonstrates a critical awareness of the
limitations of the study. She asserts that her findings were broadly in line with the
literature and declares that ‘the phonics-based intervention generally had a positive
effect on reducing anxiety in these two classes’. There is little explicit discussion of
how the evaluation of the teaching might relate to the ideas discussed in the liter-
ature. This is problematic in terms of practical theorising, as there is only limited
evidence that Molly is drawing on different sources of evidence and using one to
interrogate the other.
Although there are some issues regarding the extent to which the assignment
facilitated a full embracing of practical theorising, the process of writing the assign-
ment led to an exploration of an aspect of languages teaching that is known to be
underdeveloped in many secondary school ML classrooms in England. Molly also
highlights how she might investigate the issue further in a sustained way or explore
other areas (such as whether a reduction in anxiety might lead to more TL produc-
tion in class, as had been suggested by the literature).

Vignette 3 – Nico
Nico’s assignment achieved a Merit mark at Master’s level (65). It explores his con-
cern that insufficient exposure to L2 in the classroom (as a result of his own low
levels of TL use as a teacher) may hinder his students’ chances to develop adequate
listening and speaking skills.
150 Robert Woore et al.

In his literature review, Nico explores the debates about how much teacher TL
use might be ideal and the extent to which teachers’ TL use may influence their
students’ willingness to communicate and their TL output. There is evidence of
criticality in his discussion of different viewpoints and issues relating to the meth-
odologies of empirical studies. He concludes that increased teacher TL use does
not automatically lead to pupil TL use. He further suggests that where teacher TL
use is very low, pupil confidence and anxiety may need to be tackled first, before
gradually increasing it.
Before planning his lesson, Nico explores school data regarding the reading ages
and prior attainment of his chosen class. He reports his own impressions that his
students are reticent to speak in the TL. However, he does not gather any systematic
data to help him to identify the possible reasons underlying this reticence and so
there is, perhaps, a missed opportunity to incorporate these perspectives into his
planning.
Nico states that his planning of the assignment lesson is guided by two principles:
(a) maximising his own use of the TL; and (b) promoting students’ willingness to
communicate by boosting their confidence. The first principle seems to be directly
at odds with the conclusions which Nico drew in his literature review, where he
argued in favour of a balanced approach to TL and L1 use. The second princi-
ple is supported by ideas explored in the literature review and is operationalised
by designing a series of ‘low-stakes scenarios’ for students to practise their speaking,
beginning with written prompts.
To help him evaluate his lesson, Nico asked the observing teacher to make notes
with a focus on TL use. He recognises the limitations of relying on unstructured
data from one observer and acknowledges that it would have been useful to have
included the pupils’ own perspectives. Nico reports that he spoke a lot of TL but
did not maintain 100%, as he had planned. The observing teacher felt that students
‘bought into’ the challenge of hearing a lot of TL and that there was a relaxed
atmosphere. This observer also notes that more boys contributed answers than girls.
(The possibility that this might have resulted from Nico’s own bias when ques-
tioning the students is not discussed, even though it appears in the written lesson
feedback.) There is evidence of Nico drawing on both his experiences in the lesson
and the ideas in the literature review to think critically about his practice. However,
the limited collection of systematic data about the lesson meant that he was unable
to learn much about his students’ use of the TL beyond some simple, observable
phenomena. Nico tentatively concludes that increasing his TL input was not suffi-
cient to increase his students’ TL output.This conclusion, whilst it may be valid, had
already been established as a likely outcome through the initial review of the liter-
ature. He did not gather the sort of evidence that might have told him something
about why and how maximal TL teaching might have had an impact on his pupils’
willingness to communicate.
As tutors, we already knew that at the beginning of the PGCE course, Nico
believed strongly that maximal TL use was desirable in the classroom. This may
explain his decision to plan a 100% immersion lesson, even though his review of
 Assignments as tools for practical theorising 151

the literature did not recommend this approach. Nico’s subsequent questionnaire
responses indicate a shift in his thinking:

Work for my CA2 has helped me shift towards an optimal rather than a max-
imal approach to TL use in the classroom – without (excessive) guilt!

Within the discussion and conclusions of his assignment, Nico clearly tried to
engage with the processes of practical theorising by examining a range of different
perspectives relating to TL use: his experiences of teaching; the feedback from the
teacher observing the lesson; and the ideas he read about in the literature. This
assignment appears not, however, to have acted as a strong vehicle for Nico to
develop his experience as an independent ‘practical theoriser’, since the data by
which he evaluated his teaching were not sufficiently systematic or targeted. There
was, instead, little more than the usual global reflection on practice, supported by
an observer’s comments, that represents what might be considered ‘business as usual’
for many beginning teachers undertaking a PGCE course. In this sense, whilst he
completed his assignment very successfully (in that he achieved a creditable mark),
Nico missed out on the opportunity to collect evidence which would have enabled
him to interrogate more fully the relationship between the theoretical ideas he had
explored in his reading of the literature on the one hand, and his actual classroom
practice on the other.

Discussion
In this section, we explore the affordances and constraints of the curriculum assign-
ment as a tool for practical theorising, using the three vignettes to exemplify a range
of issues. We also draw on the findings of two questionnaires, in which the wider
cohort gave their views on (a) any strongly held beliefs about teaching languages at
the start of the PGCE course (n=20); and (b) post-course reflections on the process
of writing the assignment and the impact that they felt this may have had on their
thinking and practice (n=16).

The affordances of written assignments as tools for practical theorising

The assignments are conceptualised as tools for engaging student-teachers in delib-
erative practising of practical theorising. The requirement to engage in assignment
work created an opportunity for student-teachers to deepen their knowledge and
understanding of both practical and theoretical aspects of their chosen topics, leav-
ing them better informed about, and better able to rationally defend, their classroom
practices. In the vignettes presented above, all three student-teachers demonstrated
a critical awareness of the need to adapt their teaching for their particular learners
and they consulted a range of sources to inform their practice.
However, questionnaire responses from the cohort as a whole indicate that there
were differences in the extent to which individual student-teachers capitalised on
152 Robert Woore et al.

the opportunities for practical theorising provided by the assignment. Some fully
embraced the opportunity to engage in practical theorising; indeed, Nico said he
was happy to have had what he called an ‘enforced’ opportunity’ to engage deeply
with the issues around the use of TL in the classroom. Others clearly engaged in
certain elements of the process ( Joanna, for example, appreciated that the assign-
ment had ‘forced [her] to be more innovative’), while some only engaged at a more
superficial level or indeed, may have knowingly rejected the process. There were
three student-teachers who disagreed in their questionnaire responses that they had
learned a lot from assignment work and two of these left explanatory comments:
Jenny said she didn’t see the relevance of the assignment for her day-to-day teaching
and she characterised reading research literature as something she was ‘not likely’
to engage in during her teaching career. Sundeep claimed that he learned the most
from his practical experiences in the classroom and that assignment writing took
away valuable time from this. Sundeep and Jenny appeared – at least partially – to
reject a conception of teaching as an academic pursuit.

Tensions experienced by student-teachers when developing practical

theorising via assignments
Although assignments are intended as a tool to support student-teachers’ profes-
sional learning through the process of practical theorising, they are also designed to
address the requirements of Master’s level study, where student-teachers are required
to demonstrate their academic competence within a Social Sciences research tradi-
tion. The fact that assignment work is formally assessed in this way creates con-
ditions which may, in some cases, constrain and frustrate the work’s potential to
contribute to genuine professional learning.

Pressure and performativity

We suspect that the need to meet the assessment criteria in a limited timeframe may,
in some instances, have impeded the functioning of the assignment as a vehicle for
practical theorising. Differing interpretations of the demands and relative impor-
tance of assignments as (a) tools for professional learning and (b) tools for academic
performance assessment may have informed the ways in which student-teachers
approached their assignment work and the choices they made when faced with
courses of action aligned to competing motives. This tension is exemplified by the
following comment from Jack: ‘I began each assignment with good intentions, but
ended up implementing things like the lessons, literature review and collection of
data in quite a formulaic way in order to meet the criteria’.
A disconnect between students’ reading, their baseline investigation findings and
their lesson planning is also visible in all three vignettes to some extent, exempli-
fying some of the problems with writing assignments under pressure and to meet
specific assessment criteria. Nico’s lesson planning decisions were sometimes at odds
 Assignments as tools for practical theorising 153

with the conclusions that were reached in his review of the literature; Joanna’s deci-
sions were at odds with her baseline findings and only superficially aligned with the
theories she explored in her literature review; and Molly’s were justified by drawing
on alternative sources not included within the literature review. The disregard for
reading, or ‘retro-fitting’ of reading, when planning the teaching approaches under-
mines the principle of student-teachers genuinely testing out ideas from their reading
in the classroom.
This kind of disconnect between reading and planning may have happened
for two reasons: First, we are aware that student-teachers often complete some of
the reading post-hoc, meaning that the new ideas from their reading are discovered
too late to include in their lesson designs. This is likely to be due to the pres-
sures of the course, with teaching taking priority over reading during the school
term. Second, perhaps driven by the assessment criteria and assignment rubric,
student-teachers may have seen each section of their assignment as a separate
entity (e.g. ‘literature review’ or ‘methodology’). This may have created a situa-
tion where the coherence of the student-teachers’ inquiry (involving continued
engagement with ideas from their reading in the subsequent design of their les-
sons) may have been lost, even though the assignment criteria were adequately
met. The guidance for this assignment makes the pedagogical aim of the work
clear, particularly in the questions suggested for the discussion. However, both
the assessment criteria and the guidance are, perhaps inevitably, framed in a way
that foregrounds what is required for Master’s level performance in a universi-
ty-accredited assignment, rather than primarily nurturing the formative process
of practical theorising.
Despite these tensions, it is entirely possible that the assignment could func-
tion as an effective springboard for further practical theorising, rather than sim-
ply as a demonstration of what has already been achieved. Retrospective reading,
and the writing up of the assignment itself, could function in a way that gener-
ates new insights, on which student-teachers may subsequently draw in order to
engage in rich practical theorising beyond the bounds of the assignment. Indeed,
the requirement to neatly package a complex process of practical theorising within
5000 words – and based on the development of ideas relating to a single lesson –
creates inevitable dilemmas: it is important to recognise that practical theorising is
a dynamic and long-term developmental process. We are positively encouraged by
the questionnaire response of Connor who, as a newly qualified teacher, reflected
that ‘[assignment work] showed me how to experiment with TL and ways to gauge
the effectiveness of my approach’.

School context
The writing of assignments does not occur in a vacuum. Much depends on stu-
dent-teachers being encouraged and supported by school-based colleagues to
experiment with new teaching approaches and to gather data in school.Where such
154 Robert Woore et al.

support and encouragement are absent, student-teachers may find themselves forced
to compromise between the ideas they would like to test out in their classroom and
the teaching approaches that are deemed acceptable by colleagues. For Jane, assign-
ment writing ‘added worry and stress, due to not wanting to feel a burden to [my]
mentor’. She comments:

I was told for example, you used too much TL, don’t do this, they are not used
to it and they can barely cope in English let alone another language. This was
very sad for me, but I had to adapt to respect my mentor, and to respect the
department’s wishes.

Jane’s comments are a reminder of the importance of strong partnerships between

school- and university-based colleagues to support student-teachers. Mentors need
to understand the value and purposes of assignment work and practical theorising.
They also need to feel empowered to create a professional learning micro-climate
within which student-teachers can learn and grow, whatever may be happening in
the school more broadly (Hobson & Malderez, 2013). Thankfully, Jane’s experience
contrasts sharply with that of others in her cohort: out of seven student-teachers
who commented about the factors that facilitated their assignment work, four men-
tioned the positive support of school-based colleagues.

Structure as scaffold or stranglehold

Our PGCE course attempts to tailor the learning process for individual stu-
dent-teachers with different prior experiences and starting points. However, this
study highlights that assignments are currently presented to student-teachers in a
one-size-fits-all format, with detailed guidance on the expected structure.There are
some student-teachers for whom this approach does not appear to work particularly
well. Take, for example, Joanna who did not present her evidence systematically
enough for the evaluation of her lesson to be successful in academic terms; but at
the same time – as it were through the cracks between the evidence – a reader of
the assignment begins to form a vivid impression of her lesson, with all its evident
challenges and disorder, and with both positive and negative outcomes embedded
within it. We see this picture of the complexities and contradictions of the lesson as
a potentially rich site of professional learning, yet it seems to emerge almost in spite
of the formal constraints and structure of the academic assignment. In other words,
for Joanna, at least, following the assignment rubric (which in turn reflects the con-
ventions of empirical studies in the Social Sciences), whilst also respecting the tight
word limit, does not seem to have nourished or showcased her professional learning
particularly effectively.
Our observations about Joanna’s struggles throw up some perennial issues
regarding the extent to which learners should be provided with a framework to
support their writing. Although such frameworks can provide a reassuring safety
 Assignments as tools for practical theorising 155

net – particularly for those with no background in Social Sciences – they are also
known to restrain learners’ creativity and encourage formulaic responses (Macbeth,
2010). Joanna’s experiences also call into question the usefulness here of the linear
nature of the typical Social Science report, which demands a review of the literature
followed by the identification of research questions and an empirical investigation.
For example, in some cases, it may be more natural to begin the assignment with
an account of a school-based investigation into an issue of relevance and inter-
est, perhaps including some observation and teaching. This could then be logically
followed by a discussion of some follow-up reading, to help the student-teachers
understand the issue better. To what extent might it be possible for student-teach-
ers to engage with Master’s level assignments as tools for learning in a way that
empowers them to create their own assignment structure? Could this help them
to develop a deeper sense of ownership of and commitment to the task? Although
we do not have immediate answers to these questions, we think they merit further
consideration.
In contrast to the strong guidance given for structuring the curriculum assign-
ment examined in this chapter, we did not make prescriptions concerning the liter-
ature with which the student-teachers should engage.They were introduced, during
university sessions, to key literature and an overview of the debates in relation to
issues of TL use in the classroom. However, after this, there was an expectation that
student-teachers would identify relevant reading for themselves, relating to the pre-
cise topic of their assignment.Whilst Molly and Nico both engaged with a range of
reading with clear relevance to their overall topic, we have concerns about Joanna’s
choices of reading, which were somewhat idiosyncratic and frequently based in
contexts very different from UK ML classrooms. There is therefore a question to
consider about the balance between mandating expected reading (thus restricting
autonomy) and encouraging student-teachers to develop for themselves the skill of
identifying reading and judging its interest and relevance.

Legacy
Our intention with assignment work is to engage student-teachers in a process of
practical theorising that they can carry forward into their future teaching career.
There is, however, some evidence from student-teachers’ questionnaire responses
that they see assignment work as something that is separate to their day-to-day work
as teachers. This appears to be the case in Jenny’s comment that ‘writing a literature
review doesn’t necessarily reflect how I will develop my teaching in the future, as
I am not likely to read reams of research literature to inform the experiments that
I perform in the classroom’. The framing of inquiry work within a 5000-word
assignment may impede student-teachers from seeing the potential for sustainable
transfer of the techniques and principles of practical theorising into their future
practice, particularly given the time constraints under which they will inevitably
be operating as newly-qualified teachers. Structuring assignments as several shorter
156 Robert Woore et al.

tasks, prompting critical examination of ideas through engagement with multiple

sources, might offer a more successful model for longer-term embedding of a prac-
tical theorising stance.

Conclusion
Our analysis suggests that the assignments in our PGCE course are potentially a
useful tool for developing student-teachers’ practical theorising: they create a space
within which all of our student-teachers engage, at least to some extent, in reading,
experimentation in the classroom and evaluation of their teaching, drawing criti-
cally on multiple sources. However, regardless of how well-designed such assign-
ments might be, they can also be experienced, to varying extents, as a burdensome
assessment that is separate to the ‘real work’ of teaching. A number of other prob-
lems also present themselves. For example, there is no way to guarantee the richness
of the practical theorising in which the student-teachers engage in the course of
completing their assignments; and furthermore, the quality of their practical theo-
rising may not always be reflected in the mark the assignment receives. There is also
no guarantee that student-teachers will recognise the value of the practical theo-
rising approach that they are required to undertake, nor that they will subsequently
add this approach to their repertoire for future professional learning.
Nonetheless, our objective through the assignments is to make the philosoph-
ical and methodological underpinnings of practical theorising as well-embedded
and accessible as possible as the student-teachers move forwards into their teaching
career. To this end, we outline below (a) the principles that we feel should inform
such an objective; (b) a number of tensions inherent in attempting to address this
objective; and (c) potential solutions to these tensions, which we envisage might
better enable student-teachers to engage in effective practical theorising via their
assignment work and beyond. Whilst these considerations emerge from our own
specific context, we hope that they will be of wider relevance to those designing
teacher education courses.
In terms of principles, we believe that teachers at all stages of their profes-
sional career should be ‘research literate and have opportunities for engagement in
research and enquiry’ (BERA-RSA, 2014, p. 5). Master’s level assignment writing is
a well-established route to achieving research literacy and inducting students into
the scholarly community. Given that we espouse a view of teacher professionalism
that understands teaching as an academic as well as a practical activity, Master’s-level
work offers an important and universally recognised grounding in the research skills
needed for teachers to embody this professionalism confidently (Thomas, 2016;
Winch et al., 2013).
Turning to the tensions in pursuing this principle, we recognise that professional
learning is a complex, iterative and non-linear process (Clarke & Hollingsworth,
2002), which also follows different trajectories according to the individual stu-
dent-teacher.The first tension that emerges from our analysis is the need for assign-
ment work to encapsulate this sophisticated process of professional learning on the
 Assignments as tools for practical theorising 157

one hand, yet adhere to the strict parameters of university Master’s-level assessment
criteria on the other. Ideally, assignments should be designed with sufficient flexi-
bility to allow for the diversity of the individual student teacher’s experiences and
learning trajectories. An assignment structure that promotes the processes of practi-
cal theorising may not necessarily fit the traditional, linear structure associated with
Social Sciences research.
Second, if, as part of the process of practical theorising, student-teachers are to
draw effectively on appropriate research literature (and engage with it critically),
there are inevitable tensions as to the scope and nature of this reading. Prescribing
specific readings may be useful to ensure coverage of certain key sources, but to
what extent should we encourage individual searching of the research literature that
most closely matches the questions that student-teachers have identified as being
the ones that they wish to address? Is this skill not an important one to develop, if
student-teachers are to continue to seek out and draw on relevant published sources
in future, to help them address professional challenges?
Third, practical theorising is not something that can be achieved in a formulaic
way. It is essentially a dialectic process (McIntyre, 2009), requiring evidence from
diverse sources to be interrogated and synthesised over time; any provisional con-
sensus that may be reached will, in turn, be subjected to further interrogation as
conditions change over time or new evidence comes to light. Thus, practical the-
orising cannot provide a ‘quick fix’; rather, it requires sustained engagement over
time. Yet, student-teachers are fully aware of other demands on their time within
an intensive 36-week programme, in which they must negotiate the challenges of
being both a teacher and a learner of teaching, whilst at the same time striving both
to achieve practical competence and to meet academic programme demands.
Finally, there are challenges involved in what one might refer to as ‘messaging’,
that is to say the framing of assignment work as an opportunity for rich learning via
practical theorising when, for many student-teachers, assignments may be viewed
chiefly as an academic ‘hoop’ through which one has to jump in order to gain a
PGCE qualification.
The above tensions are, perhaps, inevitable and in seeking to address them, com-
promises are likely to be required. In this chapter, we have attempted to interrogate
established practices within our own programme and to bring the understandings
derived from our analyses to bear on them. This has led us to consider some practi-
cal ideas for change that we may wish to trial in our own context. We certainly do
not see these ideas as prescriptions (every context is different), but we offer them in
the hope that they will be useful to others grappling with similar tensions.
First, it might be useful to consider alternative assignment structures: engage-
ment in the process of practical theorising by student-teachers may not necessar-
ily be compatible with the traditional model of a Social Sciences assignment. A
more flexible structure for the assignment (perhaps involving a portfolio approach)
may help to alleviate issues such as the artificial ‘retro-fitting’ of reading to lesson
planning, and a tendency to focus on meeting assessment criteria in a formulaic
way. Such an approach might also help to address the time pressures (and sense of
158 Robert Woore et al.

competition with the ‘real’ business of learning to teach) that can be generated by
writing a larger assignment, which is perceived as ‘showcasing’ academic work.
Second, we suggest that – whilst providing some suggestions for ‘key’ i­nitial
readings – we should continue to encourage student-teachers to search inde-
­
pendently for relevant literature. An important aim is to develop their capacity to
identify and evaluate for themselves published sources which might help inform
their decision-making in relation to specific aspects of their own classroom practice.
As part of this aim, we should seek to ensure that student-teachers are introduced
to potential sources of reading that will remain accessible to them beyond the end
of their initial teacher education (e.g. open-access journals and journals available to
members of national subject associations).
Third, we may need to emphasise more explicitly the opportunities that assign-
ments provide for professional learning, and for building particular skills that sup-
port beginning teachers’ ‘occupational professionalism’ (Evetts: 2011, p. 407). While
we have anecdotal evidence that some of our student-teachers, once they are in post
as qualified teachers, do continue to draw on and develop the ideas first explored in
their PGCE assignment work, others might need more encouragement to see their
assignment work as generating ideas for future teaching, rather than as a completed
artefact of limited further relevance.
In making these suggestions, we nonetheless have to bear in mind that we are
asking student-teachers to engage in practical theorising through their assignment
work at the same time as they are responding to the multiple challenges inherent
in the social situations of development in which they find themselves. These situ-
ations are often characterised by a strong sense of misalignment between various
competing perspectives and different priorities (Tatto et al., 2017). We therefore
need to be alert to the pressures that this might create, ensuring that any such ten-
sions are acknowledged and, where possible, used productively as opportunities for
development. We would also argue for the importance of all those working with
student-teachers (including school-based mentors) to recognise these tensions and
respond to them in as supportive a way as possible. Teacher education is first and
foremost a human process requiring understanding and empathy.
In summary, we are confident that the assignments which our student-teachers
complete have the potential to act as a valuable tool for promoting practical theo-
rising, developing their research literacy and enabling rich learning from multiple
sources. Nonetheless, we have explored a number of tensions inherent in requiring
student-teachers to complete assignments as part of an initial teacher education
course. We hope that raising awareness of these tensions is itself a valuable first step
in refining the contribution that assignments can make as tools for professional
learning within a ‘practical theorising’ model. In our own context, exploring these
tensions has allowed us to identify a number of concrete actions which, we hope,
may improve the effectiveness of our assignments, and which may also have wider
applicability. In turn, this may reduce the number of student-teachers who expe-
rience assignments as an unhelpful burden and increase the richness and legacy of
the learning opportunities they can undoubtedly provide. It is our ambition that all
 Assignments as tools for practical theorising 159

student-teachers who complete our course will be in a position to reflect on their

assignment work in the way that Nico does below:

I set off thinking that the more TL I would use in my classroom, the better
an ML teacher I would be. Somewhat to my surprise, I found out that, when
actually teaching, I was using far less TL than I had anticipated. Preparing for
[my assignment] helped me map out current research in the rationale and
repercussions of (not) using TL in the classroom; planning and teaching my
lesson have further developed my understanding of how the research can be
acted upon in the classroom.

References
BERA-RSA. (2014). Research and the teaching profession: Building the capacity for a
self-improving education system. Retrieved from: https://www.bera.ac.uk/project/
research-and-teacher-education
Burn, K. & Mutton, T. (2015). A review of ‘research-informed clinical practice’ in initial
teacher education. Oxford Review of Education, 41(2), 217–233.
Clarke, D. & Hollingsworth, H. (2002). Elaborating a model of teacher professional growth.
Teaching and Teaching Education, 18, 947–967.
Evetts, J. (2011). A new professionalism? Challenges and opportunities. Current Sociology,
59(4), 406–422.
Hobson, A. J. & Malderez, A. (2013). Judgementoring and other threats to realizing the poten-
tial of school-based mentoring in teacher education. International Journal of Mentoring and
Coaching in Education, 2(2), 89–108
Horwitz, E. K., Horwitz, M. B., & Cope, J. (1986). Foreign language classroom anxiety. The
Modern Language Journal, 70(2), 125–132.
Lawes, S. (2004). The End of Theory? A comparative study of the decline of educational theory and pro-
fessional knowledge in modern foreign languages teacher training in England and France [University
of London]. Retreived from http://nplusonemag.com/the-end-the-end-the-end
Macbeth, K. P. (2010). Deliberate false provisions: The use and usefulness of models in learn-
ing academic writing. Journal of Second Language Writing, 19(1), 33–48.
McIntyre, D. (1995). Initial teacher education as practical theorising: A response to Paul Hirst.
British Journal of Educational Studies, 43(4), 365–383.
McIntyre, D. (2009). The difficulties of inclusive pedagogy for initial teacher education and
some thoughts on the way forward. Teaching and Teacher Education, 25(4), 602–608.
Ofsted. (2011). Modern languages: Achievement and challenge 2007-2010. Office for stand-
ards in education. Retrieved from: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/
modern-languages-achievement-and-challenge-2007-to-2010
Tatto, M. T., Burn, K., Menter, I., Mutton, T., & Thompson, I. (2017). Learning to teach in
England and the United States:The evolution of policy and practice. London: Routledge.
Thomas, L. (2016). Aspirations for a master’s-level teaching profession in England. Professional
Development in Education, 42(2), 218–234.
Winch, C., Orchard, J., & Oancea, A. (2013). The contribution of educational research to
teachers’ professional learning – Philosophical understandings. BERA. Retrieved from
https://www.bera.ac.uk/project/research-and-teacher-education
10
THE USE OF ASSESSMENT IN
SUSTAINING STUDENT-TEACHERS’
ENGAGEMENT IN PRACTICAL
THEORISING TO SUPPORT
PROFESSIONAL LEARNING
Roger Firth and Nicola Warren-Lee

Introduction
The process by which student-teachers undergo professional formation has come
into sharp relief and ‘the reform of teacher education is at the forefront of educa-
tion policy making in most neo-liberal Western democracies and increasingly in the
non-Western world’ (Simon, 2019, p. 10), ‘emphasising the importance of teacher
quality in a quest for continuous improvement in educational outcomes’ (Hordern,
2019, p. 112). In England, there have been extensive changes to the landscape of
initial teacher education (ITE), with increasing levels of government control, and
changes to the school curriculum. What counts as valid professional knowledge has
changed. Central to the reform of ITE ‘and closely aligned with broader devel-
opments in the modernisation of the teaching profession, is the relocation of the
serving teacher to the heart of the professional preparation of the next generation
of teachers’ (Robinson, 2006, p. 25, emphasis added). The nature and importance of
established ITE partnerships between schools and universities have been called into
question (Murray and Mutton, 2016, p. 72), leading to a climate of uncertainty and
ideological polarisation.
Within these changes, one unhelpful continuity has been the maintenance of a
perennial issue in teacher education – the fundamental relationship between educa-
tional knowledge and the practice of teaching and university and school – as ‘con-
ceptual binaries’ (Murray & Mutton, 2016, p. 73).The Oxford Internship Scheme is
one early example of an ITE course that was developed around the need to address
the relationship between educational knowledge and the practice of teaching, rec-
ognising the distinctive contributions of both university and school. As a partnership
programme, focused on the preparation of secondary school teachers, it has striven
to achieve a more integrated sense of professional knowledge (Murray & Mutton,
2016, p. 71) through its emphasis on practical theorising (Hagger & McIntyre, 2006;

DOI: 10.4324/9781003183945-14
 Use of assessment in sustaining student-teachers’ engagement 161

McIntyre, 2009) and a deep collaborative partnership (Benton, 1990; McIntyre,

1990, 1991, 1995, 2009).
The ongoing uncertainty within ITE, however, as well as the opportunity to
develop a deeper relationship between the university and schools, has not only
supported a rethinking of the institutional conditions in which ITE occurs, but we
suggest, can be understood as the very space in which to reassert the importance
of theory in ITE, where ‘teaching is, foremost, a thoughtful enterprise’ (Sloat et al.,
2014, p. 1) that can be negotiated.
This chapter is concerned with how the theory-practice relationship is con-
ceptualised and enacted within our professional practice and how this can support
student-teachers’ professional learning, specifically through the assessment process,
both formative and summative. It is not an empirical account.The discussion is both
theory-driven and grounded within our practice as university tutors – our shared
experiences and discernments of working together within Internship for a decade.
We also draw on qualitative data from a small-scale research study undertaken in
2019, presented in the form of two snapshots of practice, are these are brought to
bear, for illustrative purposes, on our reflexive account.
In understanding ITE as a shared responsibility between schools and the uni-
versity, and in putting different knowledges to work in these settings, our thinking
differs to some extent from that associated with the concept of practical theorising/
the practical theorising dialectic (Hagger & McIntyre, 2006; McIntyre, 2009). Our
professional practice is grounded theoretically in the work of David Guile (2010,
2014, 2019) and his concept of ‘recontextualisation’ which we have found more
helpful in thinking about the relationship between theory and practice in profes-
sional education. Our particular reasons for the use of the concept of recontextual-
isation are that it emphasises:

• A non-dualistic approach, that is to say a mediated relationship rather than a

gap between theory and practice.
• An inferential rather than a representational understanding of knowledge,
which offers leverage against reducing the justification of claims to know as
being a merely individual problem.
• The interprofessional working of teachers, that is to say a systemic perspective.
• That professional learning is collaborative and iterative rather than individual
and linear.
• The use of a neo-pragmatist social epistemology (Brandom, 1994, 1995, 2000)
to open up new perspectives regarding professional learning in terms of ongo-
ing social knowledge practices.
• The possibility of creating a professional curriculum for teacher formation that
is designed to prepare student-teachers for entry into their professional field,
not just for work.

These are seen as enriching ideas to support student-teachers’ professional learning

across the different settings of ITE. As Guile (2014, p. 80) emphasises,‘the concept of
recontextualization has been developed as a way to analyse the relationship between
162 Roger Firth and Nicola Warren-Lee

forms of knowing, learning and acting in and between the contexts of education
and work.’ As will be seen later, the concept of recontextualisation offers a holistic
framework ‘to encapsulate the mediated relationship between theory and practice in
the design and delivery of courses of professional formation’ (2014, p. 89).
In this chapter, we consider the unfolding of the process of recontextualisation
through formative and summative forms of assessment of student-teachers in sup-
port of their professional learning, where assessment is positioned as a pedagogic
act (Brunker et al., 2019, p. 90). To finish, we briefly explore the implications of
our study for teacher educators and ITE. We are aware, however, that we cannot,
within the scope of this chapter, fully address the complexity of the conditions and
factors that influence student-teachers’ professional learning in relation to practical
theorising and assessment.

The socially situated student-teacher

Developments within Internship and the University of Oxford’s broader relation-
ship with its partner schools since 2010 have been considered by Fancourt et al.
(2015) and Childs et al. (2014), while the design of school-based ITE in England,
which places a much greater emphasis on the role of practical experience in the
process of learning to teach, has been critiqued by Ellis (2010). The fundamental
problem he describes is ‘an impoverished understanding of experience that under-
pins how student-teachers are intended to learn in schools’ and ‘the capacity within
the teacher education system for critically examining the meaning of experience in
order to develop professional knowledge’ (2010, p. 105). Ellis emphasises how, over
time, the tensions inherent in the original design of Internship were revealed more
starkly as the contexts for ITE in England came to be regulated more directly. Ellis
makes the case that ‘school-based teacher education has not systematically addressed
… how it might help student-teachers mediate their learning in and between set-
tings, nor has it confronted and exploited the differential experiential potentials
these settings afford’ (2010, p. 111).
Ellis put forward a ‘participatory [collaborative], ‘expansive’ (Engeström, 1991)
view of learning in the work-place’ (1991, p. 117), based on an inquiry approach in
which the experience from which student-teachers learn in schools is the object of
inquiry by student-teachers, teachers and university-based teacher educators’ (1991,
p. 116), allowing all participants to understand how current practice has been shaped
culturally and historically in order to work on positive change and development.
This chapter is intended to provide a productive response to Ellis’ critique.

Conceptualisation
The accounts of professional learning and teacher knowledge offered by Ellis
(2010), Childs et al. (2014) and Edwards (2014, 2017a and b) provide a sense
of the need to reconceptualise the theoretical base of ITE. They are informed
by a common analytical framework, ‘a configuration of approaches that gather
 Use of assessment in sustaining student-teachers’ engagement 163

under the label of Vygotskian “cultural historical” understandings of learning and

practice’ (Childs et al., 2014, p. 30) and the concept of the learner’s social situa-
tion of development. While the social situation of development describes a system
of changing relationships between the developing child (or in this context, the
student-teacher) and her/his experiential reality over time, Edwards emphasises
how ‘the mutually constituting dialectical link between self and society is also at
the core of Vygotskian cultural historical theory more generally: we shape and
are shaped by the practices we inhabit’ (2014, p. 31). The philosophy of Robert
Brandom (1994, 1995, 2000) commonly known as inferentialism, is also used by
Childs et al. (2014) and by Edwards (2014), via the work of Derry (2000, 2008),
to supplement their pedagogical thinking. Their accounts break with the dualist
idea of thought (or mind) being something inner, separate from reality, and instead
conceive of thought and meaning in terms of activity. Such an approach to pro-
fessional learning concentrates on the dialectical relationship between individual
functioning and development and the sociocultural practices in which individuals
take part (van Huizen et al., 2005, p. 271). From this perspective, three considera-
tions are of particular significance, calling for more attention to be paid, than has
previously been the case, to the demands in the practices that are inhabited by
student-teachers (Edwards, 2014, p. 2); to how those practices might be enhanced
to promote student-teachers’ learning; and to the intentional action (agency) of
the student-teacher.
Inferentialism, also central to a Vygotskian account, foregrounds the human use
of reasoning within a social sphere. For Edwards (2017a) (and in relation to teach-
ing), this includes drawing attention to how experience can be extended beyond
the personal, making local meanings explicit and open to questioning, and connect-
ing them through discussion with the public meanings that underpin teaching as an
informed profession (2017b).This points towards what, in other professions, is called
‘knowledge work’ (Edwards, 2017a, p. 276), ‘the ways of reasoning and representing
that are valued in specific domains [fields of study]’ (Edwards, 2017b, p. 132). We
go on to argue that if this socially situated account, foregrounding the human use
of reasoning, were to underpin the assessment of student-teachers, there could be
significant (and positive) changes to the knowledge work required.
The emphasis is on the need to think more clearly in terms of the movement of
people and knowledge across settings that influence interpretations of the potential
for student-teachers’ intentional action, and on the need for university tutors to
prepare student-teachers for use of the resources that will support their intentional
actions when they make the transition from university to the workplace and back
again (Childs et al., 2014, p. 35). The aim of this kind of expansive learning, as Ellis
(2010, p.113) argues, is one in which student-teachers, school-based subject men-
tors and university tutors come ‘to understand how existing practices have been
shaped culturally and historically in order to work on positive change and devel-
opment’. Although Edwards (2017a, p. 276) contemplates whether Ellis’s agenda
for the study of experience in the professional preparation of teachers may be too
far-reaching, noting that ‘it may be difficult to include this kind of knowledge work
164 Roger Firth and Nicola Warren-Lee

within student-teachers school experience’, she acknowledges that Ellis’s interven-

tionist research ‘suggests it is not impossible’.
We argue that there is currently little emphasis given to the epistemic nature of
the different knowledge forms themselves, other than the occasional reference to
‘personal knowledge’ (Edwards, 2014, p. 62) and ‘public knowledge’ or ‘professional
knowledge’ that is valued by the broader profession’ (Edwards, 2014, p. 6).We also
contend that the conceptual structure and complexity of the forms of knowledge,
which underpin the inferential act involved in making a professional judgement,
must be unpacked, and that the distinctiveness of professional judgement must also
be recognised. Not only would this assist student-teachers to develop an appropriate
disposition towards knowledge, it would also reduce the likelihood of furthering the
growing anti-intellectualism about professional knowledge.

Recontextualisation
This brings the discussion to the concept of recontextualisation. As we have noted,
Guile (2014) developed a sophisticated and encompassing conceptualisation of the-
ory-practice relationships across different contexts via the concept of recontextual-
isation. This conceptualisation reveals ‘how the assumed divide between theoretical
knowledge and professional practice is the product of binary thinking in some areas
of the human and social sciences [and education] rather than the existence of an
absolute separation between theory and practice’ (2014, p. 89). One of Guile’s prin-
ciples introduces the purpose of an activity as influential for the way in which forms
of knowledge are deployed in different contexts.
Of concern here is the way in which the concept of recontextualisation has
helped us to conceptualise the use of the forms of knowledge embedded in
workplace practice and universities to support professional learning. Several key
ideas follow, which we use in our professional practice to frame the emphasis on
knowledge practices, each of which gives expression to the mediated inferential
relationship between theory and practice that constitutes the basis of professional
formation:

• All forms of knowledge and learning are contextual/situated, but not contex-
tually/situation bound.
• All forms of knowledge are underpinned by assumptions and reasons, but they
do differ according to the tradition of thought that underpins them (i.e. the-
oretical, everyday, practical). Knowledge is differentiated. The differentiation
presents different, but ultimately related, challenges for student-teachers.
• Theoretical and practical knowledge should be treated symmetrically, rather
than hierarchically to reflect the way in which theoretical concepts are embed-
ded in practice.
• Concepts can be understood as cultural tools or resources which we can, in
principle, continually recontexualise, that is, recast and deploy in new ways in
other contexts. (Based on Guile, 2014, p. 82)
 Use of assessment in sustaining student-teachers’ engagement 165

The way in which Guile (2014) has described the concept of recontextualisation
has prompted us to conceive of the design of the curriculum of ITE as a co-con-
structed and inferential process. We understand the purpose of our role and the
processes of teaching and learning as being to support student-teachers to explore
inferentially with us the different forms of professional knowledge and their devel-
opment, whereby student-teachers come to appreciate the norms that structure the
relationships between, and meaning of, the concepts and the experience (practice)
that is being examined. In this way, student-teachers use their understanding of
these relationships as a resource to address the issues which will arise in their pro-
fessional practice/development.
The principles of recontextualisation, when used to conceptualise the processes
of assessment, enable us to frame assessment in terms of teaching as a thoughtful
practice in which professional knowledge, forms of practice, reasoning, judgement,
identity and a moral disposition (all of which constitute professional expertise) are
developed through student-teachers’ participation in a curriculum which empha-
sises reasoning. Priority is given to the way in which student-teachers bring together
the different forms of knowledge and develop the ability to advance their profes-
sional development by reasoning in theoretical and conceptually structured profes-
sional ways and in the ability to establish their classroom practice and develop it in
new ways in the same and/or other contexts. In doing so, they make explicit their
underpinning assumptions and reasons. Assessment becomes a more open process
that demonstrates what Guile (2019, p. 10) describes as ‘cognition in practice’. The
effect of making cognition in practice visible and assessable is that the constitu-
ents of professional expertise become apparent for the student-teacher and can be
demonstrated in verbal and written form.
Assessment is used to assist us and the student-teacher to ask questions and make
judgements about the extent to which they are beginning to develop the constit-
uents of professional expertise that will allow them to operate effectively in the
contexts of work and the profession, and also to ascertain, when necessary, which
aspect or aspects of the process of recontextualisation is inhibiting the develop-
ment of student-teachers’ expertise. In this way, assessment can be positioned as a
pedagogic act (Brunker et al., 2019, p. 89). This is not to say that the goals of learn-
ing-focused assessment cannot be derailed by the burden of assessment processes for
measurement.

Assessment in ITE
Beyond our own conceptualisation of assessment, there are multiple influences
which impact upon the nature and functioning of assessment built into teacher
education courses. These can be seen on different scales. At a macro level, there are
national standards for gaining qualified teacher status in England – the Teachers’
Standards (DfE, 2012); at a meso level, there are agreed teacher education pro-
gramme criteria (such as those defined by the assessment ‘Descriptors’ used within
Internship); and at a micro (and less formalised) level, there are particular contextual
166 Roger Firth and Nicola Warren-Lee

ideals or standards underpinned by a school’s ethos or local understanding of what

‘good’ teaching looks like. These various standards influence how student-teachers
are assessed and so must be reconciled (by the student-teacher) in order to prioritise
and negotiate thinking and actions. For example, what should be done, when, for
whom and how?
Assessments, conceptualised in Baird et al.’s. (2017, p.1) terms, ‘are used to inves-
tigate what people know and can do and to make decisions regarding whether
they have learned what was expected’. Within Internship, assessments of this nature
include examined assignments and programmed developmental discussions focused
on reviewing progress – grounded in the Teachers’ Standards (DfE, 2012). Less for-
mal, more formative, elements of assessment include lesson observations, tutori-
als and course tasks for completion and discussion amongst colleagues. Ultimately,
­student-teachers are working towards achieving an agreed ‘pass’ in order to be rec-
ommended for Qualified Teacher Status and to gain the full PGCE award.
As assessment plays a crucial role in passing or failing, it is reasonable to assume
student-teachers put considerable effort into working out what the assessed ele-
ments of the course are and that they will take a strategic approach in allocating
time and focus to what they believe will be assessed (Biggs, 1996). As a result, the
nature and demands of course assessments have an influence over the actions and
practice of student-teachers. Assessments which promote regulatory rather than
developmental practice (Mahoney and Hextall, 2000) can create a source of con-
flict, which has been identified by Baird et al. (2017) as that between measurement
and educational objectives.
Regarding the relationship between assessments and student-teacher behaviour,
student-teachers ‘… tend to carry out those activities they think are important in
learning to teach’ (Oosterheert and Vermunt, 2001, p. 152), leading to questions,
such as: What are those activities? Do all student-teachers think the same activities
are important? What influences student-teachers’ perceptions of which activities are
important? What kinds of knowledge are developed through prioritised activities?
The way in which regulatory frameworks for teacher qualification are inter-
preted and constructed as course assessments will engender particular types of
behaviour and thinking.The extent to which assessments are seen by student-teach-
ers as opportunities for furthering knowledge and expertise or proving compli-
ance affects disposition and outcome. Here we have highlighted two dimensions of
assessment practice that ‘appear to be in tension – promoting learning autonomy
and performance orientation’ (James and Pedder, 2006, p. 109), and as we question
the extent to which PGCE assessments promote understanding of and engagement
in practical theorising, awareness of this tension remains a focus.

Teacher knowledge and assessment

The Teachers’ Standards (DfE, 2012) mention the role of knowledge seven times
across the eight different standards. The process of learning to teach geography
involves coming to a wealth of new knowledge about teaching, about learning,
 Use of assessment in sustaining student-teachers’ engagement 167

about young people and about the subject discipline. Arguably, a major demand on
student-teachers is drawing on a range of different knowledge sources and negotiat-
ing a way forwards in a busy and fast-moving social environment, in ways which can
be agreed upon as meeting set standards. A professional knowledge base for teaching
has been said to encompass three dimensions of: situated understanding, technical
knowledge and critical reflection, with all being ‘interconnected and complemen-
tary’ (Winch et al., 2015, p. 204). One of the challenges facing student-teachers is
that certainty and permanency of knowledge in learning to teach are not always
clear or agreed upon (McIntyre, 1995) and that engagement with different sources
of knowledge is a fundamental part of developing as a teacher. It is not only the
vastness of the knowledge base which proves challenging for student-teachers, it is
also the lack of agreement. This applies not only in ITE in England but throughout
the UK (and arguably internationally), with such incongruity being highlighted by
Beauchamp et al. (2015) who state that ‘the knowledge base of teaching is contested
in all four jurisdictions in the UK, and the standards clearly reflect different, declared
conceptions of teaching and the professional knowledge of teachers’ (2015, p. 164).
Where irrefutable, generalisable answers are not available, a process of argument
testing – student-teachers developing reasoned beliefs about what is more or less
likely to work – can produce ‘embodied knowledge’ (Johnson, 1989, p. 366). This
type of knowledge is not publicly available or wholly agreed upon. It is devel-
oped responsively and iteratively, is ethically driven and within an individual’s
schema of understanding – only available, idiosyncratically, to them in that moment.
Recognised as ‘individual and personally accumulated’ (Toom, 2012, p. 621), the
personal nature of this professional knowledge base is dependent on teachers having
‘to draw their own conclusions about a particular instance from another’s telling
of that incident, rather than to have some supplied form of knowledge claim that
is supported by generalizable statements based on reproducible events and experi-
ences’ (Loughran et al., 2003, p. 868).
Possible questions (and potential sources of confusion for student-teachers) are:
‘If only I know this, in this particular way, what are the methods of validation?’ and,
perhaps causing most concern (particularly at times of assessment on a pass or fail
course): ‘What if I have got this wrong?’ Acknowledging the personal nature of
teaching knowledge does not ‘relieve us of the obligation to show how it is objec-
tively reasonable to believe what we are contending’ (Fenstermacher, 1994, p. 28)
and, to link back to our previous discussion around ‘knowledge work’ (Edwards,
2017a, p. 276), it is important that student-teachers are supported in the ways of
reasoning. While it is widely recognised that teachers develop situated professional
knowledge (Winch et al. 2015), often implicit in nature (Kinsella, 2007; Toom,
2012), epistemological questions remain over the nature, production and validation
of such knowledge.
Of key concern, here, is the interplay between the recontextualisation process
and assessment in ITE. The production and nature of knowledge – professional
knowledge in particular – is of importance within this interplay, as student-teachers
seek out, reckon with and prioritise different types of knowledge in their endeavour
168 Roger Firth and Nicola Warren-Lee

to meet set assessment demands. Negotiating how different types of knowledge

are ‘interconnected and complementary’ (Winch et al., 2015, p. 204) is part of the
challenge of learning to teach.
In summary, student-teachers enter a profession which cannot provide irrefu-
table, generalisable answers which are true in all contexts and so they, implicitly
or explicitly, start the process of practical theorising in order to critically evaluate
educational ideas and practices against evolving success criteria. We go on to argue,
later in this chapter, that it is the criteria, developed through the process of practical
theorising, which offer the ‘conditions for the production of inherently valuable
knowledge’ (Hordern, 2016, p. 368) – valuable in the sense that they offer a resource
which can, in principle, be continually recontexualised, that is, recast and deployed
in new ways in other contexts. Such conditions can be made more or less likely
through the use of assessment.

To what extent can different forms of ITE assessment promote

practical theorising?
This section illustrates, through the use of examples, how, and to what extent, dif-
ferent forms of assessment within Internship help to develop practical theorising
amongst geography student-teachers. The evidence for this section is taken from
small-scale empirical research that included audio-recorded assessment discussions
(between student-teacher, school-based mentor and university-based curriculum
tutor) and from reflections on peer group discussions (between the student-­teachers)
that were written by the authors in their role as university-based curriculum tutors.
The reason for audio-recording the assessment discussions and compiling written
notes was to provide data to support consideration of whether, and to what extent,
practical theorising was evident at the formal assessment reference points within
the programme.
The participants involved in the recorded assessment discussions were chosen
on the basis of availability and where joint agreement (between intern and school
mentor) had been obtained. Seven discussions, held at the first formal assessment
reference point for each intern were recorded, each held within their particular
partnership school. A university-based discussion, involving all 21 of the geography
interns was also included in the data collection. As explained below, this group dis-
cussion constituted the final element of a particular school-focused task and served
as a means of formative assessment. Data related to this discussion took the form
of notes written by the authors acting as participant observers within the discus-
sion. Informed consent was sought, in line with the university’s research ethics
procedures for data collection, storage and use. Where names are used, these are
pseudonyms to ensure anonymity.The limitations in terms of the number of partic-
ipants and the fact that the data was collected at a relatively early point within the
programme (the first term) should all be noted. As previously explained, the data are
used as illustrative examples, clarifying the ideas presented within this chapter rather
than serving as its empirical evidential basis.
 Use of assessment in sustaining student-teachers’ engagement 169

Peer assessment and practical theorising

Firstly, we consider the example of a formative peer assessment activity, intended to
develop student-teachers’ understanding of the issues involved in teaching contro-
versial topics in geography (here focusing on climate change). The climate change
peer assessment task was designed to encourage critical reflection. While the stu-
dent-teachers all started at different points in terms of their subject knowledge
(with some having studied anthropogenic climate change at degree level, and others
not since secondary school), all were relatively new to understanding the pedago-
gies for teaching controversial issues and climate change in the secondary school
geography classroom.

The formative assessment activity

An initial input in the university outlined some of the concepts in the teaching
of controversial issues and focused on how climate change features in the sec-
ondary curriculum in England. Various teaching approaches were identified (see
Biddulph et al., 2015) and a school-based activity was set up, including questions
for exploration in school in the forthcoming days. These questions encouraged the
student-teachers to look for ways in which controversial geographical topics were
being introduced, taught and managed within the classroom. The student-teachers
were also asked to consider the role of the teacher in facilitating, influencing or
leading student learning and outcomes. Different readings (five in total) were allo-
cated to five groups, focusing on the nature of education for sustainable develop-
ment, the purpose of geography education and the subject’s specific contribution
to education about climate change. The student-teachers carried out the work in
school (through observation and discussion with school colleagues) and returned to
the university at the end of the week to discuss their findings within peer groups of
between four and five.
In framing this school-based activity (and its associated readings and follow-up
discussions) as a form of assessment, it is important to outline where the ‘assessed’
elements come in. There is a structured nature to all the designated ‘school-based
activities’ which means that all the student-teachers are asked to investigate the same
questions. After the activity has been completed in school, the student-teachers
return to share findings within a peer group with the intention of bringing multiple
perspectives and ideas together. This requires individuals to produce information
related to the topic under study (in this case, teaching climate change) which is
subjected to peer assessment, or scrutiny, as the group discusses the relative merits
of their findings – judged against evolving criteria. It should be noted that these
evolving criteria (for whether individuals’ ideas are wholly or partially accepted
or rejected by others in the peer group) are an important part of the activity as
this is where the recontextualisation process can be surfaced; where the merits, or
otherwise, of conceptual or practical arguments and ways forward for teaching are
deliberated and discussed, this in itself offers a form of shared testing.
170 Roger Firth and Nicola Warren-Lee

In peer groups, the student-teachers were asked to share the main points from
the readings with a view to setting out some of the varied ideas on teaching contro-
versial geographies. The student-teachers organised the feedback themselves, which
tended to result in one person at a time outlining their recollection of the reading.
Initially, this was concise and rather cursory, depending on the group dynamics
and individual’s level of connection with the ideas. Gradually, as the group became
settled in the activity, there were more details added by individuals and others asked
questions or joined in with similar or comparative ideas. We noted that common
group responses revolved around ideas within the readings (i) which they had
understood or could relate to; or (ii) where they had difficulty in understanding
or seeing the validity of the argument(s); or (iii) where they were pulling together
ideas from a number of the readings (and their own experiences) which seemed to
inform an argument which had begun to develop.
An example of (i) and (ii) related to the way in which the student-teachers dis-
cussed the approaches to teaching climate change within school, with a particular
emphasis on blending the ‘what’ and ‘how’ of teaching together. A quote from an
article by Hicks (2019) was read aloud by one member of the group (Sarah):

Those with an interest in making education more holistic have long under-
stood that deep learning comes from recognising and nourishing the whole
self. Not just a fanciful idea, this recognises that being fully human is about
much more than gaining knowledge. (Hicks, 2019, p. 22)

This view echoed reservations Sarah had about her current experience of teaching
climate change and was followed up with Hicks’ suggested dimensions of learning
(2019, p. 23):

1. Knowing
2. Feeling
3. Choosing
4. Acting

The point Sarah then raised was that of the substantive content of climate change
teaching being one-dimensional, with little emphasis on the feeling, choosing and
acting dimensions. A question about lesson planning then arose in the group:

How do I know how far I can change the content and the lessons on the
[school] system? It’s not a scheme of work I see as interesting or engaging but
it’s hard to know how far I can go with the changes, without annoying anyone.

This was followed up by someone else, adding:

I’m having similar issues…It’s a case of, I want to be dynamic with this topic
and it’s all diagrams and facts, I’d like to start again, from scratch.
 Use of assessment in sustaining student-teachers’ engagement 171

Various partial agreements and suggestions for how to negotiate this dilemma were
made, including a recurring point on talking to the teachers in school. Asking and
checking if changes could be made to existing schemes of work was recognised as
a way forward, with the practicalities of doing this discussed (time being a major
issue). The suggestion was also made that ‘you can alter the meaning and course of
a lesson by the way you enact it; the questions you ask are important’. The personal
influence one can exert over a lesson was taken up quickly and affirmed by others.
In looking for elements of recontextualisation, this dialogue could be used to illus-
trate how a group of student-teachers develop ideas to navigate the challenges of
working with subject content supplied by others, in a specific local context, in ways
which they can assert their own agency.
It is a complex and knotty task to try to explicate where the elements of recon-
textualisation can be said to reside within instances of dialogue. Even over a longer
discussion, the task of drawing together different ideas, from different sources, in
ways which illustrate a form of cross examination, meaningful to the individual and
their working context, is challenging.

Scaffolding practical theorising through formative assessment

For ITE peer assessment tasks to be more than ‘surface comments’ (Seroussi et al.,
2019, p. 666), student-teachers need to learn how to effectively carry out the pro-
cess effectively, which requires support. Here, there is a place for more experienced
colleagues (school- and university-based) to add to, and draw attention to, the kinds
of knowledge being used; and also, importantly, to mediate the student-teachers’
learning.
In the case of the geography peer group assessment, there were various oppor-
tunities for us (as tutors) to interject, to ask for clarification, to play devil’s advocate
(where simple consensual solutions seem to preside), or to ask about the nature or
source of evidence underpinning the views or conclusions within a group. In peer
assessments of this nature, it is the process of interaction which can build skills of
debating the merits and feasibility of different ideas for practice (McIntyre, 2009).
Since this stands in contrast to recounting ‘correct’ ideas assumed to reflect a pro-
fessional consensus ‘out there’, it occasionally causes feelings of insecurity among
student-teachers in such peer group debates. The work of teacher educators can
support student-teachers in their negotiation of a varied and changeable landscape
of opinions and evidence; helping them to see this landscape (including the lack
of universal agreement) not as something which they do not yet understand, lead-
ing them to assume that they have not yet fully grasped the ‘truth’ of the matter,
but as something that provides a rich, evolving set of ideas to be interrogated for
their integrity and usefulness. This work provides reassurance that, as they go into
their classrooms, they are prepared to critically assess different sources of informa-
tion in ways which can be deemed disciplined and justified; and – in response to
Fenstermacher’s (1994) challenge – able to show how teaching practices and deci-
sions are objectively reasonable.
172 Roger Firth and Nicola Warren-Lee

Summative assessment and practical theorising

The second, more formal, type of PGCE assessment studied and reflected upon were
the discussions of progress between student-teacher, school-based mentor and uni-
versity tutor that took place in school, at the first of the three ‘assessment reference
points’ which occur over the course of the PGCE year. During these discussions,
developments in teaching (areas of strength and targets for future attention) are cov-
ered and are driven by the individual student-teacher’s recent experiences, framed
within the expectations of the PGCE course assessment standards for that particu-
lar stage of the course. These are known as ‘Descriptors’ and are derived from the
Teacher Standards (DFE, 2012). Agreement is to be reached through the discussion
at each assessment reference point as to whether the student-teacher is deemed to
be ‘fulfilling’ the relevant Descriptors. While the identification of targets for future
development ensures that there is a strong formative element to the process, the
assessment reference point, as a judgement of whether the student-teacher is making
the expected progress at each stage of the course, serves a summative purpose.
The following extracts are taken from one the discussion with one geography
student-teacher at the first assessment reference point. The student-teacher (Emma)
is talking about her progress over the first term of the programme and reflects on
how she has been learning from other teachers.
One area of the discussion revolved around her improvement in ‘surfacing’ the
geography:

I would go through tasks and get to the end, often no time for a plenary. So,
my hurricane model activity worked, they all completed the sections but we
didn’t pull out the ideas on air masses and how cold and warm air moves.
Hazel [my school-based mentor] has encouraged me to ask more questions,
to do mini plenaries, to use the whiteboards and to slow down. I’m getting
better at questions to recap and go over the point of the activities.

Emma commented on how she learned to plan for and support students with dif-
ferent special educational needs or disabilities:

Sometimes it’s just giving emotional support, rather than focussing on the
learning. I’ve got a teaching assistant who has helped me understand what he
needs and that has been more useful than anything. I used different tactics and
saw which worked. He was worried about what would happen in the lesson
so I gave him a list of what was going to happen. I talked with [my mentor]
and that technique was something I’ve learned to do all the time now.

She went on to talk about what the university lecture series on specific educational
needs had offered her in terms of her learning:

I found them useful, in part. Some were pitched way above my head. The
take-away points were not always clear but I learned what the general points
were, which I could then take into school and ask [my mentor] more about it.
 Use of assessment in sustaining student-teachers’ engagement 173

When asked what had been the most useful for her, in terms of learning how to
respond to behavioural challenges, Emma referred to a build-up of experience and
also the use of existing practices:

I tend to stick with the norm, it’s difficult when there are inconsistencies and
everyone is different. I have found it’s easier to keep to the strategies they [the
teachers] have in each class. This has worked but has been tricky… Gradually
I find what works for me and I’ve got more confidence in how to deal with
things as they arise because I know I’ve done it before.

Student-teachers found the question, ‘what have you found to be most use-
ful in learning to teach?’, difficult to answer and generally deferred to talk-
ing about their mentor’s advice, learning by doing and observing others teach.
Interestingly, these last two aspects have been criticised for offering limited
opportunities for learning. Mason (2002), for example, has argued that experi-
ence (or doing) should not be seen as synonymous with progress, and can lead to
unconscious incompetence, while Hagger (1995) has noted that ­student-teachers
are unlikely to access the ‘craft knowledge of experienced teachers’ simply by
observation’ (p. 27).
Where student-teachers see the main purpose of an assessment discussion as
an evaluation of their performance, this can result in a disposition of compli-
ance (Bertone et al., 2003); a disposition which is unlikely to yield authentic,
meta-cognitive reasoning in relation teaching beliefs, accrued learning or per-
formed actions. The small sample of (seven) summative assessment recordings
that we examined for this chapter revealed minimal explicit evidence of practical
theorising – although there was sometimes a sense that this lay just below the
surface of what was actually said. Recounting the lesson, or reiterating the tasks
set were common responses to tutor/mentor questions about observed teaching.
For broader questions on ­progress – questions such as, ‘How have you learned to
change your questioning?’, ‘How has your understanding of what a good lesson
plan includes changed?’, ‘What has helped or influenced you in deciding to fol-
low graded learning objectives?’ – responses included how they had, ‘listened to
advice’, ‘watched what the other teachers did’, or been ‘influenced by what the
school does’. Listening back over the recordings and drawing on our experience
as tutors within the conversation, we can sense a potentially deferential or compli-
ant dynamic, with the student-teachers’ effectively wondering ‘Is this what you’re
looking for?’.

Raising the profile of practical theorising

Formal assessments carry with them an element of anxiety and, it is at these times,
that student-teachers are particularly keen to understand and show they are meeting
course criteria. In addition to the Descriptors (derived from the Teachers’ Standards,
as explained above), the success criteria within Internship also include a number of
174 Roger Firth and Nicola Warren-Lee

‘Additional Course Requirements’. Among the latter, are the expectations that the
student-teachers should

a. Develop, articulate and rationally defend their pedagogical thinking and prac-
tice, by drawing on a range of sources of evidence.
b. Identify appropriate personal professional development targets and devise and
carry out a programme of activity to address them, making effective use of col-
leagues, a range of sources of evidence and reach valid independent judgements
in relation to achievement of their targets.

Arguably, these additional course requirements are directly relatable to the process
of practical theorising. Although they already feature in both formative and sum-
mative assessments, if the importance and relevance of practical theorising is to be
fully recognised, they should perhaps be accorded a more prominent position in
the assessment process. Going further than this, and drawing upon Biggs’ (1996)
concept of constructive alignment and Canrinus et al.’s (2017) views on programme
coherence, the most powerful approach would be one that not only gives more
emphasis to the additional course requirements, but that also seeks to align teach-
ing and learning opportunities with them, i.e. explicitly modelling and providing
occasions (in both sites of learning) on which to practise articulating and ration-
ally defending pedagogical decisions, drawing on a range of sources of evidence.
An ITE curriculum in which assessments, course aims and activities inform one
another, driving learning about the process of practical theorising (and not simply
the learning of curriculum content) would develop teachers able to negotiate an
unpredictable and increasingly ‘noisy’ professional space, able to recognise what is
valued in particular settings – maintaining their agency within the ‘affordances of
the practice’ (Childs et al., 2014, p. 5).
For student-teachers to be attracted to, and develop the capacity to engage in,
practical theorising, teacher educators must carefully consider not just their curric-
ulum and pedagogy but the forms of formative and summative assessment that they
use. This is likely to depend on the development of ‘assessments that have no single
right answer and in which student [teachers’] argumentation is key in defending
their solution’ (Sluijsmans and Prins, 2006, p. 18–19).

Conclusions
In this chapter, we have focussed on practical theorising and assessment while
acknowledging epistemological questions intrinsically bound into the process. We
noted that the ways in which teacher standards are conceptualised and constructed
as course assessments have significant consequences for student-teacher behaviour
and learning. Our reflections on more than a decade’s experience of discussions
held at specific assessment reference points, alongside the empirical data included
here, suggest that the performance orientation ( James & Pedder, 2006, p. 109) of
more formal assessments does not necessarily support student-teacher engagement
 Use of assessment in sustaining student-teachers’ engagement 175

in practical theorising. Effective teacher education ( just like effective education of

young people) requires the ‘adoption of assessment to support learning’ (McLean,
2018, p. 1229) with ‘the student-teacher at the centre, responsible for developing and
refining their own personal “theories” of education’ (Furlong & Whitty, 2017, p. 42).
Formative assessment can support a practical theorising dialectic – evidence
gathering, testing and reflection in order to build student-teachers’ ability to act
in reasoned and justifiable ways in the classroom. Our reflections and empirical
exemplification of a school-based activity revealed how a peer assessment – geared
towards decision-making, using evidence, and mediated by teacher educators –
provided an opportunity for student-teachers to encounter and develop skills of
debating the merits and feasibility of different teaching ideas. (McIntyre, 2009).
In order to develop this kind of practical argumentation, and to sustain ongoing
professional learning, practical theorising (as a process) should be central in assess-
ment design. The extent to which practical theorising is understood, developed and
explicitly utilised by student-teachers is dependent on motivation to engage in the
process, which is influenced by the salience and position it holds within assessment
structures.
The rich and diverse kinds of knowledge upon which student-teachers are able
to draw – from within their schools, their peer groups, university tutors and from
professional and research literature – can be viewed as beneficial, rather than prob-
lematic, where practical theorising is fostered as a process of critically developing
justifiable and reasoned classroom teaching expertise. Fostering this process requires
ITE assessment which is designed to stimulate the kinds of activities and thinking
which are characteristic of practical theorising. Practical theorising therefore needs
to be explicitly positioned as a learning intention; elucidated across ITE partner-
ships, modelled and scaffolded by teacher educators, and formally recognised for
what it can achieve in sustaining efficacious, ongoing teacher learning.

References
Baird, J., Andrich, D., Hopfenbeck,T. N., & Stobart, G. (2017). Assessment and learning: Fields
apart? Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice, 24(3), 317–350.
Beauchamp, G., Clarke, L., Hulme, M., & Murray, J. (2015). Teacher education in the United
Kingdom post devolution: Convergences and divergences. Oxford Review of Education,
41(2), 154–170.
Benton, P. (Ed.). (1990). The Oxford Internship Scheme: Integration and Partnership in Initial
Teacher Education. London: Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.
Bertone, S., Méard, J. A., Ria, L., Euzet, J. P., & Durand, M. (2003). Intrapsychic conflict expe-
rienced by a preservice teacher during classroom interactions: A case study in physical
education. Teaching and Teacher Education, 19(1), 113–125.
Biddulph, M., Lambert, D., & Balderstone, D. (2015). Learning to Teach Geography in the
Secondary School: A Companion to School Experience (3rd ed.). Abingdon: Routledge.
Biggs, J. (1996). Enhancing teaching through constructive alignment. Higher Education, 32(3),
347–364.
Brandom, R. (1994). Making it Explicit: Reasoning, Representing, and Discursive Commitment.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
176 Roger Firth and Nicola Warren-Lee

Brandom, R. (1995). Knowledge and the social articulation of the space of reasons. Philosophy
and Phenomenological Research, 55(4), 895–908.
Brandom, R. (2000). Articulating Reasons: An Introduction to Inferentialism. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press.
Brunker, N., Spandagou, I., & Grice, C. (2019). Assessment for learning while learning to
assess: Assessment in initial teacher education through the eyes of pre-service teachers and
teacher educators. Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 44(9), 89–109.
Canrinus, E., Bergem, O., Klette, K., & Hammerness, K. (2017). Coherent teacher education
programmes: Taking a student perspective. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 49(3), 313–333.
Childs, A., Edwards, A., & McNicholl, J. (2014). Workplace learning in teacher education:
International practice and policy. In O. McNamara, J. Murray, & M. Jones (Eds.), Teacher
Learning in the Workplace:Widening Perspectives on Practice and Policy. Dordecht: Springer, 29–45.
Department for Education. (2012). The Teachers’ Standards. Ref: DFE-00066-2011.
Derry, J. (2000). Foundationalism and anti-foundationalism: Seeking enchantment in the
rough ground. In V. Oittinen (Ed.), Evald Ilyenkov’s Philosophy Revisited. Helsinki: Kikimora
Publications, 89–95.
Derry, J. (2008). Abstract rationality in education: From Vygotsky to Brandom. Studies in the
Philosophy of Education, 27(1), 49–62.
Edwards, A. (2017a). The dialectic of person and practice: How cultural-historical accounts
of agency can inform teacher education. In D. J. Clandinin & J. Husu (Eds.), The Sage
Handbook on Research on Teacher Education. London: SAGE Publications, 269–285.
Edwards, A. (2017b). Cultural-historical approaches to teaching and learning in higher edu-
cation: Teaching to support student agency. In B. Leibowitz,V. Bozalek, & P. Kahn (Eds.),
Theorising Learning to Teach in Higher Education (Research into Higher Education). Abingdon:
Routledge, 140–160.
Edwards, A. (2014). Learning from experience in teaching: A cultural historical critique.
In V. Ellis & J. Orchard (Eds.), Learning Teaching from Experience: Multiple Perspectives and
International Ontexts. London: Bloomsbury, 47–62.
Ellis, V. (2010). Impoverishing experience: The problem of teacher education in England.
Journal of Education for Teaching, 36(1), 105–120.
Engeström, Y. (1991). Developmental work research: Reconstructing expertise through
expansive learning. In M. I. Nurminen & G. R. S. Weir (Eds.), Human Jobs and Computer
Interfaces. Amsterdam: Elsevier Science Publishers, 27–42.
Fancourt, N., Edwards, A., & Menter, I. (2015). Reimagining a school–university partner-
ship: The development of the Oxford education deanery narrative. Education Inquiry, 6(3),
353–373.
Fenstermacher, G. (1994).The knower and the known – the nature of knowledge in research
on teaching. Review of Research in Education, 20, 3–56.
Furlong, J. & Whitty, G. (2017). Knowledge traditions in the study of education. In G. Whitty
& J. Furlong (Eds.), Knowledge and the Study of Education: An International Exploration.
Oxford: Symposium Books, 13–57.
Guile, D. (2010). The Learning Challenge of the Knowledge Economy. Rotterdam: Sense.
Guile, D. (2014). Professional knowledge and professional practice as continuous recontextu-
alisation: A social practice perspective. In M.Young & J. Muller (Eds.), Knowledge, Expertise
and the Professions. Abingdon: Routledge, 88–102.
Guile, D. (2019.) The concept of ‘recontextualization’: Implications for professional, voca-
tional and workplace learning. Learning, Culture and Social Interaction, 23, 1–11.
Hagger, H. (1995). The problems and possibilities for interns of gaining access to experienced teachers’
professional craft knowledge. Dissertation: Oxford University Department for Education.
 Use of assessment in sustaining student-teachers’ engagement 177

Hagger, H. & McIntyre, D. (2006). Learning Teaching from Teachers: Realizing the Potential of
School-Based Teacher Education. Maidenhead: Open University Press.
Hicks, D. (2019). Climate change: Bringing the pieces together. Teaching Geography, 44(1),
20–27.
Hordern, J. (2016). On the making and faking of knowledge value in higher education cur-
ricula. Teaching in Higher Education, 21(4), 367–380.
Hordern, J. (2019). Unpacking the dynamics of partnership and pedagogic relations in teacher
education. In N. Sorensen (Ed.), Diversity in Teacher Education: Perspectives on a School-Led
System. London: UCL Institute of Education Press, 112–128.
James, M. & Pedder, D. (2006). Beyond method: Assessment and learning practices and values.
The Curriculum Journal, 17(2), 109–138.
Johnson, M. (1989). Embodied knowledge. Curriculum Inquiry, 19(4), 361–377.
Kinsella, E. A. (2007). Embodied reflection and the epistemology of reflective practice. The
Journal of Philosophy of Education, 41(3), 395–409.
Loughran, J., Mitchell, I., & Mitchell, J. (2003). Attempting to document teachers’ professional
knowledge. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 16(6), 853–873.
McIntyre, D. (1990). Ideas and principles guiding the internship scheme. In P. Benton (Ed.),
The Oxford Internship Scheme: Integration and Practice in Initial Teacher Education. London:
Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, 17–33.
McIntyre, D. (1991). The Oxford University model of teacher education. South Pacific Journal
of Teacher Education, 19(2), 117–129.
McIntyre, D. (1995). Initial teacher education as practical theorising: A response to Paul Hirst.
British Journal of Educational Studies, 43(4), 365–383.
McIntyre, D. (2009). The difficulties of inclusive pedagogy for initial teacher education and
some thoughts on the way forward. Teaching and Teacher Education, 25(4), 602–608.
McLean, H. (2018). This is the way to teach: Insights from academics and students about
assessment that supports learning. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 43(8),
1228–1240
Mahoney, P. & Hextall, I. (2000). Reconstructing Teaching: Standards, Performance and Accountability.
London: Routledge Falmer.
Mason, J. (2002). Researching your Own Practice: The Discipline of Noticing. London: Routledge
Falmer.
Murray, J. & Mutton, T. (2016). Teacher education in England: Change in abundance, con-
tinuities in question. In G. Beauchamp, L. Clarke, M. Hulme, M. Jephcote, A. Kennedy,
G. Magennis, I. Menter, J. Murray, T. Mutton, T. O’Doherty, & G. Peiser (Eds.), Teacher
Education in Times of Change. Bristol: Policy Press, 57–74.
Oosterheert, I. E. & Vermunt, J. D. (2001). Individual differences in learning to teach: Relating
cognition, regulation and affect. Learning and Instruction, 11(2), 133–156.
Robinson, W. (2006) Teacher training in England and wales: Past, present and future perspec-
tives. Education Research and Perspectives, 33(2), 19–36.
Seroussi, D., Sharon, R., Peled,Y., & Yaffe,Y. (2019). Reflections on peer feedback in discipli-
nary courses as a tool in preservice teacher training. Cambridge Journal of Education, 49(5),
655–671.
Simon, C. A. (2019). Diversity in teacher education: Policy contexts. In N. Sorensen (Ed.),
Diversity in Teacher Education Perspectives on a School-Led System. London: UCL Institute of
Education Press, 10–28.
Sloat, E., Sherman, A., Christou, T., Hirschkorn, M., Kristmanson, P., Lemisko, L., & Sears,
A. (2014) Restoring higher education’s mission in teacher education: A global chal-
lenge from a Canadian perspective. In V. Ellis & J. Orchard (Eds.), Learning Teaching
178 Roger Firth and Nicola Warren-Lee

from Experience: Multiple Perspectives and International Contexts. ProQuest Ebook Central.
London: Bloomsbury. 143–158.
Sluijsmans, D. & Prins, F. (2006). A conceptual framework for integrating peer assessment in
teacher education. Studies in Educational Evaluation, 32(1), 6–22.
Toom, A. (2012). Considering the artistry and epistemology of tacit knowledge and knowing.
Educational Theory, 62(6), 621–640.
van Huizen, P., van Oers, B., & Wubbels, T. (2005). A Vygotskian perspective on teacher edu-
cation. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 37(3), 267–290.
Winch, C., Oancea, A., & Orchard, J. (2015). The contribution of educational research to
teachers’ professional learning: Philosophical understandings. Oxford Review of Education,
41(2), 202–216.
Young, M. (2008). Bringing Knowledge Back In: From Social Constructivism to Social Realism in the
Sociology of Education. London: Routledge.
11
DEVELOPING THE PRACTICE
OF TEACHER EDUCATORS
The role of practical theorising

Ann Childs and Judith Hillier with Jennifer Amini,

Stuart Farmer, Jesus Garcia Jorda, Stephen Hearn
and Robyn Starr

Introduction
This article looks at a sustained programme of study for teacher educators and the
role of practical theorising in its design and delivery. It was set up because of our
concern about the lack of formal or structured provision for teacher educators’
professional learning.This is a concern shared more widely in the teacher education
community. As Zeichner (2005) observed,

Many universities today treat teacher education as a self-evident activity for

both school and university-based teacher educators who mentor prospective
teachers in clinical experiences and for the instructors and faculty who teach
the courses in a teacher education program. Anyone who has ever worked
with prospective teachers knows that, although there are some similarities
in teaching children and young adolescents, there are many important ways
which the two kinds of teaching differ and where one’s expertise as a teacher
does not necessarily translate into expertise as a mentor.
(p. 118)

Zeichner’s observation is echoed by many others (see, for example, Cochran-Smith,

2003; Lunenberg, Korthagen, & Swennen, 2007; Goodwin & Kosnick, 2013) and
reflected the views of academics and teacher educators in the University of Oxford
Department of Education who set up an MSc in Teacher Education in 2015. The
course is a two-year, part-time, distance-learning Masters, the aim of which is to
develop the professional thinking and practice of teacher educators. The course
attracts teacher educators from all over the world who work, for example, in schools,
in universities or as consultants, in relation to primary, secondary and tertiary level

DOI: 10.4324/9781003183945-15
180 Ann Childs et al.

education. They are united by a professional responsibility for developing either pre
or in-service teachers’ practice.The course itself was developed by teacher educators
already committed to practical theorising as a key mechanism to promote profes-
sional learning within the Oxford Internship Scheme, the name by which Oxford’s
initial teacher education programme is known. In this chapter, we explore the prob-
lems and possibilities of practical theorising as a means of developing teacher edu-
cators’ practice on the MSc in Teacher Education course.
The chapter begins by briefly characterising the knowledge that a teacher edu-
cator requires, and then focuses on two of the most influential methods reported
in the literature to develop teacher educators’ practice, followed by a discussion of
practical theorising as a means to develop teacher educators’ practice on the MSc
in Teacher Education. It explores this through the use of vignettes from five teacher
educators who reflect on their learning on the course. First, we will analyse the
ways in which the development of their professional thinking and practice can be
described as a process of practical theorising. Second, we will look at how the pro-
cess of practical theorising may be similar/different from that of beginning teachers.
Finally, from this analysis, we will discuss the ways in which practical theorising can
be used beyond contexts such as the Oxford Internship Scheme to develop the
professional thinking and practice of, in this case, teacher educators.

Teacher educators’ knowledge and learning

The knowledge base of teacher educators
The knowledge base of teachers has been written about extensively (see, for example
Shulman, 1986; Cochran, King, & DeRuiter, 1993; Barnett & Hodson, 2001).There
is, however, less of a distinctive and comprehensive literature discussing the knowl-
edge base of teacher educators (Cochran-Smith, 2003), although some attempts
have been made to articulate what teacher educators need to know. Loughran
(2008), for example, states that teacher educator knowledge involves:

a knowledge of teaching about teaching and a knowledge of learning about

teaching and how the two influence one another in the pedagogic episodes
that teacher educators create to offer students teaching experiences that might
inform their developing views of practice.
(p. 1180)

Murray and Male (2005) discuss the transition made by teacher educators who
work in higher education (HE) and who have moved ‘from being first-­ order
­practitioners – that is school teachers – to being second-order practitioners’ in
higher education (p. 2). In making this shift, they argue that teacher educators
bring considerable knowledge from their school teaching background (the first-or-
der context), including knowledge of the discipline which they are teaching, their
knowledge of schooling and ‘experiential knowledge and understanding of school
 Developing the practice of teacher educators 181

teaching’ (p. 2). Murray and Male argue, however, that, in order to operate in the
second-order context of higher education, they need to develop additional knowl-
edge beyond that which they bring as school teachers, including ‘the pedagogical
knowledge of how to teach that “subject” in higher education’ and that these forms
of knowledge are ‘inseparable for teacher educators’ (p. 2).
Goodwin and Kosnick (2013) provide a much more detailed analysis, examining
what a framework for teacher educator knowledge might look like for teacher edu-
cators and identifying five specific areas of knowledge, one of which is contextual
knowledge/understanding of learners, schools and society. They argue that

… contextual knowledge for teacher educators must encompass the political,

historical, structural, cultural, and so on. …. Contextual knowledge propels
teacher educators beyond discrete subject knowledge or instructional strate-
gies to examine learners’ needs as nested within multiple sociocultural eco-
nomic-political locations.
(p. 339)

Loughran (2006) argues that teacher educators also need to develop their affective
and emotional knowledge in order to build effective relationships with their learner
teachers in areas which require sensitivity, trust, honesty and valuing the independ-
ence of these teachers. Ellis and McNicholl (2015), in their work with teacher
educators in higher education, take the need for such relationship-building further
when they emphasise its importance in work with school partners.
In summary, a teacher’s expertise (rich and complex as that is) does not translate
directly to that of a teacher educator – a role for which the required knowledge is
multifaceted and brings further complexities. The following section discusses two
influential approaches (reported in the literature) that enable teacher educators to
develop their knowledge and practice, and then compares these approaches with
practical theorising as a potential way of promoting teacher educator learning.

Teacher educator learning

There is, as previously noted, considerable consensus in the literature that teacher
educators do not often receive education in respect of their roles (see for exam-
ple, van Velzen et al., 2010; Zeichner, 2005; Cochran-Smith, 2003). Two specific
approaches have, however, been used to facilitate more powerful and systematic
professional learning; namely ‘self-study’ and ‘inquiry as stance’, both of which, as
we later show, have considerable resonances with practical theorising.
(i) Self-study
Dinkelman (2003) sees self-study as a tool to promote reflective teaching in
teacher education through ‘inquiry conducted by individual teacher educators as
well as groups working collaboratively to understand problems of practice more
182 Ann Childs et al.

deeply’ (p. 8). Loughran (2004) argues that self-study goes beyond teacher reflec-
tion when it:

… demands that the knowledge and understanding derived be communi-

cated (and as has become clear in the literature, this occurs in a variety of
ways), so that it might be challenged, extended, transformed and translated by
others. And, this is due to the fact that a defining feature of self-study is that
it is available for such public critique and dissemination, rather than solely
residing in the mind of an individual.
(pp. 25–26)

Pinnegar (1998), in trying to define the essence of self-study, recognises that it uses
similar research methods to other approaches, but that it is still ‘methodologically
unique’ in that it ‘involves a different philosophical and political stance’ since those
engaged in it are researchers making a deliberate choice to study their own practice
in their own contexts in order to ‘present an alternative representation of the rela-
tionship of the researcher and the researched’ (pp. 31–32).
In summary, self-study is a movement that has had a powerful influence in devel-
oping teacher educators’ practices and is essentially a movement of inquiry and
investigation by teacher educators working ‘from the ground up’. It goes beyond
reflection by using recognised research methods to understand and develop teacher
education practice in a spirit of collaboration with other key stakeholders in the
teacher education process.
(ii) Inquiry as stance
Inquiry as stance has some resonances with self-study. Cochran-Smith and Lytle
(1999) explore in more detail how they initially adopted the inquiry as stance term
as a key metaphor, initially for teachers’ learning:

In our work, we offer the term inquiry as stance to describe the positions
teachers and others who work together in inquiry communities take towards
knowledge and its relationships to practice.
(Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1999, p. 289)

Cochran-Smith (2003) later argues that if teachers are to be change agents, adopting
inquiry as stance, then teacher educators should do likewise within inquiry com-
munities ‘wherein everyone is a learner, a researcher, a seeker of new insights, and
a poser of questions for which no one in the group already has the answer’ (p. 23).
Inquiry as stance, like self-study, also has a political edge in that inquiry communities
‘question the current arrangements of schooling; the ways knowledge is constructed,
evaluated, and used; and teachers’ individual and collective roles in bringing about
change’ (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1999, p. 289). Cochran-Smith (2003) argues that
when teacher educators work within these communities, it allows them to explore
and reconsider their assumptions about their own practice but also to go further and
 Developing the practice of teacher educators 183

understand ‘the values and practices of families and cultures that are different from
their own’ (p. 24) and through this process learn to teach in a way is appropriate
to the local communities in which they work and which is also culturally sensitive.
She sees the knowledge generated within these inquiry communities not merely as
‘local knowledge’ but also as ‘public knowledge’ (as is the case with self-study) and
goes on to argue that the education of teacher educators from an inquiry stance is
so significant that it ‘can be understood as playing a significant part in the future of
society’ (p. 25). A very bold claim!

Practical theorising in the learning of teacher educators

The following section explores the design of the MSc in Teacher Education, first
explaining how practical theorising underpins its model of learning and then illus-
trating, through five vignettes of teacher educators on the course, the ways in which
the rhetoric of practical theorising is realised in practice.

The design of the MSc in Teacher Education: the course rhetoric

As stated above, the development of this particular Masters programme was
prompted by concerns about the general lack of formal or structured provision for
teacher educators’ professional learning. Its formal aims are set out in Table 11.1.
The first year of the course comprises three units, in which decontextualised
knowledge presented by the University (in the form of key readings, online lectures
and podcasts and recorded vignettes from experienced teacher educators) is set
alongside weekly inquiry tasks that the teacher educators conduct with their own
learner teachers. The three units are:

Unit 1: Understanding your learner teachers and their actions: implications for your
practice as a teacher educator
Unit 2: What knowledge does a teacher need?
Unit 3: Teacher and teacher educator learning

TABLE 11.1 The aims of the MSc in Teacher Education

1 To develop familiarity with research and professional debates associated with teacher
education in mathematics and science in particular debates and issues about
teaching, learning and assessment in mathematics and science.
2 To learn about pedagogy for teacher education in these subjects in a variety of settings.
3 To acquire a repertoire of methods for transforming the subject knowledge of teachers
and educators for teaching purposes.
4 To introduce participants to the quality assurance and research standards and methods
that characterise the research fields of subject education.
5 To equip participants to continue professional and academic dialogue with others in
the field.
184 Ann Childs et al.

The process of critical reflection is further developed through more formal,

examined assignments (one within each unit), in which aspects of the contex-
tualised knowledge gained from the tasks are more rigorously interrogated in
light of further reading – a process of practical theorising, intended to develop
the teacher educator’s professional thinking as they draw out the implications for
their practice.
Taking Unit 1 as example of how the inquiry tasks work, the first task explores
the beliefs about teaching, learning and the nature of subject that the (pre or
in-service) learner teachers with whom the teacher educators work bring to the
teacher education process. The second inquiry task asks the teacher educators to
investigate how these beliefs are enacted in practice. The range of literature pro-
vided in this unit offer insights into teachers’ beliefs about teaching and learning
and into the nature of learning to teach a specific subject, while also presenting a
range of methodologies that the teacher educators might use to investigate beliefs.
Similarly, the unit also offers a range of research examining how beliefs are enacted
in practice and, again, how this process of enactment has been researched. The
teacher educators then design and carry out their own small-scale investigation
and share their findings online with a small study group (comprising three students
from diverse teacher education backgrounds). The findings are presented on the
forum using a reflection and activity portfolio, an example of which is presented
in Table 11.2.
The student’s supervisor, and each member of the study group, then give writ-
ten feedback to these online postings and, finally, the study group meet with their
supervisor to discuss how their own task, the reading of other students’ reflection
and activity portfolios, and the academic readings have influenced their profes-
sional thinking and practice as teacher educators. In addition, the group mem-
bers discuss the way in which the task has informed their practice as developing
educational researchers. This pattern of inquiry task, feedback and collaborative
discussion, which is repeated through all three taught units, has real resonances
with inquiry as stance and self-study. As ‘inquiry communities’ within an inquiry
as stance approach, the study groups ‘take forward knowledge’ gained through the
tasks ‘to practice’ (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1999, p. 289).The process is also resonant
with Dinkelman’s (2003) characterisation of self-study as ‘intentional and systematic
inquiry into one’s own practice’ that is ‘conducted by individual teacher educators
as well as groups working collaboratively to understand problems of practice more
deeply’ (p. 8).
In the second year of the course, the teacher educators undertake a ‘research
and development project’ for which they design and carry out an innovation to
change an aspect of teacher education practice identified as an issue of concern
or particular interest during the first year. The process of practical theorising again
underpins this work, in both the design and evaluation phases, with the research
evidence collected to investigate the effectiveness of the intervention, interro-
gated alongside the literature to suggest implications for the future practice of the
teacher educator.
 Developing the practice of teacher educators 185

TABLE 11.2 A sample ‘Reflection and activity portfolio’ from Unit 1

Weeks 1 & 2:What beliefs do learner teachers hold

Objectives In this week, we will explore issues related to the beliefs held by the
learner teachers with whom you work, drawing on a range of
evidence from:
(i) Key literature
(ii) Vignettes from teacher educators
(iii) Your own inquiry task
Section 1 Read the selected texts and listen to the teacher educator vignettes.
Both suggest that the beliefs/understandings/preconceptions that
(novice) teachers bring with them are very important in shaping their
experience of teacher education. Describe any previous experiences
that you have had as a teacher educator that support or challenge the
reading and the vignettes, giving specific examples from your own
practice.
Section 2 After completing the practice-based investigation, paint a brief portrait
of each of your learner teachers’ beliefs (as discussed in the residential
week). What factors seem to have particularly influenced each
teacher’s beliefs?
Section 3 In what ways and to what extent does the ‘nature of the subject’ that
they teach seem to influence your teachers’ beliefs about teaching and
learning?
Drawing on the vignettes shared by experienced teacher educators, explain
the ways in which, and the extent to which you regard the nature of
the subject taught as an important influence on the teachers’ beliefs.
Reflections a) Research methods: what did you learn about the process of
on future interviewing and how would you develop your interviewing for the
implications next practice-based task?
b) Your practice as a teacher educator: from all the input this week
what do you think are the key issues to take forward into your work
as a teacher educator?

Although the inquiry and reflection tasks in Year 1 and the research and develop-
ment project in Year 2 both exemplify key principles of practical theorising, there are
some important ways in which the process differs from that used by beginning teach-
ers. First, the vital evidence base of contextualised knowledge on which beginning
teachers draw is, at least in the initial stages, that of the experienced teachers and men-
tors with whom they work in their school placements. For the teacher educators on
the MSc in Teacher Education, the contextual knowledge derives from the inquiry
tasks they carry out with their learner teachers and from their own knowledge of the
context in which they work as teacher educators.Whether this contextualised knowl-
edge is fundamentally different will be the first line of inquiry in our analysis below.
The second difference arises from an important critique of practical theorising
by Furlong and Maynard (1995), who question the ability of beginning teachers,
186 Ann Childs et al.

with little knowledge or experience of teaching, to carry our practical theorising

and the appropriateness of asking them to do so:

With a kind of postmodernist relativism, the Oxford scheme leaves it to the

student to make up his or her own mind about what are appropriate forms
of practice.
(p. 50)

The teacher educators undertaking the MSc course are, almost exclusively, experi-
enced professionals in their field and many have been teacher educators for some
time. They already bring extensive professional knowledge of teaching and learning
as teachers, and sometimes as teacher educators, to the process of practical theoris-
ing. This may make a difference to the ways in which they can engage in practical
theorising, that we will pursue as a second line of inquiry below.
A third key difference is the role of theory in initial teacher education. Hobson
et al. (2006) reported that beginning teachers had concerns about the relevance
of theory in their learning and that the parts of their training ‘which didn’t have
obvious relevance to teaching (and were thus not “practical”) tended to be regarded
as “theory”’ (p. 44). Korthagen and Kessels (1999) raise similar concerns about the
relevance of theory for student teachers when they discuss the ‘transfer problem’ in
moving from theory to practice (p. 5). On the MSc in Teacher Education, however,
the teacher educator’s engagement with theory, and its relevance to their learning,
may be different. Anecdotally, at interview, many of the teacher educators express
the need to inform and enrich their practice through drawing on theoretical per-
spectives, so they already come to the course with a more positive and engaged atti-
tude to the value of theory; something that we will pursue as a third line of inquiry.
A final difference is related to the critique of practical theorising made by Ellis
(2010): the ability of student teachers within Internship to question practice from
their positions of relative powerlessness.
Power relationships are obviously relevant for the teacher educators on the Masters
course, but they are likely to play out in different ways. Many of the teacher educators
join the course precisely because they want to question their own context-specific
practices and understandings and, indeed, the assessment rubrics specifically encourage
critique of both contextualised and decontextualised knowledge.There are, of course,
cases where the teacher educator is working within a bigger programme, and perhaps
as a relative novice in the role, which obviously raises issues of power, when it comes
to asking critical questions; but it seems likely that for most of the teacher educators,
the power relationships will play out very differently from those experienced by stu-
dent teachers engaged in practical theorising. This will be our fourth line of inquiry.

The taught course – from rhetoric to reality

Here we present vignettes from five teacher educators who reflect on their learn-
ing within the course. The Year 1 vignettes relate to three teacher educators within
one study group who were invited to reflect on theoretical perspectives which had,
 Developing the practice of teacher educators 187

so far, influenced their professional thinking and practice. We made notes of their
responses, wrote the vignettes in the third person and then checked them with the
participants to ensure that they represent their perspectives. For the Year 2 vignettes,
we asked for similar reflections, but with the focus more on their learning through
carrying out the research and development project.These are presented as first-per-
son accounts. We do not claim that the five vignettes are representative of all the
teacher educators on the course, but rather they allow us to analyse, in relation to
these five specific teacher educators, the ways in which the development of their
professional thinking and practice can be described as a process of practical theoris-
ing and how that process of practical theorising may be similar to or different from
that of beginning teachers (drawing on the lines of inquiry we have outlined above).
It thus allows us to consider how the process of practical theorising can be used
beyond the context of Internship, in this case to develop the professional thinking
and practice of teacher educators.

The reality: Year 1 Vignettes

Jennifer Amini
Jenny is an assistant principal in an independent primary school, where she is
responsible for teacher education.
The theoretical perspectives that she perceives as most resonant in her
context are those associated with teachers’ beliefs in Unit 1. She reflected
that taking account of teachers’ beliefs should have been something she had
already thought about, but that she had not previously done so. Unit 1 raised
for her the important issue of accessing what the teachers with whom she
works believe and understand about teaching and learning, and why they act
and do the things they do, in order to shape the professional development
that the school provides. It also prompted an examination of, and shed light
on, her own beliefs about teaching and learning within her own context. She
also highlighted Clarke and Hollingsworth’s (2002) Interconnected Model of
Teacher Professional Growth, to which she had been introduced within the
course; a framework which had given her insights into why teachers do not
just change; why professional development is complex; and why ‘you have
to work on many fronts’. Having previously often asked herself after a pro-
fessional development, ‘Why don’t they just change?, she claimed that the
Interconnected Model and other articles in Unit 1, had given her insights into
the complexity of effecting teacher change and growth and the importance
for professional development of listening to teachers and giving them voice
and ownership over the school’s provision in order to win over, ‘their hearts
and minds’ and to make the provision more tailored to their concerns and thus
more meaningful and effective.
188 Ann Childs et al.

Jesus Garcia Jorda

Jesus is a head of the middle school mathematics department in a private,
bilingual K-12 day-school in Beijing, China and one of his responsibilities is to
support the teachers in developing their teaching practices.
Jesus perceives that a key theoretical insight that has changed his profes-
sional thinking and practice as a teacher educator is his reading about Realistic
Teacher Education (Korthagen & Kessels, 1999). After studying Units 1 and 2,
he could see the importance of considering teachers’ beliefs but also believed
that teachers needed to be exposed as part of their professional development
to multiple theoretical perspectives. In planning a teacher education session in
his context on effective teacher questioning in mathematics, he had originally
intended to begin with a variety of theoretical perspectives on best practice in
questioning followed by a sequence of activities that would allow teachers to
practise those theoretical approaches. However, having read about Realistic
Teacher Education, alongside the literature on the importance of eliciting
beliefs, he changed this plan completely, deciding to start instead from the
teachers’ current practice and their beliefs. He was intending to explore these
and seek to understand them better through the use of video-stimulated recall,
spending time analysing and unpicking current practice, before beginning to
introduce any theoretical perspectives.

Robyn Starr
Robyn is a teacher educator working for a charity which places beginning
teachers in schools on 80% timetables from the start of the academic year.
Robyn was most influenced by readings in Unit 1 on teacher beliefs and,
in particular, an article by Pajares (1993) which made her realise that stu-
dent-teachers do not always share their beliefs and it is important to make
them explicit, in order to be able to work effectively with them. She was also
influenced by an article by Joram and Gabriele (1998), which emphasised that
everything beginning teachers do will be filtered through their beliefs. This
made her even more committed to listening to her student teachers, recog-
nising that it is not a case of changing beliefs, but of building on them ‘rather
than tearing them down’.
She reflected on her previous practice in discussions with her student-teach-
ers, when she was listening for things in relation to a set checklist from the
teacher education provider for whom she works: a list which focused on the
nuts and bolt of teaching and involved telling the beginners what to do. After
her reading, she is now focused much more on listening to ‘what’s driving
them’ and why, because she felt that the checklist approach gave them no
 Developing the practice of teacher educators 189

ownership, which she perceived as negatively affecting their commitment to

the teacher education process. So now, when working with her student-teach-
ers she asks lots of questions about them over time, as part of a process of
getting to know and understand them, ultimately in order to work with their
concerns more effectively. As an example, she reflected on a recent discussion
with a student-teacher, in which he espoused beliefs about his commitment
to collaborative practice between students in practical work. In reality, because
of the restrictions imposed in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, the stu-
dents would be socially distanced and sitting in rows, hindering their ability
both to collaborate or to engage in practical work. But because Robyn now
understood his intense commitment to collaborative practice, she worked with
him to explore how, given these constraints, collaboration might work in prac-
tice even though compromises would be needed. Her student teachers have
reported to her that they have enjoyed these conversations and have felt bet-
ter understood and appreciated and Robyn has perceived that they are more
receptive to feedback because, as one of her student-teachers said, this new
approach was like ‘ten years’ worth of therapy’.

The reality: Year 2 Vignettes

Stephen Hearn
I was a Head of Science in a large independent school. I still teach physics at
school and work with adults entering teacher training as well as local, experi-
enced physics teachers. I was a Teacher Network co-ordinator for the Institute
of Physics from the beginning of the project. My focus throughout my time
with the Institute of Physics, was the coaching/teaching of non-specialist phys-
ics teachers. I established a programme of weekend and summer residential
schools, to develop physics knowledge and pedagogy in non-physicists enter-
ing teacher training. This work continues. Since completing the MSc in Teacher
Education, my work has benefitted from further action research projects.
Michael (a pseudonym), the learner teacher with whom I worked in my
research and development project, is a Head of Science and a non-specialist
physics teacher. He had chosen to take on the job of teaching physics for GCSE
(public examinations at 16+), in a department with no physicists. The aim of
the project, was to work in partnership with Michael to develop his subject
matter knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge (Shulman 1986) in
three specific topic areas of the GCSE physics curriculum:

(a) Motion, forces.

(b) Radioactivity.
(c) Electromagnetism.
190 Ann Childs et al.

The work followed many previous conventional professional development epi-

sodes in which Michael had been a passive consumer of my expositions of
physics content. In this project, he had to play a much more active role in the
teacher education process.
The Integrated Model of Teacher Professional Growth (Clarke &
Hollingsworth, 2002), seeks to represent the complex, non-linear way, in which
subject matter knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge are developed
by teachers. An ‘external domain’ contains ideas/experiences which can stim-
ulate change in the teacher’s beliefs and knowledge. Changes in the teacher’s
‘personal domain’ – their knowledge, beliefs or attitudes – can affect prac-
tice in the classroom (‘practice domain’) and long-term growth begins when
new ideas become salient, making changes in the ‘consequences domain’.
The development of change sequences or growth networks across the four
domains occurs as a result of reflection on, or enactment of, changes within
any particular domain. The model helps in the analysis of data collected as you
work with a teacher, but also helps the teacher educator to be more conscious
of the non-linear way that people learn.
I started work in the ‘external domain’, by showing Michael practical physics
demonstrations and discussing models used in the three physics topic areas we
were working on. The novel element was the use of explanation capture soft-
ware to set challenges for Michael to think about. He would have to construct
explanations using the new models we had worked on. These captured explana-
tions were then used by me within a stimulated-recall approach to help Michael
to develop his ideas further and to correct misconceptions. The process worked
because we had a trusting relationship, in which getting explanations wrong
was regarded as a positive experience leading to better understanding. The use
of video-stimulated-video reflection proved very powerful within the project:

(a) as a way of measuring SMK growth;

(b) as a way of showing Michael how explanations are made in physics;
(c) In providing insights into how the external domain should be changed as
we prepared for taught lessons;
(d) as a way of strengthening commitment to the intervention since Michael
started to use it as a formative assessment tool in his own teaching; and
(e) as a way to develop confidence in classroom dialogue with pupils, in
response to Michael’s ambition to include more open and expansive dia-
logue with pupils during physics teaching.

Recent work conducted a year after finishing the above project with Michael,
produced evidence to suggest that he had developed an internal coherent
account (Hillier, 2013) of two of the three topic areas on which we had worked.
He could remember and understand the content explored in all the areas of
physics in which he had faced conceptual difficulties a year earlier. He was still
using and developing the captured explanation method.
 Developing the practice of teacher educators 191

Stuart Farmer
At the time of studying for the MSc in Teacher Education, I was the Head of
Physics in a large secondary school in the north of Scotland. However, along-
side this I had a long history of supporting the professional learning of phys-
ics and science teachers through professional bodies such as the Association
for Science Education and the Institute of Physics. This included a role as the
institute’s Physics Teacher Network Coordinator for the north-east of Scotland,
which involved organising and delivering professional learning support to
teachers of physics (both primary and secondary), in an area where schools
were relatively sparsely spread geographically and relatively remote from the
main population centres.
The MSc allowed me to expand my theoretical understanding of how
teachers learn as well as providing a context to develop, implement and eval-
uate interventions designed to explore and improve the professional learning
of in-service physics teachers.
Firstly, the MSc enabled me to better theorise the process whereby profes-
sional learning activities lead to professional growth in teachers, particularly
through the use of Clarke and Hollingsworth’s (2002) Interconnected Model
of Professional Growth. Secondly, I was able to better theorise teacher knowl-
edge through improving my understanding of the importance of pedagogi-
cal content knowledge and as a result of my introduction to the Knowledge
Quartet (Rowland, 2013). I found the latter particularly useful in providing a
language to describe the sorts of knowledge teachers must develop if they are
to improve their professional capital (Hargreaves & Fullan, 2012) and adaptive
expertise (Berliner, 2004).
In addition, I was also able to draw on research regarding what makes
effective professional learning (Cordingley et al., 2018; Cordingley et al., 2015;
Kennedy, 2016; Timperley et al., 2007). For my research and development pro-
ject, I worked with the physics teachers from eight secondary schools in a rural
area in the north of Scotland to strengthen the networking and peer support
between schools. Since most of the schools had only one or two physics teach-
ers, the aim of developing a Networked Learning Community was to provide
a forum for effective subject-specific professional learning for relatively isolated
teachers, unable to access this easily elsewhere. Members of the Networked
Learning Community met eight times during an academic session, mainly in
the early evening. As well as providing a forum in which to share their own
expertise, it also drew on the input of knowledgeable others to provide new
information and challenge to the status quo.
While my research highlighted the value that the teachers attributed to
such subject-specific professional learning with colleagues, with input from
knowledgeable others, it also revealed that lack of time, excessive workload,
lack of leadership support and conflict with family commitments limited the
192 Ann Childs et al.

success of the community. The research also showed the need for good policy
alignment at local, regional and national levels in order to facilitate professional
learning that would address teachers’ needs in improving their classroom prac-
tices. This is an area I am continuing to research in the context of a part-time
PhD, which I am also using to inform policy and practice in my new role as
Education Manager for the Institute of Physics in Scotland.

Analysis
Is this practical theorising?
The vignettes show strong evidence of the teacher educators engaging in the process
of practical theorising. Steve, for example, an experienced teacher educator became
dissatisfied with his practice when he engaged with Clarke and Hollingsworth’s
(2002) Interconnected Model of Teacher Professional Growth. He concluded
that his own practice was characterised more as ‘conventional’ professional devel-
opment ‘episodes’ in which ‘Michael was a passive consumer of my expositions
of physics content’. As well as allowing Steve to interrogate his own practice, the
Interconnected Model also made him realise that he needed to engage Michael in
different and active ways, and he chose to use video-stimulated recall to support
effective reflection. Setting his own understanding of teacher education against the
Interconnected Model had thus allowed him to ‘be more conscious of the non-lin-
ear way that people learn’. There is also evidence that he drew on other research
and theoretical ideas when he later characterised Michael’s learning as developing
a ‘coherent internal account’ of subject knowledge (Hillier, 2013) as it gave him a
language to describe Michael’s learning.
Stuart is likewise a highly experienced teacher and teacher educator with rich
contextual knowledge within Scottish physics education. He talks about theoretical
perspectives enabling him to ‘better theorise the process whereby professional learn-
ing activities lead to professional growth in teachers’ and ‘to better theorise teacher
knowledge through improving my understanding of the importance of pedagogical
content knowledge and by introducing me to the Knowledge Quartet (Rowland,
2013)’. This process by which Stuart relates his extensive contextual knowledge to
theory, is resonant of practical theorising. It developed both his professional thinking
about teacher learning, and his practice through his research and development pro-
ject, which focussed on the facilitation of physics teachers’ learning through the use
of knowledgeable others. As with Steve, the introduction of theoretical perspectives
on teacher knowledge provided Stuart with ‘a language to describe the sorts of
knowledge teachers must develop’.
What is striking about the three vignettes from Year 1 is that theoretical perspec-
tives, principally from Unit 1, seem to have focused the teacher educators’ gaze on
their learner teachers and the need to understand their beliefs and practices when
working with them. For Robyn, this has changed the ways in which she listens and
 Developing the practice of teacher educators 193

responds to her learner teachers to give them agency, allowing her to respond more
educatively to their current understandings and beliefs, rather than imposing her
own agenda and that of their teacher education programme on them. For Jenny, as
well as helping her to understand the importance of starting with her learners’ voices,
the Interconnected Model (Clarke & Hollingsworth, 2002) also helped her under-
stand the complexity of effecting teacher growth, something she had previously
found challenging and frustrating. Jesus seems to be more focused on starting with
his learner teachers’ practice and working with them to understand their current
practice in questioning using video-stimulated reflection. What is significant from
his vignette, however, is the way in which a theoretical perspective on teacher learn-
ing, Realistic Teacher Education (Korthagen & Kessels, 1999), completely changed
his original plans to work with them. Weighing up his own contextual knowledge
of these teachers, in light of Realistic Teacher Education, he decided to begin with
the teachers’ current practice and move forward from there, rather than starting with
more theoretical perspectives about teacher questioning. Each of these examples thus
provides evidence of how the teacher educators, drawing on their own contextual
understanding and practice, and setting them alongside key theoretical perspectives
through the process of practical theorising, have found fruitful ways forward for
working with and developing their learner teachers.
What do the vignettes suggest about changes in the knowledge base of these
teacher educators has developed? Clearly there is evidence, as Loughran (2008) sug-
gests, of the development of ‘a knowledge of learning about teaching’ (p. 1180) and
of their contextual knowledge of the adult learners they are educating (Goodwin &
Kosnick, 2013). The vignettes offer, for example, evidence of the teacher educa-
tors’ greater understanding of their learner teachers’ beliefs and practices in context
(Robyn, Jesus and Jenny); of their misconceptions of physics concepts (Steve); of
why teacher may resist opportunities to learn (Jenny); and of what type of learning
they value (Stuart). Furthermore, there is evidence of how they have developed a
knowledge of teaching about teaching (Loughran, 2008, p. 1180). Steve and Jesus,
for example, used video-stimulated recall, a strategy that Steve later developed in
his research and development project. Robyn and Jenny developed skills of listening
to their learner teachers and responding to their voices, and Stuart developed the
strategy of working with knowledgeable others within his teacher network. Finally,
Jenny and Robyn, in particular, developed their affective and emotional knowledge
by building effective relationships with their learner teachers, through showing sen-
sitivity for the latter’s perspectives and voices, which they both report as contribut-
ing to building trust (Loughran, 2006).

In what ways is practical theorising different for teacher educators?

The previous section has provided some evidence that these five teacher educators
are engaged in practical theorising and that this has developed their professional
thinking and practice. Is, however, what we have characterised as practical theorising
194 Ann Childs et al.

different from that of beginning teachers in relation to our four lines of inquiry?
A key difference, in relation to the first, is that the five vignettes show the teacher
educators drawing on their own contextualised knowledge (developed as teachers
and teacher educators over time), which has been enhanced and further developed
through the inquiry tasks conducted with their learner teachers. This contrasts with
the early experiences of student-teachers within Internship who have little con-
textualised knowledge of teaching and learning on which to draw as they embark
on their school placements, and so are encouraged to draw on that of their men-
tors and the other experienced teachers working with them. Our second line of
inquiry focused on concerns raised by Furlong and Maynard (1995) about whether
interns can really engage in practical theorising, given their lack of knowledge and
experience. Unsurprisingly, these concerns do not seem to apply in relation to the
teacher educators’ vignettes; nor is there any evidence, in relation to our third line
of inquiry, of the teacher educators eschewing theory. They are all enthusiastic to
engage with it. Both differences can be explained by the teacher educators’ experi-
ence and motivations to undertake the MSc. Although some are less experienced as
teacher educators than others, they all come with confidence in their expertise as
teachers in their own contexts and in their own knowledge of teaching. In addition,
they have deliberately applied for a Master’s programme, with the explicit inten-
tion, explained by many at interview, of engaging with theoretical perspectives in
order to develop their professional thinking and practice in the academic setting
of a university. What is noticeable, however, is that certain theoretical perspectives,
presented during the course of the taught units, became more resonant with each
of them. This is not to say that they rejected other perspectives presented to them,
just that some proved more relevant and fruitful in terms of offering insights for
their developing thinking. For Steve and Stuart, this happened when they focused
on their research and development project. For Robyn, Jenny and Jesus, the reve-
lation in Unit 1 of the importance of starting with the beliefs and understanding
of the beginning teachers endured, despite all the other theoretical perspectives
offered in Units 2 and 3. Our final line of inquiry deals with the issues of power
that student-teachers face when they are presented with perspectives by their men-
tors in school that conflict with those of their university-based tutors. Again, there
is little evidence that the teacher educators have experienced issues related to their
own powerlessness or perceptions of the need to comply, like those discussed by
Ellis (2010) in the context of student-teachers’ learning. If the teacher educators do
encounter conflicts between their own contextualised knowledge and the theoret-
ical perspectives they are offered, they are less likely to be in a position where they
feel obliged to ‘please’ anyone. They could, furthermore, deal with any such conflict
by choosing not to engage with it, opting not to follow a particular theoretical
line because it does not seem fruitful for them. We do know, however, that some
deliberately chose to engage with models that challenged their existing knowledge
and assumptions. In Steve’s case, for example, the Interconnected Model (Clarke &
Hollingsworth, 2002), seriously challenged ‘conventional’ professional development
practices – a challenge that he embraced, leading to significant development in his
professional thinking and practice.
 Developing the practice of teacher educators 195

Practical theorising for teacher educators – a final reflection

In summary, the vignettes provide clear evidence of practical theorising in the
learning of these teacher educators. The fact that many of the critiques of practical
theorising, raised by Furlong and Maynard (1995) and by Ellis (2010) in relation
to beginning teachers, do not apply to this group, makes it much easier for them
to engage in the process, which has much in common with the ideas of ‘self-study’
(Dinkelman, 2003; Loughran, 2004) and ‘inquiry as stance’ (Cochran-Smith & Lytle,
1999). Indeed, some of the teacher educators on the course have continued to
engage in inquiry, in collaboration with others, leading to publication of their work,
although this has been the exception rather than the rule.This analysis has prompted
us to consider how we can use the Masters programme more fully to embed the
processes of practical theorising into the teacher educators’ routine ways of working,
setting them on a life-long path of inquiry and self-study in collaboration with their
peers, rather than seeing the MSc as an end in itself. We can model this process for
them in terms of our own work as the teachers of teacher educators, using some
of the research approaches of self-study, to take forward our own research agenda.
Here, our interests focus on the knowledge base required of teacher educators,
particularly those working, as we do, to support practical theorising among such a
diverse cohort of learners, engaged in very different professional contexts.

References
Barnett, J., & Hodson, D. (2001). Pedagogical context knowledge:Toward a fuller understand-
ing of what good science teachers know. Science Education, 85, 426–453.
Berliner, D. C. (2004). Describing the behavior and documenting the accomplishments of
expert teachers. Bulletin of Science,Technology & Society, 24(3), 200–212.
Cochran, K. F., King, R. A., & DeRuiter, J. A. (1993). Pedagogical content knowledge: An
integrative model for teacher preparation. Journal of Teacher Education, 44(4), 263–272.
Cochran-Smith, M. (2003) Learning and unlearning: The education of teacher educators.
Teaching and Teacher Education, 19, 5–28.
Cochran-Smith, M., & Lytle, S. (1999). Relationship of knowledge and practice: Teacher
learning in communities. In A. Iran-Nejad & C. D. Pearson (Eds.), Review of Research in
Education, 24. Washington, DC: AERA, 249–306.
Clarke, D., & Hollingsworth, H. (2002). Elaborating a model of teacher professional growth.
Teaching and Teacher Education, 18, 947–967.
Cordingley, P., Greany, T., Crisp, B., Seleznyov, S., Bradbury, M., & Perry, T. (2018). Developing
Great Subject Teaching: Rapid Evidence Review of Subject-specific CPD in the UK. London:
Wellcome Trust.
Cordingley, P. Higgins, S., Greany, T., Buckler, N., Coles-Jordan, D., Crisp, B., Saunders, L., &
Coe, R. (2015). Developing Great Teaching: Lessons from the International Reviews into Effective
Professional Development. London: Teacher Development Trust.
Dinkelman, T. (2003). Self-study in teacher education: A means and ends tool for promoting
reflective teaching. Journal of Teacher Education, 54(1), 6–18.
Furlong, J., & Maynard, T. (1995). Mentoring Student Teachers: The Growth of Professional
Knowledge. London: Routledge.
Ellis, V. (2010). Impoverishing experience: The problem of teacher education in England.
Journal of Education for Teaching, 36(1), 105–120.
196 Ann Childs et al.

Ellis,V., & McNicholl, J. (2015). Transforming Teacher Education: Reconfiguring the Academic Work.
London: Bloomsbury.
Goodwin,A.L.,& Kosnick,C.(2013).Quality teacher educators = quality teachers? Conceptualising
essential domains of knowledge for those who teach teachers. Teacher Development, 17(3),
334–346.
Hargreaves, A., & Fullan, M. (2012). Professional Capital: Transforming Teaching in Every School.
Abingdon: Routledge.
Hillier, J. (2013). How does that work? Developing pedagogical content knowledge from
subject knowledge. Teacher Education and Practice, 26(2), 323–340.
Hobson, A. J., Malderez, A., Tracey, L., Giannakaki, M. S., Kerr, K., Pell, R. G., Chambers, G.
N., Tomlinson, P. D., & Roper, T. (2006). Becoming a Teacher: Student Teachers’ Experiences of
Initial Teacher Training in England (Research Report RR744). Nottingham: Department for
Education and Skills.
Joram, E., & Gabriele, A. J. (1998). Preservice teachers’ prior beliefs: Transforming obstacles
into opportunities. Teaching and Teacher Education, 14(2), 175–191.
Kennedy, M. M. (2016). How does professional development improve teaching? Review of
Educational Research, 86(4), 945–980.
Korthagen, F. A., & Kessels, J. P. A. M. (1999). Linking theory and practice: Changing the
pedagogy of teacher education. Educational Researcher, 28(4), 4–17.
Loughran, J. J. (2004). A history and context of self-study of teaching and teacher edu-
cation practices. In J. J. Loughran, M. L. Hamilton, V. K. LaBoskey, & T. Russell (Eds.),
International Handbook of Self-Study of Teaching and Teacher Education Practices. Dordrecht,
The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic, 7–30.
Loughran, J. (2006). Developing a Pedagogy of Teacher Education: Understanding Uteaching and
Learning about Teaching. Abingdon: Routledge (Chapter 6, Principles of practice).
Loughran, J. (2008). Toward a better understanding of teaching and learning about teaching.
In M. Cochran-Smith, S. Feiman-Nemser, & J. McIntryre (Eds.), Handbook of Research on
Teacher Education: Enduring Questions in Changing Contexts, 3rd edition. New York: Routledge,
1177–1182.
Lunenberg, M., Korthagen, F., & Swennen, A. (2007). The teacher educator as a role model.
Teaching and Teacher Education, 23(5), 586–601.
Murray, J., & Male, T. (2005). Becoming a teacher educator: Evidence from the field. Teaching
and Teacher Education, 21(2), 125–142.
Pajares, F. (1993). Preservice teachers’ beliefs: A focus for teacher education. Action in Teacher
Education, 15(2), 45–54.
Pinnegar, S. (1998). Methodological perspectives: Introduction. In M. L. Hamilton, S. Pinnegar,
T. Russell, J. Loughran, & V. Boskey (Eds.), Reconceptualizing Teaching Practice: Self-Study in
Teacher Education. London: Falmer, 31–33.
Rowland, T. (2013). The knowledge quartet: The genesis and application of a framework for
analysing mathematics teaching and deepening teachers’ mathematics knowledge. Journal
of Education, 1(3), 15–43.
Shulman, L. S. (1986). Those who understand: Knowledge growth in teaching. Educational
Researcher, 15(2), 4–14.
Timperley, H.,Wilson,A., Barrar, H., & Fung, I. (2007). Teacher Professional Learning and Development
Best Evidence Synthesis Iteration [BES].Wellington: New Zealand Ministry of Education.
van Velzen, C., van der Klink, M., Swennen, A., & Yaffe, E. (2010).The induction and needs of
beginning teacher educators. Professional Development in Education, 36(1–2), 61–75.
Zeichner, K. (2005). Becoming a teacher educator: A personal perspective. Teaching and Teacher
Education, 21(2), 117–124.
SECTION 4
Practical theorising beyond
initial teacher education
12
SUSTAINING PRACTICAL THEORISING
AS THE BASIS FOR PROFESSIONAL
LEARNING AND SCHOOL
DEVELOPMENT

Katharine Burn and Eluned Harries

When McIntyre embraced the term ‘practical theorising’ to encapsulate the process
by which student-teachers should engage with research-based ideas in the context
of classroom practice, he did so, in part, because he regarded it as a ‘more helpful for-
mulation than the more fashionable emphasis in recent years on reflection’ (McIntyre,
1995, p. 366). It was precisely because beginning teachers had so little previous
experience on which to reflect that they needed to draw on ideas from many
other sources, including both the ‘elucidated practice of experienced teachers’ and
‘a diverse theoretical and research-based literature’. Experienced teachers, however,
according to McIntyre, could be expected to learn very effectively through critical
reflection. Indeed, he suggested that reflection on their own experience was likely
to be ‘experienced teachers’ most important way of learning professionally’ (ibid.)
Such an assumption has been profoundly challenged in the 25 years that have
since elapsed, both by widespread demands for teaching to become a research-based
(Hargreaves, 1996) – or at least an evidence-informed (Nelson & Campbell, 2017) –
profession and by consistent findings pointing to the vital contribution of specialist
expertise (including research-based knowledge) to forms of continuing professional
development that have a positive impact on pupil outcomes (Cordingley, 2015).The
call for continued research engagement to be seen as central to teachers’ professional
identity and practice has been made not only by organisations such as the British
Educational Research Association (2014), with an obvious interest in promoting the
role of research in teachers’ professional development and school improvement, but
also by teachers themselves through formal bodies, such as the Chartered College
of Teaching (recognised, in its new charter of 2017, as the professional body for the
teaching profession in the UK) and grassroots initiatives such as the researchED
movement.
In 2013, the University of Oxford and its local partnership schools formally
demonstrated their commitment to supporting teachers’ continued engagement
DOI: 10.4324/9781003183945-17
200 Katharine Burn and Eluned Harries

with educational research by establishing the Oxford Education Deanery as means

of incorporating two additional strands into their exiting collaborative work: a focus
on early career teachers’ professional learning and a commitment to knowledge
exchange through various kinds of research collaboration. An essential feature of
the new partnership is as the role of ‘research champion’, a designated teacher who
acts as a conduit between their school and the university, facilitating collaborative
research and promoting teachers’ research engagement. This chapter, co-authored
by the co-ordinator of the Deanery and a school-based research champion, draws
on their experience over the past eight years and on two separate research projects
(among many in which the school has participated) to present a detailed case study
of the way in which practical theorising has been systematically embedded within
the school’s professional development and school improvement policies, examining
how this has been achieved and the kind of impact it has had.

The limitations of learning from experience alone

McIntyre’s (1995) assumption that reflection on their own experience was likely
to be the most important way in which established teachers would go on learning
professionally was borne out by subsequent research carried out with graduates
of the Oxford Internship Scheme as they embarked on their professional careers.
The Developing Expertise of Beginning Teachers project, a collaborative study con-
ducted at the turn of the millennium by researchers from Oxford and Cambridge
(where McIntyre had moved as Head of the Faculty of Education), tracked 24 new
teachers through their first two years of professional practice, examining what and
how they claimed to be learning. The teachers were interviewed at the beginning
and end of each year and once each term following an observed lesson, with ques-
tions focused on their planning and interactive decision-making and on any new
professional learning of which they were aware (as reflected in the specific lesson
observed or more generally in their practice). As we had expected, among all the
sources to which they attributed any specific instance of learning, ‘experience’ stood
out as the most frequently mentioned. Indeed, by the end of the teachers’ second
year in practice, experience came close to eclipsing all the others, accounting for
86% of all the instances for which a source was suggested (Burn et al., 2010). Most
of the other instances were attributed to sources within their school (such as advice
or suggestions from colleagues); only 4% were specifically attributed to sources
beyond the school context, such as research or professional literature, or to any kind
of professional development programme.
While the predominance of personal experience as a source of early career
teachers’ continued professional learning is unsurprising, it appears to present a
serious challenge to the idea of teaching as a research-based or research-informed
practice. What is the value of promoting research use within teacher preparation
programmes, if qualified teachers make little, if any, reference to research thereafter?
Yet, it is important neither to overstate the problem, nor to overlook other, more
nuanced findings related to the learning of early career teachers. The data collected
 The basis for professional learning and school development 201

in the Developing Expertise of Beginning Teacher project (Burn et al., 2010) only
reflected what the teachers claimed about their learning. Since professional knowl-
edge is above all ‘knowledge for action’ (Buchmann, 1984) – requiring enactment in
practice (Shulman, 1998) – it necessarily has a strong experiential dimension. From
whatever source and by whatever route new insights into students’ learning or new
suggestions for classroom practice actually reach teachers, it is only in the processes
of planning, teaching and evaluation that such insights come together in action and
thus acquire meaning. In many instances of learning (including those not attributed
to any particular source), it is likely that the source of the idea will be less relevant
and thus less memorable to the teacher than the outcome of its actual use. Thus
the early career teachers may well have under-estimated their reliance on research-
based suggestions for practice.
It was also clear from the data that ‘learning from experience’ actually meant
very different things to the early career teachers, and that those differences had
an important impact on their capacity to go on learning, particularly in contexts
that provided poor support for early career professional development. The most
important differences in the teachers’ oientations towards learning from experi-
ence were found to lie in their levels of aspiration (expressed in terms of their own
continued learning and/or their ambitions for their students); the extent to which
they planned deliberately for their own learning; and in the frames of reference on
which they drew in seeking to make sense of their classroom experience (Hagger
et al., 2008; Mutton et al., 2010). Those for whom ‘reflection on practice’ meant
an exclusive focus on their own classroom practice found it much more difficult
to go on learning productively than those who looked beyond their practice (to
colleagues and peers; to heads of department/faculty; to professional journals; to
subject associations; to engagement in research studies) in order to make sense of
it (Burn et al., 2010). Indeed, by the end of the longitudinal research study, it had
become clear that those teachers with high aspirations who lacked the capacity to
plan deliberately for their learning and to draw on other sources in that process
were most disposed towards a sense of disillusionment, and were beginning in one
or two cases to question whether they wanted to remain within the profession. In
contrast, those who were drawing on wider frames of reference, including research
studies disseminated through subject associations and their professional journals,
were already demonstrating the capacity not only to pursue their own ambitions
for students’ learning but also to begin transforming the learning culture of their
departments, taking other teachers with them.

The Oxford Education Deanery: extending practical theorising

beyond initial teacher education
These findings obviously predate significant initiatives of different kinds over the
past decade to make the vision of research-informed teaching a reality, but they help
to explain why the University of Oxford was so keen to explore ways of extending
our long-established initial teacher education (ITE) partnership into the early years
202 Katharine Burn and Eluned Harries

of professional practice and beyond. The need for beginning teachers to develop
‘adaptive expertise’ (Berliner, 2001) rather than mere competency in enacting rou-
tine practices was (as explained in Chapter 1 of this volume) one of the fundamental
drivers in establishing the partnership’s commitment to practical theorising. But the
value of learning to thinking critically about current practice – examining whether
and why it was proving to be effective within a particular context – would be of
limited value if the teachers who engaged in such reflection failed to draw on new
or more relevant research than that to which they had been introduced in their ITE
programe. In 2010, the university therefore began to explore with local headteach-
ers the idea of extending the PGCE partnership to become a multi-layered knowl-
edge exchange partnership (Fancourt et al., 2015; Burn et al., 2020). As the idea
of ‘knowledge exchange’ implies, the idea of an extended partnership came to be
seen as a means of strengthening both the university’s capacity to engage in research
of direct relevance to the schools within its local community and the capacity of
teachers within those schools (at all levels) to make productive use of that research
and of the other research resources to which the university could provide access.
The scope for this kind of extended collaboration was first discussed in 2010 at
a meeting of local headteachers with members of the university. Ideas took shape
gradually through discussions with different stakeholders before the formal launch
of the Oxford Education Deaney in 2013 (Fancourt et al., 2015). Membership at
the start was limited to the state-funded secondary schools in Oxford that already
worked together under the banner of ‘Oxford City Learning’, but within two years
the invitation to join was extended to all the schools within the PGCE partnership.
While the ITE programme continues to serve as the foundation of the partnership,
there are now, therefore, two additional strands to the work of the Deanery. The
first comprises various forms of professional development that engage teachers in
and with research. The second is university-based research, which invovles schools
and teachers in a range of ways, from acting as full research partners to membership
of project advisory boards. The aims within each of the three areas of activity are
also linked, centring on supporting schools as research-rich environments, both for
student-teachers and experienced practitioners, while also enabling conversations
across these activities which can guide the edcuational relevance of the university’s
research (Burn et al., 2020).
The broader arguments for promoting career-long research enagement are well
summarised in the final report of a BERA-RSA Inquiry into the specific contribu-
tion that research could make to improving the quality of teaching:

In an environment in which teachers (and parents) are bombarded with asser-

tions about “what is good for children” and other learners, high quality edu-
cational research and enquiry has a key role to play. It can enable practitioners
to distinguish myth from reality and help identify strategies that have the best
chance of success in the contexts in which they work. Research provides a
rich source of evidence for teachers, school leaders, teacher educators and
policymakers… The findings are clear: in the UK and elsewhere, teachers’
 The basis for professional learning and school development 203

research literacy and opportunities for engagement in the research process

correlate closely with the quality of teaching and, through this, with student
outcomes. For this reason, schools and colleges need to be research-rich envi-
ronments that promote and enhance teachers’ research literacy and that open
up opportunities for teacher engagement in the research and enquiry process.
(BERA-RSA, 2014, p. 11)

As the report went on to argue, the establishment of such research-rich environ-

ments calls for a systemic approach, which is what the Oxford Education Deanery
seeks to provide. It is intended to operate as a ‘third space’ (Gutiérrez, 2008) where
the distinctive knowledge and expertise of each of the different partners is acknowl-
edged, discussed and built upon, thereby carrying forward key ideas embedded in
McIntyre’s notion of ‘practical theorising’. Within the Deanery, our intention is
to ensure that ‘pedagogic research is informed by on-the-ground assumptions of
dilemmas arising from national policies or curriculum changes, and school strate-
gies are informed by easy access to the latest research on, for example, assessment or
inclusion’ (Burn et al., 2020, p. 617).
A critical component of this system is the role of the ‘research champion’ a
teacher formally identified by each school to act as the main point of contact
between the school and the university’s Department of Education in relation to
research collaboration. The research champions all hold the status of ‘Academic
Visitor’ in relation to the university, enabling them to access all its libraries (includ-
ing its online collections and journal subscriptions). Each champion is encouraged
to join with those from other schools in formal meetings three times a year, with
university staff, as well as creating their own informal networks and attending the
twice-yearly research exchange meetings hosted by the Deanery and open to all
school colleagues. Recent collaborative research into the intentions and actions of
the research champions, within and beyond their own school contexts, has revealed
a great deal about the nature of their work and the different kinds of role that they
are able to play (that will be discussed below), but in early publicity materials pro-
duced by the university it was suggested that they would support their colleagues’
engagement in and with research by helping them to ‘ask the right question/s,
to access relevant publications, and to design and carry out their own small-scale
research projects’.
Beyond the research champions themselves – but always promoted, facilitated
and sometimes co-led by them – the Deanery has offered all teachers a range of
opportunities for research-engaged professional learning, including an induction
programme for newly qualified teachers, various action research programmes and
an ‘enhanced’ component for teachers undertaking the university’s Master’s in
Learning and Teaching. A wide range of research projects (related, for example,
to teacher collaboration and its impact on pupil outcomes; assessment in modern
languages; supporting EAL learners in science; effective classroom talk in mathe-
matics; pupils’ sense of connectedness to school) have been carried out in collabora-
tion with member schools, again guided and facilitated by the research champions.
204 Katharine Burn and Eluned Harries

In the work of the research champions, the Deanery has thus sought to emphasise
the relational aspects of practitioner engagement with research and researchers. Its
knowledge exchange model breaks down the assumptions that research is simply a
process carried out by others ‘on’ pupils or teachers, and that it can be simply ‘trans-
lated’ for the use of practitioners. It implies two-way processes that are both ‘messier
and more transformative’ (Penuel et al., 2015, p. 183).

Matthew Arnold school: a case-study of practical theorising

within the Oxford Education Deanery
Having explained why the Oxford Education Deanery was established, we switch
focus at various points in the sections that follow to explain the ways in which
members of the Deanery worked and to focus on experiences in the single case-
study school in which Eluned works. At certain points, Eluned draws (in the first
person) on recollections of her experience as a research champion over the past
eight years and on briefing materials that she produced for colleagues within school
and across the multi-academy trust that the school joined with others to establish in
2017. These personal insights are set alongside the findings of two research projects
in which Eluned and some of her colleagues participated, one focusing directly on
the work of the research champions and the other looking more broadly at research
use in schools. Here Eluned begins by explaining why she worked so enthusiasti-
cally to promote the idea of the Deanery when it was first proposed.

The school's rationale for joining the Deanery

Matthew Arnold School is a relatively small, co-educational secondary school
and sixth form, located just west of Oxford, with around 1,100 pupils on role.
In 2013, when the Deanery was formally established, it was a community school,
administered by the local education authority (Oxfordshire County Council). Its
long-standing partnership with the University of Oxford through Internship dated
back to the late 1980s, while its strong links with other local schools had recently
been formalised through its membership of ‘Oxford City Learning’.
After several years of working as a ‘professional tutor’ within the Internship pro-
gramme, with oversight of the whole group of student-teachers undertaking their
partnership placements in the school and responsibility for their ‘professional devel-
opment programme’, I assumed a new role in 2013, as an assistant head with the
following responsibilities:

• Leading the development of effective teaching and learning across the school
• Leading, developing and assuring the quality of a programme of professional
learning for teachers
• Leading and managing an induction programme for newly qualified teach-
ers, with an associated responsibility (as Induction Tutor) for the assessment of
those teachers
 The basis for professional learning and school development 205

• Contributing to the development of teaching quality by supporting individual

staff and participating in leadership team activities to monitor the quality of
teaching and learning

At that point, the staff body was characterised (as it still is) by a strongly collabo-
rative culture and our main strategies for developing teaching capacity included a
process of sharing effective practice through School Improvement Groups; allowing
staff to attend a number of external short courses; and, occasionally, bringing in
outside speakers for presentations on staff training days. My impression was that we
were not always focussing on what mattered most in improving student outcomes
and that we lacked a system for ensuring that best practices were embedded in
classrooms. However, our culture of collaboration, our commitment to continuous
improvement and our capacity to work in partnership with others gave me confi-
dence that we could hone our approach to make a difference where it mattered – in
every classroom.
Crucially, my ambition was for the practices developed by all teachers to be evi-
dence-based and for all teachers to be reflective practitioners. To fulfil these aims,
our school needed to engage collectively with external research, while also making
it possible for individual teachers, at a number of levels, to explore and improve their
own classroom practice, which would, in turn, inform whole school approaches.
The particular attraction of working within the Deanery lay in the support that it
appeared to provide for a systematic approach to creating a professional learning
community, enabling me to look both ‘outwards’ and ‘inwards’. The former was
important in identifying what we could usefully learn from wide-ranging, rigor-
ous, research studies and meta-analyses, as well as smaller-scale investigations of
practice in contexts similar to our own. The latter would help us to focus on tack-
ling the particular challenges that our teachers faced and to test the innovative
approaches that some were capable of generating through disciplined investigation
into their own practice. I therefore agreed to take on the role of research champion
for Matthew Arnold and assumed responsibility for developing research-led practice
within the school by working with external partners. Before explaining exactly how
I took this work forward within the school, we outline the shared goals that research
champions across the partnership embraced and the different ways in which they
worked to achieve them.

The work of research champions across the Oxford Education Deanery

Subsequent research (Burn et al., 2020) that we conducted into the work of research
champions (after the Deanery had been operating for five years), based on data col-
lected across nine member schools over an 18-month period, has given us valuable
insights into their strategic intentions and the kinds of actions that they took to
achieve them. On six or seven occasions between November 2017 and May 2019,
each of the champions used a self-report pro forma or template to record all the
actions involved in a particular activity that they had recently undertaken and to
206 Katharine Burn and Eluned Harries

indicate how those actions connected to their strategic goals as research champions.
Thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006) of the 59 completed templates undertaken
by the present authors, along with one other university-based colleague and a second
research champion, revealed two broad strategic aims: the creation of a ‘research cul-
ture’ in school and the promotion of research-informed professional development.
The research champions’ conception of a ‘research culture’ is perhaps most pow-
erfully captured in one champion’s vision of a school context ‘in which asking “What
does the research say about this?” has become normal’. At a strategic level, two kinds
of approach informed the actions that champions adopted in pursuit of this goal: one
concerned with the mobilisation of relevant knowledge, for example by collating
the findings of different kinds of research already being carried out in the school,
inviting in local researchers and drafting blogs or newsletters for colleagues; the
other focused on supporting research-informed professional development. Here the
research champions worked on different scales, depending on their position within
the school, with some able to shape the content and format of whole-school pro-
grammes and others working within their own subject departments or establishing
voluntary groups, such as a ‘film club’ in which teachers discussed video clips of their
own practice, in which they explored strategies suggested by research.
The actions that the research champions took in pursuit of these two strategic
goals fell into three broad categories: those focused on developing their own knowl-
edge and expertise in the role; those focused on working with colleagues to connect
research with practice within the school community; and those that involved con-
tributing to the wider community of research-based education. Champions spent
considerable time finding and reading research, not only examining it critically
before sharing it with others, but often also engaging in their own practical exper-
imentation to begin testing the feasibility of the recommended strategies. Activities
intended to help colleagues to connect research with practice included those with
a wide reach (but perhaps limited impact), such as regular research newsletters or
even direct presentations to students (about important aspects of learning, such as
metacognition, for example); and those that were much more precisely targeted,
such as the encouragement to an individual to participate in the city-wide ‘action
research fellowship’ co-ordinated by the Deanery, or to enrol in the university’s
‘enhanced’ Master’s in Learning and Teaching. Active contributions to the wider
community of research-based education included further encouragement of those
who had participated in such programmes to share their findings more widely
(through the Deanery’s ‘Research Meets); participation in university-led research
projects, and introducing their colleagues to university researchers who shared their
interests or could address their particular questions.
Eluned’s own work as a research champion was obviously reflected in these find-
ings, but in order to demonstrate in more detail the nature of her own vision for her
school as a professional learning community and the way in which she worked with
the support of the Deanery to achieve that vision, she draws now on the text of a
presentation that she drafted in 2017 (for other head teachers within the school’s
newly established multi-academy trust).
 The basis for professional learning and school development 207

The work of creating a research culture and promoting research-

informed professional development at Matthew Arnold School
The professional learning community that I sought to create was based on the same
vision of the teaching profession as a self-improving system that had underpinned
the report of the BERA-RSA (2014). Our school-based professional community
should be constantly and collectively engaged in building its knowledge base and
expertise. While this implies a commitment to sharing what we recognise as ‘best
practice’ and ensuring that it is actually embedded in every classroom, it also means
giving teachers the freedom to investigate issues of concern to them within their
classes, to experiment and develop the ‘next practice’ that we will also need. I there-
fore sought to combine high expectations of individual teachers as professionals
with carefully structured, systematic forms of support. Figure 12.1, a diagram that
I shared with colleagues on a regular basis, illustrates the range of ways in which I
encouraged teachers to ‘branch out’ exploring in detail what exactly was happening
in their own classrooms, while simultaneously drawing on wider sources of knowl-
edge, including their colleagues and external research.
I regarded our partnership with the Deanery across all three strands of its work as
one of the most important ways of achieving the balance that I sought.Through the
process of practical theorising embedded in its ITE programme, it provided us with
the right sort of entrants to the profession; through its various professional develop-
ment programmes, it offered well-structured learning pathways for individuals; and
through the connections that it provided to other schools and to research networks,
it enabled us to look outwards as well as inwards.

Keep the
students front
and centre

Get advice, get Inquire into my

ideas own practice

Check that what

Commit to
I actually do in
working with
class aligns with
colleagues
My role as a my values
professionals
is to…

Connect with
research Surprise myself
evidence

Sift what works Model the

from what change I want to
doesn’t see

FIGURE 12.1 The vision of a teaching professional promoted in Matthew Arnold School.
208 Katharine Burn and Eluned Harries

The action research fellowships and ‘enhanced’ Masters in Learning and

Teaching both allow teachers to pursue issues of concern to them as individuals,
while also ensuring that they are connected to wider research networks. While I
have never sought to dictate the focus of any individual teacher’s research project,
taking a deliberate interest in the issues that they have chosen to pursue has played
a crucial role in alerting me to the ‘next practices’ on which the school might
profitably focus. Two examples serve to illustrate this point. The first was a small-
scale action research project undertaken by a member of our support staff seeking
to understand how we could sustain the attendance of students from socio-eco-
nomically disadvantaged backgrounds, whom we knew to be at risk of increasing
marginalisation, tending to absent themselves more often as they moved up the
school. The simple device that she used of conducting a short interview with a
small number of Year 7 students on each occasion when they returned to school
after an absence not only alerted us to the power of individual conversations and to
the ways in which we framed improvement targets to make them seem accessible
and worthwhile; it also prompted the university to work with Deanery schools
on a larger-scale study of the factors that contributed to young people’s sense of
connectedness to school. A more formal project within the ‘enhanced’ Masters’
programme focused on metacognition in the context of computing, combined
with what I had already learned from other small-scale projects across the Deanery,
helped to sow the seeds for a subsequent whole-school focus on metacognition.
When senior staff were later prompted by me to engage with the recommenda-
tions of the guidance report of ‘Metacognition and Self-Regulated Learning’ published
by the Education Endowment Foundation (Quigley et al., 2019), they claimed that
could make sense of the strategies it proposed because they had already seen them
being taken up in school.
This second example illustrates the power of combining a more systematic
top-down approach with the more open, or idiosyncratic, bottom-up strategy of
allowing individuals to pursue their own concerns. But it is important to note that
the systems that I steered from the top continued to represent a critical and ques-
tioning approach to the use of research. In embracing this focus on metacognition
as a whole school priority for improving the quality of learning and teaching
(as we did in 2019, following a previous emphasis on providing effective feed-
back), we employed a system of filtering or ‘shredding’. The basic principles were
shared with all staff (through scheduled professional development sessions as well
as through regular blogs and newsletters), but departmental and pastoral teams
were also explicitly invited to test and refine those principles, as they played out
in relation to their own subjects or contexts, and to feed their reflections back
through their representatives in our School Improvement Groups. It is a devolved
model in which responsibility for professional learning lies with the team leaders
who are responsible for establishing the subject- or phase-specific criteria against
which practice should be evaluated. These criteria go on to play a crucial role in
the process of triangulation by which the senior leadership then review the princi-
ples in operation, drawing on the regular monitoring and evaluation data that they
 The basis for professional learning and school development 209

collected, including lesson observations, learning walks, student and staff surveys
and – ultimately – examination results.

The nature of teachers' engagement in and with research across the

school
So far in this account, we have focused on the strategic intentions and actions of
the research champions across the partnership, and on the specific ways in which
Eluned worked in that role and, as a senior leader, was able to shape both the teach-
ing and learning policies of the school and the nature of its professional develop-
ment programme. In order to explore the impact of that work across the school and
more specifically the ways in which teachers actually engaged with and in research,
we turn in the final section of this paper to findings from another research project
(Burn, Fancourt and Klose, 2017) also conducted by the Deanery, looking explic-
itly at research use in schools – which illustrate the extent to which the principles
of practical theorising have come to underpin not only the school’s development
planning but teachers’ professional learning at all career stages.
Matthew Arnold was one of four schools that took part in the study, which
deliberately included two cases of schools that explicitly identified themselves as
research-engaged and two that did not. The intention of the study was to explore
the ways in which research and research use were conceptualised within the dif-
ferent schools and the main data took the form of semi-structured interviews con-
ducted with eight teachers in each school, including the head (or a nominated
representative), the senior teacher with responsibility for professional learning, three
heads of subject departments/faculties and three main-scale teachers. Copies of any
written policies or documented initiatives related to research engagement that were
mentioned in the course of the interviews (or as we negotiated access to the school)
were also collected and analysed. The findings reported here relate to perceptions
and practices within Matthew Arnold School, focusing on the perspectives of the
deputy head, the subject leaders and main-scale teachers.
The strength of the research culture that we found in the school can be summed
up by the deputy head’s declaration that ‘research is an essential part of what we do’.
His vision of learning from research included both a deep appreciation of the value
of access to the outcomes of large-scale, well-validated randomised control trials
and systematic meta-analyses and an insistence on the importance of small-scale
practitioner enquiries pursued by individuals and department teams to address spe-
cific issues of practice. As the senior leader with responsibility for improving school
effectiveness, he expressed an essential humility in the face of the extensive evidence
available from others elsewhere:

‘I should be trying to build on what other people have done, looking at

what has worked in schools similar to ours and different to ours, and trying
to implement some of those strategies and filtering them out through our
various teams in the school.’
210 Katharine Burn and Eluned Harries

He recognised, however, that the process of making effective use of such research
was far from being a simple one of acceptance and implementation. Decisions about
whether a particular approach endorsed by the Education Endowment Foundation
(Quigley et al. 2019, for example), might be fruitful for the school, involved consulta-
tion of some of the original papers that it cited, as well as consideration of the scale of
the studies and the details of how the idea had been implemented. He also emphasised
the processes of filtering, shredding and triangulation that Eluned outlined above.
Alongside this whole school approach, drawing on well-validated findings from
elsewhere, the deputy head also stressed the value of individuals or subject teams
pursuing their own specific concerns, which explained his support for teachers’
engagement in the action fellowship programme and for the school’s partial fund-
ing of tuition fees for those undertaking the ‘enhanced’ Masters in Learning and
Teaching. While he had not undertaken a Master’s degree himself, he cited his own
involvement in a previous long-running programme of research and development
activities led by the university as a powerful influence on his thinking, alerting him
to the ways in which engagement in research actually serves to bring about change
in his own practice.
The maths department was cited on a number of occasions by the deputy head
to illustrate the school’s approach to research engagement and it was therefore
unsurprising that the views and strategies reported by the head of maths reflected
the picture reported by the school’s senior leadership. Research engagement, as a
means of ‘expanding ideas that we use in the classroom’ was absolutely central to
his view of professional learning. To substantiate this claim, he cited the impact on
his department’s practice of a training course he had attended, led by Dylan Wiliam.
The event had prompted him to read up on research into formative assessment and
to institute a number of policies, such as withholding test scores, while experiment-
ing with ways of giving feedback (the focus of another colleague’s Masters) and
promoting peer assessment. Other examples of research with which he had engaged
included a year-long investigation into the use of variation theory to guide teach-
ers’ choice of examples and tasks to set, as well as approaches to curriculum design
and the particular vocabulary used with students, along with more recent thinking
about interleaving. Asked about the relationship between research and professional
experience in shaping his practice, he was essentially unable to distinguish between
the two:

‘I would say that a lot of the research-based things that I have read about are
kind of now so intertwined with the things that I do that I really don’t know
all the time whether it’s specifically from one source or another.’
(Head of maths)

While the extent of the commitment of the head of maths to research use was per-
haps exceptional, the influence of the school’s commitment to a systematic process
of consulting and evaluating research-informed ideas was also clearly visible in the
approaches advocated by the head of science. When a previous Ofsted inspection
 The basis for professional learning and school development 211

had raised questions about the quality of feedback to students, the department
(along with the rest of the school) had embarked on a process of consultation
and experimentation – drawing on another research report published by the
Education Endowment Foundation (Elliott et al., 2016) (but actually conducted
by researchers from within the university’s Education Department). They had
also visited other local schools to investigate alternative practices. Although the
head of science reported a degree of scepticism about the quality and rigour
of some social science research, reading this particular report fuelled both his
interest in seeking to evaluate’ feedback in terms of its subsequent impact on
students’ subsequent learning (rather than asking easier questions about students
or parents’ views of the feedback) and his acknowledgement of how difficult it
would be to establish a clear causal link. He also recognised the school’s own
research or inquiry process as being just as important as the outcomes in stim-
ulating focused professional dialogue, prompting teachers to ‘innovate, refresh,
try out new things… being willing to take risks and… to keep asking questions
about what does and doesn’t work’.
The importance that the head of maths attributed to bringing research to bear
critically on problems of practice was also reflected in the fact that he had created
a post within the maths department, with responsibility for leading a research-
based approach to professional learning. The colleague who took on this role had
developed a programme of weekly department meetings in which specific ideas
would be discussed, informed by shared reading of particular research articles and,
if thought viable, then developed into practical examples related to ‘one part of a
scheme of work’ for colleagues to ‘tear apart’ and refine before trying them out in
practice. Once this process began, it would be followed by ‘peer observation and
discussion’, keeping ‘it going in that hopefully sensible cycle’.
Although no other departments had adopted such elaborate procedures, all the
teachers that we interviewed demonstrated similar convictions about the importance
and value of research. A sociology teacher, for example, regarded it as ‘really, really
important’ declaring that ‘Everything really should be driven by research. I think it
would be stupid not to really. I’m very pro-research’. As a participant within a pro-
gramme for teachers in their second year of practice that Eluned had initiated in light
of its positive impact in another Deanery school, this teacher had been assigned a
more experienced colleague as a mentor and had chosen to focus on ideas and prac-
tices related to metacognition. The school had also subsidised her pursuit of a part-
time Masters, similarly focused on metacognition, with a very strong emphasis on the
subject dimension. She knew that she would be required to share her insights from
both these projects with other staff at events organised by the research champion and
to offer advice about any aspects of her work that could usefully be taken up by others.
As a Masters student, she was obviously well informed about research meth-
odology and attributed value to different approaches and different kinds of data,
acknowledging the need for quantitative research in large-scale studies to deter-
mine impact alongside qualitative data which is needed to ‘really understand what
is going on in that classroom’. She was cautious about the way in which particular
212 Katharine Burn and Eluned Harries

educational ideas could move in and out of fashion and suggested the need to
take ‘everything with a pinch of salt’, noting that as research is widely shared it
is often misinterpreted, with inappropriate implications drawn from it for prac-
tices in schools. She also suggested that the value of particular research-based ideas
depended very much on the context – both that in which the research had been
conducted and that in which one might seek to apply the ideas.What would matter
was not just the students and the subject being taught, but also the nature of the
specific topic and the particular learning objectives.

Conclusion
While we certainly cannot claim that the views of the six subject leaders and main-
scale teachers that were interviewed were typical of those held by all teachers within
the school, the accounts of their own practice and the ways in which their depart-
ments operated provide strong evidence of the way in which the deliberate promo-
tion of critical research use at different levels within Matthew Arnold had indeed
nurtured teachers’ engagement with the process of practical theorising. Teachers
were committed not only to reviewing and refining their current practices in the
light of research, but also to the process of asking specific and demanding questions
of research in response to their particular experiences and the most urgent needs
of their context. The idea of looking both ‘inwards and outwards’ neatly captures a
commitment to learning both from practice – what is working well and what are
the current problems that call for investigation and experimentation? – and from
research – what have others learned elsewhere on which we could usefully draw?
While Eluned coined the term ‘shredding’ to capture the process by which subject
departments were encouraged to contextualise and test out research-based sugges-
tions for addressing the school’s priorities, the process was one that teachers at all
levels recognised and in which they actively engaged.
While we have not focused here on the impact of the school’s commitment
to practical theorising as reflected in student outcomes, data is obviously regularly
collected to make such evaluation possible. The structure of the individual pro-
grammes in which teachers are engaged – as action research fellows, or students
on the ‘enhanced’ Masters in Learning and Teaching – ensures that they assess the
impact of the particular initiatives that they undertake, while formal assessment data
and student surveys both constitute vital sources for department teams and senior
leaders in judging the value of the strategies adopted in relation to whole-school
concerns. We obviously cannot share all that data here, but a single example serves
to capture something of the effects of this process of practical theorising on the
students’ experience of learning. One Year 12 student, invited to record a short
message for new teachers about to join the school, independently identified two
aspects of practice that he thought best epitomised teaching at Matthew Arnold:
the whole approach taken to marking and feedback (including peer assessment),
which he described as ‘more about knowing how to improve your work than what
grade you’ve got’; and the fact that metacognition ‘is always being pushed, helping
 The basis for professional learning and school development 213

you to reflect on what you’re learning and what you’re not understanding’, which,
he felt, had equipped him to go on learning effectively when the school had to
switch to online learning during the Covid-19 pandemic. The fact that he reported
so positively on the two successive aspects of practice that had been identified
as whole-school development priorities provides strong evidence that the school’s
commitment to practical theorising, working simultaneously from the top down
and the bottom up, has facilitated highly productive professional learning.
The variety of ways in which the school has been supported in that commit-
ment by the work of the Oxford Education Deanery also demonstrates the value of
extending partnerships between schools and universities well beyond initial teacher
education. While the Education Endowment Foundation was established specifi-
cally to find ‘what works’ in education, by distilling existing research findings and
commissioning new studies, its existence over the past ten years has not overcome
the persistent challenges inherent in simply ‘applying’ or even ‘translating’ research
into practice. Within Matthew Arnold, the senior leaders’ confidence in focus-
ing on metacognition and self-regulation depended less on the recent guidance
issued by the Education Endowment Foundation (Quigley et al., 2019) than on the
ground work undertaken by individual teachers (within and beyond the school),
supported through the Deanery’s action research and Master’s programmes. This
initial exploration by interested teachers, in specific subject areas, helped the school
as a whole to engage with the processes of metacognition and self-regulation and
to begin to make sense of them within their own context. That work was sus-
tained and strengthened not only by the systematic processes of testing and refine-
ment through subject departments, but also by the opportunities that the Deanery
created for the regular exchange and critical discussion of experiences across the
partnership.

References
Berliner, D. (2001). Learning about and learning from expert teachers. International Journal of
Educational Research, 35(5), 463–482.
Braun, V. & Clarke, V. (2006). Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative Research in
Psychology, 3(2), 77–101.
British Educational Research Association, Royal Society of Arts (BERA-RSA) (2014).
Research and the Teaching Profession: Building the Capacity for a Self-improving Education System.
Retrieved from: https://www.bera.ac.uk/project/research-and-teacher-education
Buchmann, M. (1984). The priority of knowledge and understanding in teaching. In Katz, L.
& Roth, J. (eds.) Advances in Teacher Education (Vol 1), New Jersey: Ablex, 29–48.
Burn, K., Conway, R., Edwards, A., & Harries, E. (2020). The role of school-based research
champions in a school–university partnership. British Educational Research Journal, 47(3),
616–633.
Burn, K., Fancourt, N., & Klose, E. (2017). Research use in schools: Teachers’ views of meth-
odology, status and implementation, paper presented at the Annual conference of the British
Education Research Association, University of Sussex, 5–8 September.
Burn, K., Mutton,T., & Hagger, H. (2010). Strengthening and sustaining professional learning
in the second year of teaching. Oxford Review of Education, 36(6), 639–659.
214 Katharine Burn and Eluned Harries

Cordingley, P. (2015). The contribution of research to teachers’ professional learning and

development. Oxford Review of Education, 41(2), 234–252.
Elliott, V., Baird, J., Hopfenbeck, T., Ingram, J. Thompson, I., Usher, N., Zantout, M.,
Richardson, J., & Coleman, R. (2016). Marked Improvement? A Review of the Evidence on
Written Marking. Education Endowment Foundation. Retrieved from: https://education
endowmentfoundation.org.uk/public/files/Publications/EEF_Marking_Review_
April_2016.pdf
Fancourt, N., Edwards, A., & Menter, I. (2015). Reimagining a school – university partner-
ship: The development of the Oxford Education Deanery narrative. Education Inquiry,
6(3), 353–373.
Gutiérrez, K. (2008), Developing a sociocritical literacy in the third space, Reading Research
Quarterly, 43(2), 148–164.
Hagger, H., Burn, K., Mutton, T., & Brindley, S. (2008). Practice makes perfect? Learning to
learn as a teacher in Oxford Review of Education, 34(2), 159–178
Hargreaves, D. (1996). ‘Teaching as a Research-Based Profession: Possibilities and Prospects’ Paper
Presented at the Teacher Training Agency Annual Lecture, April. Retrieved from http://eppi.ioe.
ac.uk/cms/Portals/0/PDF%20reviews%20and%20summaries/TTA%20Hargreaves%20
lecture.pdf
McIntyre, D. (1995). Initial teacher education as practical theorising: A response to Paul Hirst.
British Journal of Educational Studies, 43(4), 365–383.
Mutton, T., Burn, K., & Hagger, H. (2010). Making sense of learning to teach: Learners in
context Research Papers in Education, 25(1), 73–91.
Nelson, J., & Campbell, C. (2017). Evidence-informed practice in education: Meanings and
applications. Educational Research, 59(2), 127–135.
Penuel, W. R., Allen, A. R., Farrell, C., & Coburn, C. (2015). Conceptualizing research–prac-
tice partnerships as joint work at boundaries. Journal for Education of Students Placed at Risk,
20(1–2), 182–197.
Quigley, A., Muijs, D., & Stringer, E. (2019). Metacognition and Self-Regulated Learning: Guidance
Report. Education Endowment Foundation. Retrieved from https://educationendowment
foundation.org.uk/public/files/Publications/Metacognition/EEF_Metacognition_and_
self-regulated_learning.pdf
Shulman, L. (1998).Theory, practice and the education of professionals. The Elementary School
Journal, 98(5), 511–526.
13
PRACTICAL THEORISING IN THE
PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
OF PRIMARY TEACHERS
Outcomes of the ‘Thinking, Doing, Talking
Science’ project

Deb McGregor, Helen Wilson, Sarah Frodsham and

Patrick Alexander

Introduction
The earlier chapters of this book are primarily concerned with the ways that begin-
ning teachers adopt and adapt varied forms of practice informed by theoretical
frameworks. In this chapter, the ways that the Thinking Doing Talking Science
(TDTS) project has been theorised, interpreted and enacted by primary teachers
concerned with teaching science is presented and considered as a form of practical
theorising. TDTS draws on research that identifies key features of a creative peda-
gogy that supports cognitive development in science (Davies & McGregor, 2017;
McGregor, 2007; McGregor & Gunter, 2006) and focuses on teachers applying
theoretical propositions related to a constructivist approach to learning in a practical
and inclusive way.
The TDTS project has helped teachers in applying theoretical propositions
about both science and pedagogy in a practical, engaging way. A key component
of the programme, although not named as such in its implementation, is the nur-
turing of ‘adaptive expertise’ (Berliner, 2001) or the capacity to adopt a flexible,
research-informed approach to the teaching of Primary Science. Through partici-
pation in the programme, teachers are encouraged to adopt and adapt various kinds
of activities that challenge pupils to extend and deepen their thinking. This was
inspired by Mant et al.’s (2007) tailored concept of higher order thinking (Lewis &
Smith, 1993). In the context of TDTS, teachers were encouraged to engage their
pupils in higher order thinking by adopting practices that demonstrated their adap-
tive expertise focused on facilitating thinking and talking about scientific concepts.
This was achieved through dedicated discussion time, hands-on practical activity,
creative investigation and problem solving. Results from the efficacy trial (Hanley
et al., 2015) showed that in schools adopting this approach, pupils (aged 9–10) made
approximately three additional months’ progress in science. With this in mind, we

DOI: 10.4324/9781003183945-18
216 Deb McGregor et al.

argue and illustrate how a ‘practical theorising’ approach (as described below) pro-
vided more equitable opportunities for learning in science for all pupils.

Practical theorising
Drawing on the work of Alexander (1984), McIntyre’s (1995) framing of practical
theorising provides a valuable lens through which to interrogate the benefits of the
TDTS approach. Crucially, McIntyre (1995) frames theorical knowledge as, ‘tenta-
tive, inadequate, and constantly to be questioned’ (p. 366), highlighting how a lack of
consensus can be normal and, indeed, a preferable expectation for teachers to provide
space for the framing of their practice. If one is able to frame teaching as a profession
within which no consensus on theory or practice is to be expected, argues McIntyre,
it may be possible to instil a critical disposition as the starting point for teachers to
engage in their professional lives. As McIntyre (1995) puts it, practical theorising
should offer space for going beyond reflection on practice, incorporating instead an
‘experimental use of ideas from many sources, including both the elucidated practice
of experienced teachers and also a diverse theoretical and research-based literature,
i.e. with theorising about practice’ (p. 366). A major challenge to engaging with
practical theorising in the real world of schooling, however, is the continuing drive
towards a consensus around what ‘counts’ as disciplinary knowledge, theoretical or
otherwise, and what ‘counts’ as a valid means of teaching and assessing this knowledge.
Arguably, this is as much the case for prescriptive government-mandated approaches
to teacher education (Hagger & McIntyre, 2006) as it is for examples of curriculum
oriented towards high stakes assessment (Harlen, 2007). For teachers involved in the
TDTS programme, there is space to consider what they know instinctively, what
they know how to do technically, and what they believe to be the ‘evidence’ about
what works that can inform the enactments of their practical theorising. A compli-
cation of marrying theory and practice is the propensity to make linear the tempo-
ral relationship between theory and practice. This can lead to assumptions that one
must or should precede the other. Such a fixed framing of the relationship between
theoretical knowledge and practical experience (that the former precedes and shapes
the latter, or that the latter generates the former) creates an a priori tension between
these aspects of teaching and learning. Instead, practical theorising goes some way to
suggest that theory and practice are married together simultaneously in the present,
and that therefore neither can exist without the other. Moreover, the co-existence of
theory and practice in any kind of educative process offers the possibility of a pro-
ductive, critical space where consensus is always under development. The inductive
approach of TDTS described below is an example of such an approach.

The context and crisis for teachers teaching science in primary

school
Science education is a particularly good context for reflecting on practical theo-
rising. A crucial component of the scientific method involves critical engagement
 Practical theorising in the professional development 217

with evidence that marries consensus around existing evidence with an acknowl-
edgement that consensus is never (or should not ever be presented as) hegemonic
or total. At the same time, the reality of delivering science education in primary
settings often reveals a lack of confidence or agency on the part of teachers to
engage with core scientific principles, and thus also with the process of practi-
cal theorising. Teachers provided with resources, materials and ideas that consti-
tuted the TDTS approach adapted the ways they used them in their particular
schools, thereby modelling practical theorising underpinned by creative practices.
The general pedagogic approach involves presenting conundrums, in a variety of
forms, and engaging pupils in discussion to creatively and collectively resolve the
scientific challenges.
Before exploring TDTS in more detail, however, it is worth briefly considering
the nature of science education in English primary schools prior to development
of the project. Science has long been a core subject, along with English and math-
ematics, in primary (elementary) schools in England. Up to May 2009 science was
included in the Statutory Attainment Tests (SATs), compulsory national measures
of assessment, taken by all pupils at the end of their final year in primary education.
However, science was removed from these, partly because it was hoped teaching to
the test (Murphy & Beggs, 2003) would decrease and a cessation in constantly meas-
uring pupil’s performance levels, using summative testing methods would provide
space and opportunity for teachers to be innovative in primary science classrooms.
However, Ofsted (2019) indicate that science provision has remained weak in com-
parison to numeracy and literacy and that science has been de-prioritised in primary
schools since the scrapping of the SATs. Prior to this, the Wellcome Trust (2013,
p. 5) had reported there was a lack of science expertise in most primary schools
and the confidence to teach it was low and few practical lessons were reported to
take place. As Fitzgerald and Smith (2016) described, as ‘generalists, primary school
teachers must determine how, when and where they attend to a range of explicit
science curriculum demands, while also attempting to balance teaching and learn-
ing requirements across all curriculum areas’ (p. 64). Peacock and Dunne (2015)
suggest, teaching science is challenging because of the traditional ways in which it
is often presented. Science concepts related to forces, electricity and evolution, for
example, have long been understood to be ‘hard’ (p. 27) and even ‘boring’ (p. 28).
Perceptions of both teachers and students have long held the view that science is
complex and often ‘counter intuitive’ (ibid, p. 28) and that this may result in avoid-
ance of it. For teachers and pupils alike, this representation of the highly theoretical
nature of scientific knowledge is exclusionary and drives a wedge between theory
and practice. TDTS offers an approach to help resolve this seemingly national issue.
It is important to promote teaching of science to younger pupils in ways that
engage them and capture their imagination whilst also improving their knowledge
and understanding of the subject. Ironically, however, at times the practice of sci-
ence education can get in the way of theorising about science (or about science
education). Against a backdrop of teaching challenging subject matter that requires
competence and confidence to design and conduct effective lessons those new to
218 Deb McGregor et al.

teaching science understandably can require clear guidance and support about how
to go about marrying theory and practice productively in the primary school envi-
ronment. Regimes of compliance (including programmes of teacher education) can
make it very difficult for teachers (and especially new teachers) to feel that they
have the power to make regular challenges to the status quo of educational research
and school practice. Such agency can be developed through the practice of research
or through experiential development of the theoretical, institutional or practical
knowledge required to challenge the normal (McIntyre, 1995). Introducing different
‘ways of being’ (Bourdieu, 1991) can provide teachers with opportunity to critique
the consensus and in so doing become more agentive teachers of science.

Developing expertise in primary science teaching

Berliner (2001) in his summary about key influences on the development of peda-
gogy considers how beyond just talent and practice it is the context, i.e. the situation
in which teachers find themselves, that can affect what characterises teaching exper-
tise. The TDTS approach provides participating primary teachers with a teaching
framework that encourages them to engage critically with the tensions outlined
above between theory and practice in the primary classroom. In the process, teach-
ers develop the capacity to be adaptive and fluid in their practice. The following
discussion presents the approach in detail to demonstrate this.

The TDTS approach

The TDTS project enabled teachers to champion the lack of consensus in science
teaching practice as a positive outcome of their critical engagement with crea-
tive pedagogy and core aspects of the scientific method. Initially, inspired by the
theoretical framing of higher order thinking and recognising the value of discus-
sion to promote such, as indicated by Adey and Shayer (1994), the TDTS project
embraced constructivist approaches practically demonstrating to teachers different
ways they could engage learners in thinking and talking about science (McGregor
et al., 2020). The development of the TDTS materials builds on the ‘Conceptual
Challenge in Primary Science’ project funded by the AstraZeneca Science Teaching
Trust (now the Primary Science Teaching Trust) which took place in 16 English
primary schools in 2002–2003 (Mant et al., 2007). Learning activities are charac-
terised by cognitive challenges, practical activities and discussions (as outlined in
Figure 13.1), rather than rote revision or a transmissive communication of a scien-
tific ‘body of knowledge’ (Murphy & Beggs, 2003). The TDTS has been developed
jointly by Oxford Brookes University and Science Oxford. Two TDTS trials have
been undertaken thus far, funded by the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF),
a grant-making charity that focuses on pupils fulfilling their potential regardless of
their socio-economic background.
The EEF is committed to improving teaching and learning and funds projects
and evaluations of innovations to ‘extend and secure the evidence on what works
 Practical theorising in the professional development 219

Practical Prompt for Thinking Big Questions

(PP4T) (BQs)

Bright Ideas Time

A dedicated discussion slot for every primary science lesson
A key strategy, carefully linked to accompanying challenging practical science
and focused pupil recording, resulting in distinctly sharply work and reduced
time spent writing

Odd One Out Positive, Minus & Interesting

(OOO) (PMI)

FIGURE 13.1 Some of the key features of ‘Thinking, Talking, Doing Science’.

and can be made to work at scale’ (Hanley et al., 2015, p. 2). Their preferred meth-
odology of Randomised Controlled Trials (RCTs) involves independent data col-
lection and analysis undertaken by a professional body separate from those who have
developed and delivered the intervention.The TDTS approach has been recognised
by the EEF to be a promising project and significant funding has been invested to
set up an effectiveness trial with 42 schools (reported on by Hanley et al., 2015),
an efficacy trial with 205 schools and a further RCT is planned with another 140
schools (during the 2021–2024 academic period).

The TDTS approach in detail

TDTS is a five-day professional development programme for primary teachers,
focused on augmenting their recognition of, and confidence in, encouraging pupils
to talk, think and problem solve in science and thereby become more independent
learners. The approach was based on the assumption that focusing on cognitive
challenge within primary science curricular contexts would engage pupils’ interest
and subsequently improve their attainment. Two teachers from each school partici-
pated in the training to facilitate collaboration and mutual support, which research
shows supports effective professional development (Cordingley et al., 2005; Scher &
O’Reilly, 2009).Training is designed to create a team ethos, with cohorts of teachers
working together to explore and develop their practically theorised practice.
The TDTS activities each illustrate different ways that learners can be challenged
to promote constructivism within primary science classrooms. Early development
of TDTS tasks adopted Lewis and Smith’s (1993, p. 136) notion about higher order
thinking and the ways consideration of new information connects or relates to
existing knowing. Acknowledging how pupils’ thoughts, ideas or concepts may
need re-organising to take account of both their former perspectives and fresh
information is promoted in training. Various mediational techniques are practised
220 Deb McGregor et al.

with the teachers so they clearly appreciate what Berliner (2001) would describe
as adaptive expertise. The key features of TDTS (as represented in Figure 13.1)
focus on enabling teachers to appreciate what conceptual challenge looks like and
how to present appropriate thinking and learning opportunities that stretch the
pupils. Providing experiences for teachers so they appreciate how to cognitively
challenge their learners and actively engage them in thinking about science is inte-
gral to the TDTS philosophy. Each training session involves teachers reflecting and
sharing perspectives about the impact of the different TDTS strategies on their
pupils’ engagement with science. Engaging in professional dialogue of this kind,
throughout the year on five whole-day occasions, offers multiple opportunities to
reflect on personal experiences and relate them back to their classroom contexts
and initiate thinking about ‘what works’ and ‘how it works’ to begin to ‘practically
theorise’ (McIntyre, 2009) about the implementation of TDTS in their own par-
ticular schools.

TDTS strategies and constructivism

Views of constructivism vary in the extent to which they draw on Piagetian notions
of how children learn. Piaget (1950, 1959) describes how when children encounter
‘something’ hitherto unknown to them, they wrestle with this ‘new’ information,
observation or experience and cognitively re-structure what they retain (or assimi-
late) as their personalised interpretations of the world around them. Over time, they
gradually re-structure their ideas to explain each new phenomenon as they encounter,
interact with it and make sense of it.The Piagetian notion of dissonance is often inter-
preted as cognitive challenge. This can be presented in a variety of ways for pupils to
engage in thinking and reasoning about their views and/or ideas about something
that resonates with the TDTS intentions. Practically theorising about activities that
provide stimuli for learners to think about things that are counter intuitive and don’t
immediately make sense (like the flame under a balloon that doesn’t ‘pop’ it, because
it is full of water that isn’t immediately visible) is concretised for the teachers. The
strategies outlined in Table 13.1 below, that constitute the Bright Ideas Time and sup-
port the generation of novel and creative thinking, enable the practising of various
cognitive processes, with the result that the learners engage in a range of experiences
to promote thinking about science in various ways. These affective and cognitive
experiences can then be drawn on in subsequent tasks, tests and assessments.
The thinking processes promoted and practised by the pedagogic strategies listed
in Table 13.1 are designed to provide learning encounters for pupils that engage
them in considering and talking about why they believe something is as it is in the
world around them, how it has come to be, how contrasting objects are different
and similar and what can be done to solve practical problems. Within the dedi-
cated, ring-fenced space entitled the ‘Bright Ideas’ time, the pupils are encouraged
to consider scientific things in many different ways. Discussion is valued because
it underpins encouraging social interaction to promote shared thinking in TDTS
activities. This extends Piagetian (1950) perspectives of self-construction (Piaget,
 Practical theorising in the professional development 221

TABLE 13.1 A summary of the ways in which each TDTS teaching strategy supports the
development of different features of constructivism

TDTS Activity Element of constructivism being demonstrated

a. Practical prompt The learner thinks about the conundrum, perturbation or
for thinking disequilibrium and re-equilibrates their thinking.
The learner engages in trying to explain observable/experienced
phenomena.
b. Odd One Out Opportunities are provided for learners to think about and discuss
the comparison of materials or objects to propose what is
similar/different.
c. Positive Minus The learner thinks about advantages, disadvantages and something
Interesting intriguing in what is presented to them.
d. Big Questions The learner develops their personalised explanation of something
presented to them from their surrounding environment.
e. Practical Activity A range of materials are presented so that the learner can
manipulate them and learn through experience.
Initiative can be illuminated.
Adapted from from McGregor et al. (2020).

1950) by helping teachers realise how a Vygotskian approach to develop thinking,

through engaging collectively in joint activities and promoting social exchange to
solve problems (Vygotsky, 1978) highlights how language plays a formative role in
the development of advanced mental processes. For example, ensuring that:

Children solve practical tasks with the help of their speech, as well as with
their eyes and hands. This unity of perception, speech and action, which
ultimately produces internalisation of the visual field, constitutes the central
subject matter for any analysis of the origin of uniquely human forms of
behaviour.
(Vygotsky, 1978, p. 26)

This underpins why hands-on as well as minds-on activity is key in the TDTS
approach. McGregor (2007) illustrates how social interactions with others (between
peers, experts and novices) can promote discussion that heightens understanding
about the matter in hand. Nine- and ten-year-olds, therefore, working together
towards joint solutions or resolutions can attain what might be beyond them if they
were working alone as an individual, which is described by Vygotsky as the zone of
proximal development (zpd). Therefore, through the practice of solving problems
collectively pupils develop experience and confidence in manipulating objects and
thinking about multiple ways to achieve solutions to through the TDTS approach.
Encountering and engaging in new ways of thinking about science through the
various activities, such as Positive, Minus and Interesting (PMI) which invites the
pupils to think about the useful (positive) aspects of something, like for example,
plants being able to walk or a glass umbrella, also involves them considering the negative
222 Deb McGregor et al.

side to these ideas as well as something that is interesting. Another strategy is where
the pupils consider how several objects could be similar or different through the
Odd One Out (OOO). This provides the opportunities for the nine- and ten-year-
olds to think about the world around them and make sense of it through reflecting
on how contrasting objects, like sand, salt and iron filings might have characteristics
in common, but also might constitute being in a different group to the other two
substances. Big Questions (BQs) pose really challenging concepts for pupils to grap-
ple with. Questions such as How do we know the earth is a sphere? or Why don’t we sense
the spinning of the Earth? are used to really engage them in thinking carefully and
deeply about science, what they observe, how they interpret the evidence presented
and how it all makes sense to them.The Practical Prompts for Thinking (PP4T) also
resonate with Piaget’s (1950) view of dissonance or challenge that provides a visual
stimulus for learners to think about things that might not immediately make sense
to them and extend some kind of cognitive conundrum from their perspective (like
a round cake tin that rolls uphill or water that appears on the outside of a glass in the
summer when it isn’t raining). Chin (2007) stressed how important it is for a teacher
to mediate pupils’ discussion and exchanges in ideas as they are critically linked to
development of the ZPD (Vygotsky, 1978). Mediating to enable learners’ cognitive
re-structuring as a result of interacting with the world around them (and others) is
of significance in the TDTS approach.
The pedagogic approaches integral to TDTS therefore promote, support and
encourage thought processes coming into existence through doing, thinking and
discussion. In this way, teachers are actively engaged in practical theorising not only
in relation to their own practice but also in their dialogue with pupils through the
substantive focus of the tasks. McGregor (2007) suggests that thinking develops as
pupils work together on challenging tasks, and being encouraged to discuss as they
collaborate, they more openly elucidate their thinking. Therefore, teachers setting
up tasks that enable learners to work out and rehearse working jointly to solve prob-
lems offers practice in knowing-how to tackle unfamiliar challenges with no specific
correct outcome. As McGregor (2007) describes, ‘[r]etention, understanding, and
the active use of knowledge can be brought about only by the learning experiences
in which learners think about and think with what they have learned’ (p. 41). Having
been introduced to the repertoire of TDTS strategies and the underlying ethos and
theory, teachers were invited to use their professional judgement to evaluate and
employ them wisely, not mechanistically. Interestingly, participation in the TDTS
programme arguably helped to shape professional judgement with an emphasis on
nurturing creativity and criticality. For this reason, pre-prepared lesson plans were
not produced, the teachers were encouraged to practically theorise how best the
TDTS strategies worked with their pupils in their particular school contexts.
TDTS, therefore, adopts a range of practices that can engage learners beyond a
narrow conceptualisation of learning science. It enables the development of pupils’
thinking from a focus on scientific content, or factual knowing-what, to contemplate
why things are as they are, consider possibilities, acknowledge multiple ways to solve
practical problems and designing solutions. That is, they practise the development
 Practical theorising in the professional development 223

of knowing-how. McGregor (2007) summarises how practitioners can scaffold and

mediate to influence and support cognitive development through varied pedagogic
tactics by presenting intriguing ideas, asking thought provoking questions, providing
challenging tasks and reflecting on any outcomes. Mercer and Hodgkinson (2008)
corroborate that it is the teacher’s pedagogical beliefs and practices (that is, the
choices they make about how they communicate with their pupils and the strate-
gies they use) that steers the nature of the thinking.The relational recursive dynamic
between theory and practice informs the ways that pedagogical enactments (i.e.
practical theorising) emerges in the classroom. A teaching approach that considers
how and when to use particular materials, how to sequence and pose questions,
encourage discussion, or mediate without giving away any answers (McGregor,
2007) will shape the ways that pupils engage in thinking. Ways of facilitating practi-
cal experiences, by reducing writing for example, become more prominent with the
concern that ‘doing’ and ‘talking’ (through small groups of pupils solving problems
together) better promote Vygotskian notions of social construction (McGregor,
2007). As Mercer and Hodgkinson (2008) highlight, through such an approach,
teachers consider, critically, not only their questioning technique but also their
mediation and scaffolding strategies designed to cultivate pupils’ thinking, rather
than transmit scientific factual information. It is with this practical theorisation in
mind that Tables 13.1–13.3 and Figure 13.1 summarise and relate features of the
TDTS approach that incorporate pedagogic frameworks supporting constructivist
ways of learning in this way.

Teachers practically theorising how to implement the TDTS

strategies
To examine how the teachers practically theorised the TDTS strategies, a range
of research tools (detailed in McGregor et al., 2020) were applied to evidence
how their science lessons became ‘more practical, creative and challenging’ (Hanley
et al., 2015).
To illustrate how expert teachers (Berliner, 2001) had practically theorised
encouraging pupils’ plausible and reasoned thinking that considers scientific ideas
and evidence, Mant et al. (2007) illustrated ways the different pedagogical tactics
could be implemented to frame TDTS activities (summarised in Table 13.2).
An example of the way that a novice TDTS teacher illustrated adaptive expertise
in supporting PP4T included a challenge witnessed by researchers.The teacher pre-
sented a conundrum to the pupils involving a coke can, not placed flat on the table,
but balanced on a round bottom edge. The teacher asked, ‘How is that p­ ossible?’,
paused and gave them time to think (as quoted in table 13.3). This resulted in a
range of replies that might suggest a particular liquid, magnet, sand or some other
substance is inside it to enable the can to balance in an unusual position. The very
visual PP4T encouraged prediction, scientific reasoning and hypothesising through
engaging pupils to constructively consider and explain something they have not
seen or experienced before.
224 Deb McGregor et al.

TABLE 13.2 A summary of key TDTS teaching strategies (adapted from McGregor et al.,
2020) and the ways in which expert teachers practically theorised them

TDTS Activity Ways that expert teachers practically theorised how the TDTS approach
can offer constructivist learning opportunities
a. Practical prompt for Asking what will happen if a flame is held under an air-filled
thinking balloon and a water-filled balloon.
b. Odd One Out Presenting water, chocolate and paper and asking which is the odd
one out, with reasons.
c. Positive Minus What would be positive, negative and interesting in a world
Interesting without electricity?
d. Big Questions How do we know the earth is a sphere?
What would happen if we didn’t get bigger as we got older?
e. Practical Activity Design a metre run that ensures the marble reaches the bottom as
slowly as possible.

A second strategy, Odd One Out (OOO), was adapted in a range of ways and
encouraged children to think about sorting and classifying objects and deciding
whether or not they have something in common, or were somehow distinctly dif-
ferent. An adapted example included, ‘Which is the odd one out between a man,
chimpanzee and teddy bear?’ and the ideas and reasoning proffered included, ‘I think
that the teddy bear is the odd one out because it doesn’t consume any food or drink
and it doesn’t have any bones’ (Frodsham, 2017). This flexible strategy is easy for
teachers to adaptively re-contextualise for use in any topic of science (as indicated in
Table 13.3). For example, asking pupils to decide which is the odd one out, between
a lion, a London bus and a tree with all its green leaves can stimulate a range of
responses including, ‘The lion because he’s the only one that is brown’; ‘The bus was the
odd one out because it’s the only one that has wheels’; ‘The lion because it’s the only one who
lives in the desert’. Pupils bouncing ideas off each other, and building on one another’s
thinking (also practically theorised as quoted in Table 13.3) illustrated quite clearly
how socially constructivist processes were valued and actively sought by the teachers.
The ways that teachers adopted and mediated the use of deBono’s (2000) PMI
supported a host of original ideas and suggestions emerging from the pupils. A
teacher asked if there was an extended power outage, for some reason, and everyone
lived in ‘a world without electricity, what would be positive, what would be negative? what
would be interesting?’ Examples of positive reflections included: ‘children wouldn’t
have computers so they’d be outside more and fitter’; ‘[there would be] no electric-
ity bills’ and we ‘wouldn’t be able to make guns and weapons without electric pow-
ered factories’. Examples of negative comments included: ‘no streetlights so they’d
be security issues and crime might go up’ and ‘food would go off because [there
would be] no fridges so [there] might be more food poisoning’. Interesting points
included: ‘steam power would make a comeback or solar power would be more
common’ and ‘it would be like going back in time’ (Wilson & Mant, 2005, p. 22).
Another teacher’s adaptive use of a BQ included ‘How do you know you are
alive?’ This conundrum posed to nine- and ten-year-old pupils elicited responses,
 Practical theorising in the professional development 225

TABLE 13.3 Prominent behaviours implied by the constructivist view of thinking and
learning that have been practically theorised by teachers

Features of the constructivist Practical theorising as offered by interviewed teachers

theory of learning
Learners respond to a ‘…thinking questions are ones where you need some time
conundrum, perturbation to think about it. But also, [..] where you don’t know the
or disequilibrium and answer straight away, you’ve got to think about it.You
re-equilibrate might need to develop your thinking. And it could be,
um, that you’re using some prior knowledge, and you’re
[..] rearranging that knowledge, or [..] trying to […] put
it into a different situation’
Learners show initiative and ‘…towards the end of the lesson, you might have seen that
are agentive children were saying, ‘Well, I’ve discovered this, but I’m
still curious about something else’, So […] I would say is
an ongoing curiosity’
Learners generate meaning ‘…the teacher facilitating the learning rather than imparting
through interaction with knowledge all the time’
the environment ‘I allow children to decide on their own areas for
investigation. I think I allow children to plan their own
investigation because very often we give them quite a
formula in science’
Learners engage in ‘...the children have to say where they think the water has
explaining observable or come from, but we don’t give that away ..’
experienced phenomena
Learners have the ‘I’ve seen quite magical moments where children have
opportunity to gone off in completely different direction to the one
manipulate materials and I’d perhaps anticipated …but the discovery has been
make sense by themselves remarkable’

including ‘having/feeling a pulse’, ‘growing’, ‘being noticed’, ‘making objects move’

and ‘senses (feeling, touching and tasting)’ (Frodsham, 2017). This illustrated again,
like OOO and Positive Minus Interesting (PMI) how teachers adapt use these
strategies in a constructivist way, prompting unfettered ideas and suggestions from
their pupils. Encouraging scientifically plausible responses to open queries is clearly
demonstrated by the teachers’ pedagogy designed to extend pupils’ thinking and
open up opportunities for contributions from the whole class, no matter what their
gender, ability or social background.
Besides these illustrative examples, Tables 13.3 and 13.4 also demonstrate how
teachers have adaptively changed their practice to enact various elements of the
TDTS approach. The most prominent pedagogic changes that the teachers report-
edly implemented in their science classrooms involved making science more
interesting by doing more practical work, encouraging the pupils to talk and ques-
tion more. They also reportedly provided more opportunities for pupils to make
choices and/or determine what they did, independently of the teacher. Teachers
also reported how the TDTS approach enabled them ‘…to gain new ideas or think
about different approaches to teaching Science that… helped engage, motivate and
226 Deb McGregor et al.

enthuse all children’ they saw that the pupils responded positively to the new ways
of learning science. One practitioner even stated, ‘Pupils have been fully engaged in
what they have been doing and have been forced to really think about [the] impact
the experiments have had on their learning [ideas and thinking] and asked a lot
more questions as to why that is’. This quotation illustrates how teachers have suc-
cessfully adopted practically theorised approaches that supported active engagement
and child-led experimentation and on-going class discussions (like many practical
theorisations in Table 13.4). It also indicates critical evaluation of the constructivist

TABLE 13.4 Prominent behaviours implied by the socially constructivist view of thinking
and learning that have been practically theorised by teachers

Features of the socially Practical theorising as offered by interviewed teachers

constructivist theory of
learning
Learners mediate one ‘I’m a firm believer in not having all the answers, I think
another’s’ ZPD creativity is about the children learning from each other as
was seen in the lesson when we talked about the learning and
one of the pupils said, I learned from other people, I think having
the opportunity to learn from each other is hugely important.’
Learners collectively ‘…magic tricks. We’d get the children to work out the science
consider queries behind them. … so, for example, a box and you balance it on
(questions or tasks) something [..] after 40 seconds it falls off. The children have to
work out what they think is inside the box to make it fall off,
but, by the end of the session, I still haven’t told them because
I want them to [still keep thinking] and maybe draw a picture
of it, or try to make one, or go home and talk about it.’
Learners discuss ‘…we’re using little white boards for them to draw on. Not
ideas and share electronic ones, just you know, [little] white boards [..] getting
their contrasting them to draw how they think a shadow works [..] and then
understandings you get everybody involved.’
to make sense of
something
Learners collaborate to ‘There are many open-ended workshops where children
jointly find solutions make lots of the decisions as they go along. We don’t rely
on prescriptive worksheets. They [the activities] are very
open-ended’
Learners exchange their ‘…you could see in the discussion that it moved their thinking
elaborations and forward, and then if you have some more input and you
justifications for their see that light-bulb moment … but the light-bulb moment
ideas worked much better because they’d had the discussion
first. That made me try and think every time [..] How can I
encourage the discussion here?’
Learners develop ‘…it’s … the talking which lets you know what they’re
meaning for thinking’
themselves through
the social interaction
 Practical theorising in the professional development 227

nature of the TDTS strategies and the ways that adopting these strategies conse-
quently altered their practice.

Conclusion
In the evidence outlined here and detailed further in McGregor et al. (2020), teach-
ers have adapted their pedagogic expertise to embrace the constructivist approach
of TDTS. Returning to McIntyre (1995), the TDTS approach has at its heart a
commitment to championing an experimental approach to theory and scientific
exploration. The practice of talking and doing encourages teachers and pupils
to address big, open questions where the consensus around answers is much less
important than the active process of inquiry. Encouraging critical questioning and
promoting discussion that encourages a lack of consensus is perhaps particularly
challenging in the context of science education, where pupils (and some teachers)
may anticipate more fixed answers. In order to account for this and to follow the
TDTS approach effectively, teachers developed adaptive expertise in their delivery,
flexing the nature of tasks to fit the specifics of a particular teaching context or
discussion. The quantitative and qualitative evidence (McGregor et al., 2020) sug-
gests that a child-led, active, thought provoking and discursive approach has been
more successful in improving academic attainment and increasing motivation to
learn science than a transmissive and factually oriented pedagogical approach. The
TDTS strategies make explicit for teachers how they can extend reasoned thinking
in science and about science, and provides them with the confidence to re-orient their
practice and not just teach to facts.Ways that adaptive expertise was clearly demon-
strated by the teachers involved with TDTS intervention included the following
principles:

• Supporting Thinking, both individually and jointly, about scientific conundrums;

• Engaging in Doing through practically working together to solve problems;
• Continuing to Talk and discuss whilst participating in all the TDTS activities.

Evidence from observations and interviews (McGregor et al., 2020) clarified how
teachers practically theorised their enactments of TDTS as more dialogic, affective
and cognitive. As Hanley et al. (2015) states, the TDTS training programme and its
adoption in primary classrooms ‘…make science lessons more creative, practical
and challenging’. With the evidence elicited and presented here, it is possible to
substantiate ‘how’ the teachers adaptively altered their pedagogy and ‘why’ the TDTS
approach could affect a three-month improvement in nine- to ten-year-olds’ aca-
demic attainment. Pre- and post-test data, collected through an RCT, provided
statistically significant evidence of the impact of the TDTS intervention (Hanley et
al., 2015), but clarification of the ways that teachers practically theorised enactments
of the strategies was required to provide insights for other practitioners, outside the
intervention, to illustrate what they should pay attention to if they wish to ensure
a similar result with their own classes. What has also become apparent through this
228 Deb McGregor et al.

project is a need for teachers to be reflexive in the ways they entwine theory and
practice to adaptively present activities that engage pupils in challenging learning
situations.

References
Adey, P. & Shayer, M. (1994). Really Raising Standards: Cognitive Intervention and Academic
Achievement. London: Routledge.
Alexander, R.J. (1984). Innovation and continuity in the initial teacher education curriculum.
In R.J. Alexander, M. Craft, & J. Lynch (Eds.) Change in Teacher Education. London: Holt,
Rinehart and Winston, 103–160.
Berliner, D.C. (2001). Learning about and learning from expert teachers. International Journal
of Educational Research, 35, 463–482.
Bourdieu, P. (1991). Language and Symbolic Power. Boston, MA: Harvard University Press.
Chin, C. (2007). Teacher questioning in science classrooms: Approaches that stimulate pro-
ductive thinking. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 44(6), 815–843.
Cordingley, P., Bell, M.,Thomason, S., & Firth, A. (2005) The Impact of Collaborative Continuing
Professional Development (CPD) on Classroom Teaching and Learning. Review: How do
Collaborative and Sustained CPD and Sustained but not Collaborative CPD Affect Teaching and
Learning? London: EPPI-Centre, Social Science Research Unit, Institute of Education,
University of London.
Davies, D. & McGregor, D. (2017). CreativeTeaching in Primary Science (2nd ed). London: Routledge.
Fitzgerald, A. & Smith, K. (2016). Science that matters: Exploring science learning and teach-
ing in primary schools. Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 41(4), 64–78.
Frodsham, S. (2017). Developing Creativity within Primary Science Teaching. What Does It Look
Like and How Can Classroom Interactions Augment the Process?’ Unpublished PhD thesis.
Oxford: Oxford Brookes University.
Hagger, H. & McIntyre, D. (2006). Learning Teaching from Teachers: Realising the Potential of
School-Based Teacher Education. Maidenhead: Open University Press.
Hanley, P., Slavin, R., & Eliot, L. (2015). Thinking, Doing, Talking Science. Evaluation Report
and Executive Summary. Available at: https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/pro-
jects-and-evaluation/projects/thinking-doing-talking-science/ Accessed 31 May 2020.
Harlen, W. (2007). Assessment of learning. London: Sage
Lewis, A. & Smith, D. (1993). Defining higher order thinking. Theory into Practice, 32(3),
131–137.
Mant, J., Wilson, H., & Coates, D. (2007). The effect of increasing conceptual challenge in
primary science lessons on pupils’ achievement and engagement. International Journal of
Science Education, 29(14), 1707–1719.
McIntyre, D. (1995). Initial teacher education as practical theorising: A response to Paul Hirst.
British Journal of Educational Studies, 43(4), 365–383.
McGregor, D. (2007). Developing Thinking; Developing Learning. A Thinking Skills Guide for
Education. Buckingham, UK: Open University Press-McGraw Hill.
McGregor, D. & Gunter, B. (2006). Invigorating pedagogic change: Initiating development
of secondary science teachers’ practice and cognisance of the learning process. European
Journal of Teacher Education, 29(1), 23–48.
McGregor, D., Frodsham, S., & Wilson, H. (2020). The nature of epistemological opportu-
nities for doing, thinking and talking about science: Reflections on an effective inter-
vention that promotes creativity. Research in Science and Technological Education. Available at
10.1080/02635143.2020.1799778.
 Practical theorising in the professional development 229

McIntyre, D. (2009). The difficulties of inclusive pedagogy for initial teacher education and
some thoughts on the way forward. Teaching and teacher education, 25(4), 602-608.
Mercer, N., & Hodgkinson, S. (Eds.). (2008). Exploring talk in school: Inspired by the work of
Douglas Barnes. London: Sage.
Murphy, C. & Beggs, J. (2003). Children’s perceptions of school science. School Science Review,
84(308), 109–116.
Ofsted (2019). Intention and Substance: Further Findings on Primary School Science from Phase 3 of
Ofsted’s Curriculum Research. Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/
intention-and-substance-primary-school-science-curriculum-research Accessed 27 May
2020.
Piaget, J. (1950). The Psychology of Intelligence. London: Routledge.
Piaget, J. (1959). The Language and Thought of the Child. (3rd ed). London: Routledge.
Peacock, A. & Dunne, M. (2015) Why is science hard to teach. In M. Dunne & A. Peacock
(Eds.). Primary science: a guide to teaching practice (2nd ed). London: Sage. 27-46
Scher, L., & O’Reilly, F. (2009). Professional development for K–12 math and science teach-
ers: What do we really know?. Journal of research on educational effectiveness, 2(3), 209-249.
Vygotsky, L.S. 1978. Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes. London:
Harvard University Press.
Wellcome Trust (2013). The Deployment of Science and Maths Leaders in Primary Schools. A Study
for the Wellcome Trust. Available at: https://wellcome.ac.uk/sites/default/files/wtp056231_1.
pdf Accessed 27 May 2020.
Wilson, H. & Mant, J. (2005). Creativity and Excitement in Science. Oxford Brookes University:
Astra Zeneca and Oxford Brookes University.
14
CURRICULUM
Practical theorising in the absence of theory

Victoria Elliott and Larissa McLean Davies

What is curriculum?
The most notable work in recent years on curriculum theory and English educa-
tion, by Australian researcher Bill Green, describes the term ‘curriculum’ as ‘one
all too often taken for granted, as an already known quality… it tends to function
as either a “placeholder”, a “stop-word”, or akin to an empty signifier and hence
available to be filled according to need or purpose or whatever discourse is at hand’
(Green, 2017, p. 1). Etymologically speaking, a curriculum is the course one runs
along, a pathway taking you from the beginning to the end of school. It is fre-
quently equated with the syllabus: the specific items which are taught such as the
texts in English, the periods in History, the equations in Mathematics, the topics
in Modern Foreign Languages. The curriculum as the course one runs along is a
helpful metaphor here: we can have a pathway that goes from A to B but it can take
many forms – it can be a dirt track, a Roman road, or even a yellow brick road.The
content is not the only aspect that makes a curriculum; it is also how that content is
conveyed and the aspects that are foregrounded or glossed over. Curriculum is ‘not
a state of things, but a happening’ (Grumet, 2014, p. 88).
The metaphor of a path is used in a different way by Pinar (2012), who notes that
the school curriculum – ‘what the older generation chooses to tell the younger gener-
ation’ – communicates ‘what we chose to remember about the path’ by which we have
reached the current point, along with ‘what we believe about the present, what we
hope for the future’ (p. 30). Green (2017) conveys this as ‘representation’: curriculum is
a representation of the world (and representation within the curriculum of certain his-
tories and peoples is an important issue). Lawrence Stenhouse (1980) described cur-
riculum as being ‘a symbolic or meaningful object, like Shakespeare’s first folio’ (p. 40).
Various curriculum scholars have noted the different conceptual and institutional
levels on which curriculum operates (Fullan & Hargreaves, 2014; Porter et al., 2001).

DOI: 10.4324/9781003183945-19
 Curriculum 231

The ‘intended’ curriculum (Tyler, 1949; Schubert, 2010) is often used to refer to the
official curriculum written by bureaucrats which functions at the level of policy.
The concepts of the curriculum as ‘espoused’ (the form in which it exists in public
and institutional discourses), ‘enacted’ (the way it is made manifest by teachers in
classroom) and experienced (the way students engage with curriculum through
classroom activities) highlight the significance of the local, institutional manifesta-
tions of curriculum and the role of teachers in mediating curriculum for students.
Indeed, the ways in which students experience the intended curriculum is signifi-
cantly influenced by the ways that teachers talk about and understand curriculum
imperatives. Curriculum, then, is not a static set of documents, or imperatives, but
rather must be negotiated (Boomer, 1982) and made manifest in practice.This is not
to say that teachers and schools do not face significant political pressures with regard
to the enactment of curriculum. Since the 1990s, governments internationally have
been persuaded that there is a crisis in curriculum (Young, 2013) and that knowl-
edge has been rendered absent in curricula that focuses more on skills. This has
led to a policy level emphasis on ‘bringing knowledge back in’ to the curriculum
(Young, 2008) and, as part of a neo-liberal drive towards accountability, the ‘assessed’
curriculum (Porter et al., 2001) has become a key driver for the ways that teachers
articulate (espouse) and implement the intended curriculum.
In this chapter, we take up curriculum theory as a framework through which these
different dimensions of curriculum can be negotiated and conceived. However, we
acknowledge that while being able to articulate a theory of curriculum is impor-
tant to policy makers and practitioners, across career stages, this conceptual framing
of curriculum is not always apparent. In this chapter, we first explore the uses and
definitions of curriculum theory, and then investigate why curriculum theory is not
always apparent at the design or implementation phases, and, consequently, what
forces or imperatives are drawn on, by policy makers and teachers, in the absence of
curriculum theory. Following this, we argue that a mindset of practical theorising,
which recognises an interplay between theory, conceived both as knowledge and
the ability to theorise (McIntyre, 1993, 1995), and practice enables teachers to make
use of curriculum theories, and to consider the other theories or theoretical con-
cepts which are drawn on in curriculum development in the absence of curriculum
theory, and to embed or enact these in practice.
We will support this discussion with examples from England and Australia, the
national contexts in which we work as researchers and teacher educators and focus
particularly on the way these curriculum debates and dilemmas are played out in
secondary school subject English. We use subject English as a case study here, not
only because this is the area of our curriculum scholarship, but also because, as
we will discuss further, school English presents particular challenges for curric-
ulum theorising in terms of epistemology (Green, 2017; Yates et al., 2019), and
the enduring links between subject English and the development of citizens and
society, which often result in interventions from government and media brokers in
terms of debates about curriculum content, purpose and emphasis (McLean Davies
et al., 2017).
232 Victoria Elliott and Larissa McLean Davies

Curriculum theory
One of the founding figures in curriculum theory, Ralph W Tyler, suggested four
main questions as the basis of theorising the curriculum:

1. What educational purposes should the school seek to attain?

2. What educational experiences can be provided that are likely to attain these
purposes?
3. How can these educational experiences be effectively organized?
4. How can we determine whether these purposes are being attained? (Tyler,
1949, p. 1)

Curriculum theory, therefore, is the field which deals with these questions which,
it must be noted, are not subject-specific questions but broad questions which ask
educators to look across the disciplinary silos of the school day and plan for the
whole of an education, not just its constituent parts. The field then theorises about
what the answers to these questions should be and how they should be reached.
In this way, the definitions of curriculum by different researchers form part of
the theorisation of curriculum, but true curriculum theorists go further. Garth
Boomer’s concept of ‘curriculum negotiation’, for example, sought to integrate stu-
dent voice into the answers to Tyler’s questions, arguing that this promoted both
student agency and democratic engagement as well as citizenship skills (Bron, Bovill,
& Veugelers, 2016), all of which arguably contribute to the educational experiences
and purposes behind curriculum.
One area in which curriculum theory perhaps does underpin practice is in
Bruner’s (1960) concept commonly known as the ‘spiral curriculum’: the idea
that any student revisits the same topic or theme several times throughout their
schooling, getting progressively more complex with each visit. In science that
complexity might be increased in knowledge of the specific topic as we move
from simply planting beans in early Primary to understanding photosynthesis
and the process of growth in Secondary; in English, it might be more likely to be
the skill of analysis and conceptual development practised on more sophisticated
texts. Even so, this principle is not practised in the same way everywhere: we
need only compare the ways in which algebra, geometry and calculus are sepa-
rated into different courses in US schools with the integrated spiral mathematics
curriculum in the UK and Australia to see that the spiral curriculum is not an
organising feature everywhere in all subjects. Bruner’s thinking that underlies the
spiral curriculum underlies the principle of scaffolding too, but the key is that
scaffolding must be removed in order for progress and improvement to be made
(Wood et al., 1976). The removal of scaffolding is a particular issue in modern,
high-stakes education systems where accountability is king: providing acronyms
and mental scaffolds that can be taken anywhere by the student provides a level of
safety for teachers launching their students into examinations where they them-
selves will be judged by the outcomes. But without removal, the leap forward
 Curriculum 233

cannot be made (the argument made by John Warner (2019) in his book Why
Can’t They Write. This demonstrates where an understanding of the theoretical
underpinnings of curriculum can inform and support more effective teaching
practices.
Lawrence Stenhouse argued passionately that the problem with educational
research was that it was too far removed from the practitioner to do any good:

all [educational thinkers] should pay teachers the respect of translating their
ideas into curriculum. And that means enough contact with classroom reality
or enough consultancy with teachers to discipline all ideas by the problems
of practice. Only in curricular form can ideas be tested by teachers. Curricula
are hypothetical procedures testable only in classrooms. All educational ideas
must find expression in curricula before we can tell whether they are day
dreams or contributions to practice.
(Stenhouse, 1980, p. 41)

While much educational research has taken this to heart in the last 40 years, in the
area of curriculum theory, it has not been quite so widely adopted, perhaps because
of the cross-curricular and broad-ranging nature of curriculum theory, and perhaps
for other reasons discussed in the next section. In one area, the theorisation of cur-
riculum, in terms of the debate of skills versus knowledge (and particularly, most
recently, Young’s ‘powerful knowledge’), has been moved into practice, as the cur-
riculum has tended to evolve from knowledge to skills, to knowledge. But this has
come largely not via the teaching profession but through policy makers and pundits
who have also amplified the strawman aspect of the debate, rather than encouraging
the use of practical theorising to engage with the ideas behind powerful knowledge,
or acknowledging that even the most ‘progressive’ educationalists concur that ‘you
can only learn skills in context’ (Eaglestone, 2019, p. 81). This implementation has
also tended to gloss over the most important question, ‘what knowledge is of most
worth?’ (Spencer, 1860), the questioning and exploration of which is key to curric-
ulum theorisation, taking the answer for granted. Green (2017) argues, however, that
this question is not enough, ‘with the view that what happens after that is more or
less simply a matter of application, or implementation, or usage or practice’ (p. 7), so
that curriculum theory must also deal with the implementation of curriculum in a
particular socio-historical context, understanding it in within the context of indi-
vidual and societal identities. For the English specialist, this is often a debate over the
creation of a literary Canon. In this debate, those who argue for the absolute value
of some texts are pitted against those who see the reproduction of canon through
the societal processes of education as being largely independent of the absolute
worth of each text (Guillory, 2013).
Some of these debates may seem to move curriculum theory beyond the range
of relevance of the classroom teacher: what does it matter to the hard-working,
inner-city teacher of English Language Arts that the subject has its origins in the
establishment of the British Empire across the globe and the deliberate engendering
234 Victoria Elliott and Larissa McLean Davies

of ‘British’ sensibilities in colonial schooling? Yet these origins do continue to have

repercussions in what and how we teach today – the role of indigenous literatures
in the Australian curriculum, the resurgence of 19th-century literature in examina-
tion in England as part of a deliberately nationalist rhetoric (British literature is the
‘best in the world’ (Gove, 2010)), to name but two examples. An understanding of
the origins of the curriculum they teach and the ways in which policy is enacted is
key to enabling teachers as professional mediators of curriculum rather than (highly
skilled) deliverers of material via the pedagogies which can and do form the focus
of practical theorising.
As Green (2017) has argued, it ‘matters greatly that (the) curriculum … is worth-
while, in and of itself – worth teaching, worth studying and worth putting in place
as the story we tell ourselves, and our children, about our past, our present, and our
future’ (p. 15). Curriculum theory provides a set of questions to enable us to think
about curriculum, and to ensure that it is indeed worthwhile. However, in 2020, we
still find ourselves asking the question ‘whatever happened to curriculum theory?’
(Edwards, 2011, p. 173).

The absence of curriculum theory in curriculum development

There are various reasons why broad or general theories of curriculum policy and
planning might not be immediately apparent, either at the intended (policy) or
enacted levels or within the curriculum itself. Although, as outlined in the previous
section, there has been decades of scholarship developing curriculum theory, prag-
matic, political and epistemological pressures on the development of the intended
curriculum and its enactment in different contexts mean that curriculum theory
may not be at the forefront of deliberations for policy makers or teachers.
In terms of designing the intended curriculum, there are various conditions and
circumstances which make it challenging to establish and maintain an overarching
curriculum theory. Often, curriculum is changed when a new government comes
into office; this is because education, in neo-liberal contexts, is bound up with the
economy, a vision of global markets, and the implications of this for a developing
citizenry (Ditchburn, 2012). This means that there are generally time pressures on
the development of a new curriculum, making deliberations about overarching
theories difficult to prioritise and expeditious writing a priority. Further to this
point, because curriculum is tied to the business of government, in both England
and Australia, Ministers of Education have significant power although, like most
bureaucrats in such roles, are not familiar with curriculum policy or theory and are
thus dependent on the views of others and may or may not choose to be advised
by school educational experts (as we will discuss in the context of Michael Gove’s
approach to the English curriculum below). However, even when ministers do
decide to consult widely, and enlist a range of stakeholders to advise about a new
curriculum, which was the case with Australia’s first national curriculum developed
in 2008, the disparate views and about key curriculum questions may not be able
to be resolved, and thus the curriculum created may not have a clear theoretical
 Curriculum 235

underpinning, but rather reflect a hybrid, compromised position (McLean Davies

and Sawyer 2018).
Arguably, there are some school subjects for which it is more difficult to reach
agreement about curriculum direction, and this is certainly the case with the school
subject English. English has long been said to not have a knowledge base (Medway,
2010; Durrant, 2004), or to not even be about the development of knowledge
(McLean Davies & Sawyer, 2018). This means that it is difficult for experts to reach
agreement, but also means, in the context of government oversight of the devel-
opment of curriculum, that it is vulnerable to external influences and non-expert
advice and theories. Moreover, this epistemological openness and fluidity, while
attractive to teachers, is often seen as both dangerous and compelling for bureau-
crats, a problem requiring a solution. As Terry Eagleton (2008) and Ian Hunter
(1988) have argued, English, particularly through the core component of literary
study, has been made to play a key role in regulating and governing students’ senses
of society and behaviour. While contemporary English teachers would contest this
notion of English creating a compliant and classed citizenry, it is clear why bureau-
crats wishing to firm up social and classed positions, would want to dictate the
content of the English curriculum.
Of course, curriculum theory is not limited to the intention or design phase,
and can also be animated in schools as subject areas are enacted, by school leaders
and teachers in classrooms as they work with policy documents. Yet, we also see
various challenges of mobilising and utilising curriculum theory on the school
level. Part of the challenge is the need to sustain curriculum discussion across dis-
parate learning areas. Another aspect, though, relates to the training that teachers
have had with regard to curriculum theory: much of this will have taken place in
the preservice phase, where issues of classroom management and student engage-
ment, the demands of the practicum and the development of pedagogical content
knowledge command preservice teachers’ attention (Loughran et al., 2001). The
result of this is that other aspects of the course, which might relate to curriculum
theory or planning, are often deemed as less relevant by new teachers (Mayer et al.,
2015). Once teachers commence in practice, it is rare that curriculum theory is the
focus of ongoing professional learning or development. In the secondary school
context, professional learning is likely to support general pedagogical practices, tar-
get disciplinary knowledge or subject content. For example, professional learning
for English teachers will often focus on new texts introduced to the curriculum,
particularly those set for examination.
Thus, the marginalisation or absence of curriculum theory at the level of the
design of the intended curriculum, and at the school and classroom level where the
curriculum is enacted, is the result of a complex range of factors that stem from
different subject epistemologies and priorities; pragmatic considerations of time;
priorities around subject content, student engagement and assessment. In the next
section, we will discuss the mechanisms, knowledge and priorities that are used to
develop curricula in England and Australia, when an overriding theory is not pri-
oritised or apparent.
236 Victoria Elliott and Larissa McLean Davies

Curriculum development outside curriculum theory

England
In England, the national curriculum went through a major overhaul under the
Coalition Government of 2010–2015, led by the then Secretary of State for
Education, Michael Gove. This new curriculum included primary and secondary,
including a complete overhaul of the examination systems and the content of the
major national examinations at 16 and 18. At a governmental level, the curricular
decisions were largely made in camera, and appeared to be largely driven by the
personal beliefs of the Secretary of State in places, given their relation to speeches
he had made since before the election which led to the formation of the Coalition
Government. Certainly, widespread consultation of the teaching profession did not
take place. The voices that were given precedence in the development of the cur-
riculum appear to have been subject experts chosen personally by Michael Gove.
Jonathan Bate, then Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford,
related his role in curriculum reform in an event in 2015, and took responsibility
for the new examination requirements at 16 which said that students should study a
Shakespeare play, a 19th century novel, representative Romantic poetry and a mod-
ern British novel or play. His vision was for schools to be able to choose their own
texts within these restrictions, and he has written of his dismay that the Awarding
Bodies who run the examinations instead chose to specify a very limited range of
set texts (Bate, 2014). This decision seems entirely predictable to anyone involved
in education and assessment in a school context as opposed to coming from a
University discipline background; in England strict limits on the numbers of set
text options have been the norm for at least 60 years, which is seen to be essential
to accurate and reliable marking of examination papers. In Scotland, in contrast,
teachers have free rein over text choice for their classes and examination questions
are written to be answerable on multiple texts, demonstrating partially the role that
inertia and ‘this is the way we have always done it’ plays in the enactment of new
policy. Bate also suggested, at the event in 2015, that the reason he had been asked
to join the ‘small panel of experts’ on English was that Michael Gove had read and
enjoyed Bate’s English Literature: A Very Short Introduction (2010), which is a case
study in the ways in which serendipity can play into the selection of expert advice
to government.
Where curriculum is set directly from government, a number of different polit-
ical priorities play into the development of that curriculum. Elliott has argued else-
where (2014) that a concern with developing a strong sense of Britishness animated
some of the curricular choices which were made in the development of the English
curriculum in England (the devolution of education within the United Kingdom
creating some interesting tensions in this regard). Discourse from the government
around the curriculum reforms has also sought to reframe the traditionalist approach
to curriculum from the Conservative Party as being the socially just one, with Gove
referring to his critics as the ‘enemies of promise’ (Gove, 2013b), and desiring to
 Curriculum 237

remodel state education on the model of the historical elite public schools in the
UK because ‘their medieval cloisters connect seamlessly to the corridors of power’
(Gove, 2013a). This was particularly evident in the reform of the history curricu-
lum from age 5 onwards, with the initial proposal to teach history in schools via a
‘linear chronology of the achievements of British national heroes’ (Watson, 2019, p.
1), which eventually failed in the face of almost united opposition from the history
community, in terms of both the teaching profession and disciplinary academic
experts. Watson also reflects on Gove’s insistence on his ‘passion’ for history as a
justification for his attempts to impose his own view of an appropriate historical
education on the nation.
Curriculum at the national level in England, therefore, in the most recent rede-
velopment was not informed by curriculum theory, but by individual ‘expert’ views,
largely where those expert views aligned with the personal preferences of the
Secretary of State for Education, or perhaps more kindly where they accidentally
intruded on his consciousness. This was aided by the fact that in England control of
education is largely governed by policy below the level of law, which means that it
lies in the direct remit of the Secretary of State. However, another reform at the same
time was the massive expansion of the academy programme, which among other
things allows schools to work outside the national curriculum.The main mechanism
by which curriculum is governed, therefore, is via assessment, through high-stakes
examinations from as young as age 5 (the Phonics test, which checks that reading
is taught through systematic synthetic phonics, and is thus high stakes for schools if
not children), and through league tables of school achievement. In the latter case, the
development of the ‘English Baccalaureate’ and later ‘Progress 8’ incentivised schools
to ensure that 16-year-olds sit examinations in at least eight traditional subjects and
have been used as a lever to increase the study of modern foreign languages, while
also being blamed for the demise of creative subjects in schools. In doing so, there
has been a significant shift in the allocation of resources within schools in order to
maximise outcomes on these measures (Neumann et al., 2020). School level cur-
riculum development is shaped by these external pressures. Despite rhetoric around
autonomy for schools (Wright, 2012), the reality is that examination outcomes are
one of the main drivers of behaviour, especially around curriculum, because they
are strongly linked to the instigation of the very high-stakes inspection visits from
the national schools inspectorate, Ofsted. A poor Ofsted outcome can result in the
dismissal or resignation of the head teacher, or indeed the closure or forced takeover
(euphemistically known as ‘re-brokering’) of the school in question.
Ofsted itself has reformed its inspection framework to focus on school curricu-
lum, which has led to the resurgence of discussion of curriculum in schools and a
renewed interest in the concept. However, it has also set strict conditions on what
a successful curriculum can be which largely relate to the development of ‘cultural
capital’ (Ofsted, 2019, p. 10); there are severe problems with the way this term is
currently used in education discourse in England (Elliott, 2021). Nonetheless, the
combined ‘incentives’ of league tables and Ofsted judgements make many schools
238 Victoria Elliott and Larissa McLean Davies

extremely risk averse in their curricular decision making, even where they are not
bound by national decision making.

Australia
As we have mentioned, Australia commenced the development of its first national
curriculum for year Foundation (5-year-olds) to Year 10 (16-year-olds) in 2008.
This was the first national curriculum to exist in the country, a situation largely
brought about because the seven States and Territories of Australia have jurisdiction
over school education and curriculum, and had not, since the commencement of
formal schooling, been able to agree on a national curriculum. Persuaded that a
national curriculum was required to support students and their families as they
moved between States, and to ensure retention and a consistent quality of educa-
tion would be provided to all students (Reid, 2018), the national curriculum, called
the Australian Curriculum, received bi-partisan support from State and Territory
Education ministers.While a national curriculum was developed for the senior years
(Years 11 and 12, for 16- to 18-year-olds) in 2008–2009, there was not the same
broad agreement that this would be implemented.
Unlike the National Curriculum in England, as we indicated in the previous
section, a considerable consultation phase for the F–10 curriculum was conducted
around the country in 2008. Stakeholders from each of the state and territory juris-
dictions, drawn from teacher professional associations, curriculum authorities and
universities, gathered to discuss the new curriculum. While all subject areas across
the years of schooling were to be developed, the priority areas were English, sci-
ence, maths and history. These subjects were developed by independent panels of
experts, each managing epistemological and philosophical debates within their own
subject areas. During the development of the Australian curriculum, these debates
were particularly strident in the curriculum areas of history and English. In history,
the periods to be studied was a source of much consternation (ACARA, 2012;
Gilbert, 2011), while in English, the decision to ‘return’ literature to be a key organ-
ising strand of the curriculum (along with literacy and language) caused concern
amongst teachers who valued the more multi-modal and egalitarian term ‘texts’
(McLean Davies et al., 2018; McLean Davies & Sawyer, 2018).
The range of stakeholders and views represented made it difficult, on the subject
level, to settle on curriculum organisation or content, and of course, as is often the
case, this presented a challenge to the use of theory for the curriculum as a whole
(Yates, 2018). This further became problematical when the curriculum was imple-
mented in State and Territory jurisdictions. While there had been agreement that
the curriculum would be utilised, the larger and more well-resourced States such as
Victoria and New South Wales were ultimately reluctant to give up their bespoke
curricula, arguing that the National curriculum was an inferior product to their
existing offerings. In some recognition of their commitment to use the National
Curriculum, these States redeveloped their local curricula to take account of what
they perceived to be the key ideas of value in the national offering. In the case of
 Curriculum 239

subject English, in the State of Victoria, a desire to retain what was considered to
be a distinctive ‘Victorian’ approach to English which valued and prioritised the
language modes (speaking and listening, reading and writing) was superimposed
on the organising structure of the Australian Curriculum: English. This meant that
the national curriculum, already a theoretical pastiche, was further theoretically and
conceptually complicated when it was appropriated in some State contexts. While
those designing the Victorian Curriculum claimed that the retention of the lan-
guage modes was to ensure teachers were not confused by the new organisation of
the Australian curriculum, perhaps predictably, and ironically, the current document
is inherently unwieldy and confusing. It is worth stating that while the Victorian
Curriculum is mandated for State schools and Catholic schools receiving signifi-
cant State funding, independent schools, which receive their funding, as one of the
anomalies of federation, through the Federal government, may choose to imple-
ment the Australian, rather than the State version of the curriculum.
While, as we have noted, the initial development of the Australian Curriculum
allowed for the input of a range of stakeholders through nationally held consulta-
tion sessions (ACARA, 2016), the first review of the curriculum commissioned by
the conservative Government of the day was conducted by ‘experts’ – Dr Keven
Donnelly and Professor Kenneth Wiltshire who – enlisted the services of similarly
like-minded colleagues in Universities. Donnelly were on record expressing neo-co-
lonial views of curriculum at the time it was being developed (Donnelly, 2010),
and so it was not surprising that the recommendations from the first Australian
Curriculum Review in 2014, found that the mandate to include Australian liter-
ature, which has been historically marginalised in subject English, was contested
(ADGE, 2014). The reviewer of the Literature Strand of subject English, Professor
Barry Spurr, from the University of Sydney, recommended that if Australian liter-
ature was to be given attention, then it should be in the context of writers whose
work could be traced, at least conceptually or stylistically, to an imperial origin
(such as Patrick White), rather than the work of past or contemporary Indigenous
writers or non-Anglo-Celtic writers (Spurr, 2014). It is perhaps only because Spurr
came into personal and professional disrepute at the time the review was released
that these recommendations did not gain traction (New Matilda, 2014).With regard
to the Language strand, the suggestion of the reviewer, Dr Fiona Mueller, that
greater attention needed to be paid to phonics in the early years was included in
the next iteration of the curriculum documents. This first review of the Australian
Curriculum, and in particular its English offering shows that, just as the curricu-
lum in England is influenced by those whose views are affirmed by the Minister of
Education, the Australian Curriculum is similarly vulnerable.
While the intended curriculum in both England and Australia is influenced
by neo-liberal actors outside the school system, the enacted curriculum in both
countries is mediated by high-stakes assessment. Just as the four Awarding Bodies
administering the GCSE examinations significantly influence the curriculum at the
school level in England, the final examinations at Year 12 level – which in Australia
are administered by each State and Territory – similarly dictate the curriculum.
240 Victoria Elliott and Larissa McLean Davies

Like the Year 5 Phonics test in England, standardised literacy tests in Australia (part
of the suite of the National Assessment Program for Literacy and Numeracy, or
NAPLAN) which are conducted at Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 also drive curriculum con-
tent. As in England, league tables produced in response to high-stakes testing impact
on the reputation and enrolment profile of schools and their access to funding.
The role of high-stakes testing on curriculum was explicitly recognised by those
reviewing the National Curriculum in 2014. Notably, Australia had national high-
stakes literacy and numeracy testing prior to the design and implementation of a
national curriculum, and so one of the recommendations of the report was that the
curriculum documents and tests better align. Given that not all States and Territories
in Australia actually follow the National Curriculum, but the NAPLAN tests are
mandatory across the country, it stands to reason that these tests will continue to
have the most significant influence on the enactment of curriculum of any external
policy document.

Adopting a practical theorising mindset in relation to curriculum

We have identified a number of constraints on the use of practical theorising in rela-
tion to curriculum. One is the lack of individual control that an individual teacher
has over curriculum broadly speaking, and another is the disconnect between cur-
riculum theory in particular and the teaching profession. However, we would like
to suggest that adopting a practical theorising mindset can and should be done in
relation to curriculum on the micro-level (even if it is not done or possible on the
macro-level). Practical theorising asks us to constantly revisit the links between
theory and practice, privileging neither one but allowing each to influence our
understanding of the other. The first thing we might take from this in relation to
curriculum is to view it as a problem of education, and as something which is gen-
erated from and through theory, whether or not that is the field of curriculum the-
ory. Curriculum development is not a tessellating puzzle in which we simply have
to organise an agreed set of pieces in order to fit them into the number of teaching
periods, terms and years we have to fill.We also have to agree on those pieces before
we fit them together. This is no easy task. If we work on the level of the individual
school, then curriculum across the broad range of subjects is the responsibility of
school leaders. It is they who decide which subjects are taught, how often and for
how long and in what arrangement. Is music an essential subject for younger stu-
dents that they should learn across every year, or should it be rotated with drama
and food technology across a year? Do English and mathematics get an extra period
of teaching in exam years when compared to optional subjects? Within that debate
subject leads may have a voice, usually to advocate for their own subject, but it is a
process likely to be largely dictated by external pressures and leadership priorities.
Once the overall shape of the curriculum is decided, it falls to subject leads and
departments to decide how their subject works within that shape, with reference
to the external influences of national curricula, examination specifications and the
disciplinary specific norms.To take the example of poetry: it is agreed that it is a key
 Curriculum 241

element of English and a valuable educational experience, but what form should
poetry teaching take? Should students be both reading and writing poetry, and in
which year levels? Is teaching the reading of poetry mainly about the teaching of
analytical writing about a specific anthology of poems set for study, or is it mainly
about the enjoyment and experience of reading poems and finding those which
call to you and your students? To make any of these subject-level decisions draws
on beliefs and principles: without recourse to practical theorising, that is without
an explicit consideration of the basis on which they are made, those decisions are,
at best, based on personal preference and can, at worst, threaten the progress of the
students. In part, a practical theorising mindset in relation to curriculum means
developing critical analysis when it comes to what we teach, as well as how we teach
it, considering the motivations that have led to this point. McLean Davies’ (2012)
suggestions regarding auditing the English curriculum support this practical theo-
rising approach. Indeed, there is no neutral curriculum: it is always the product of
a number of factors mediated through each other. This is particularly significant in
a subject like English where, as we have discussed, content for the most part is not
set, and teachers have some authority and autonomy to select literature for their
students.
Even where the specific content of the curriculum is dictated to the teacher,
via set topics or requirements for particular texts, the practical theorising mindset
enables them to consider what and why they are teaching in relation to that topic.
Engagement with anti-racist theory or an understanding of canon formation might
encourage the use of Black composers in music lessons. Consideration of cross-cur-
ricular learning and overlapping topics might lead to history and English depart-
ments coordinating their offerings so that when their 12-year-old students cover
World War II, the two reinforce and support each other, drawing on their respec-
tive strengths rather than generating competing worldviews. A practical theorising
approach then seeks to explore the strengths and weaknesses of the ways in which
the curriculum has been developed or refined in relation to any theoretical input,
thinking in terms not only of personal development but also of individual attain-
ment. Evaluating a five-year curriculum is no easy task, thinking merely in terms of
time and confounding factors: but the smaller elements within those five years can
be examined and refined along with pedagogy.
It is this mindset which prevents us being wholly swept up in popular move-
ments in education; which ensures that we do not move to either extreme of a
debate and lose what the other side has to offer. A few years ago, the name of the
game in curriculum across the subjects was ‘relevance’ (Elliott, 1983): 21st century
science, demonstrating the real-world applications of maths, making Shakespeare
‘relevant’ to students. Now the pendulum has swung back the other way, in favour
of knowledge, Gradgrindian facts, and an emphasis on scientific versus spontaneous
concepts, as Vygotsky termed them (Daniels, 2016). Yet an understanding of the
theory of schemata, the mental maps we use to organise knowledge in our brains,
will show the teacher that jettisoning spontaneous concepts altogether is almost cer-
tainly a bad idea, in that relating scientific knowledge to the informal learning our
242 Victoria Elliott and Larissa McLean Davies

students have engaged in every day makes it more memorable and does not negate
the power of that scientific knowledge (Vygotsky, 1978). Likewise, the delivery of
out-of-context factual knowledge is less powerful than that which is specifically
contextual and therefore has a hook to hang on in our brains (see Bleiman (2020)
for a discussion of this in relation to Biblical knowledge and literature teaching, for
example).
Adopting a practical theorising mindset in relation to curriculum, therefore, also
enables us to think carefully about disciplinary knowledge and what constitutes
valuable knowledge in the light of certain pedagogies that have been adopted in
the name of ‘what works’, such as retrieval practice and knowledge organisers. We
can use practical theorising to think on a micro-scale about curriculum even if we
do not as individual teachers have much control over the macro-scale. It also brings
us an understanding that we can step back and look at curriculum as a whole –
an important point which has recently been brought into rapid focus in England
because of changes to the school inspection framework, but which has implications
for curriculum, teachers, and schools across the world.

References
Australian Curriculum and Reporting Authority (ACARA). (2012). Curriculum Development
Process. Retrieved from: https://docs.acara.edu.au/resources/ACARA_Curriculum_
Development_Process_Version_6.0_-_04_April_2012_-_FINAL_COPY.pdf
Australian Curriculum and Reporting Authority (ACARA). (2016). The Consultation Process.
Retrieved from: https://www.acara.edu.au/curriculum/history-of-the-australian-curriculum/
consultation-process
Australian Government Department of Education (AGDE). (2014). Review of the Australian
Curriculum: Supplementary Material. Retrieved from: https://docs.education.gov.au/node/36269
Bate, J. (2010). English Literature:A Very Short Introduction (Vol. 249). Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Bate, J. (2014) GCSE English literature row: Don’t blame Gove, blame me. The Guardian, Friday,
May 30, 2014. Available from: https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2014/
may/30/gcse-literature-row-gove-blame-me-english-literature-syllabus
Bleiman, B. (2020). What Matters in English Teaching: Collected Blogs and Other Writing. London:
English and Media Centre.
Boomer, G. (1982). Negotiating the Curriculum: A Teacher-Student Partnership. New York: Ashton
Scholastic.
Bron, J., Bovill, C., & Veugelers, W. M. M. H. (2016). Curriculum negotiation: The relevance
of Boomer’s approach to the curriculum as a process, integrating student voice and devel-
oping democratic citizenship. Curriculum Perspectives, 36(1), 15–27.
Bruner, J. (1960). Process of Education. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Daniels, H. (2016). Vygotsky and Pedagogy. Abingdon: Routledge.
Ditchburn, G. (2012) A national Australian curriculum: In whose interests? Asia Pacific Journal
of Education, 32(3), 259–269.
Donnelly, K. (2010). The ideology of the National English Curriculum. Quadrant. Retrieved
from https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2010/5/the-ideology-of-the-national-english
curriculum
Durrant, C. (2004). English teaching: Profession or predicament? English in Australia, 141, 6–8.
 Curriculum 243

Eaglestone, R. (2019). Literature: Why It Matters. Cambridge: Polity.

Eagleton, T. (2008). Literary Theory: An Introduction: Anniversary Edition (2nd ed.). Oxford:
Blackwell Publishing.
Edwards, R. (2011) Whatever happened to curriculum theory? Pedagogy, Culture & Society,
19(2), 173–174.
Elliott, J. (1983). A curriculum for the study of human affairs: The contribution of Lawrence
Stenhouse. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 15(2), 105–123.
Elliott,V. (2014).The treasure house of a nation? Literary heritage, curriculum and devolution
in Scotland and England in the 21st century. The Curriculum Journal, 25(2), 282–300.
Elliott, V. (2021). Knowledge in English: Canon, Curriculum and Cultural Literacy. Abingdon:
Routledge.
Fullan, M. & Hargreaves, A. (Eds.). (2014). Teacher Development and Educational Change (2nd
ed.). London: Routledge.
Gilbert, R. (2011). Can history succeed at school? Problems of knowledge in the Australian
History Curriculum. Australian Journal of Education, 55(3), 245–258.
Gove, M. (2010, October). All Pupils will Learn our Island’s Story. Speech presented at
Conservative Party Conference. Birmingham. Retrieved from: http://www.conservatives.
com/News/Speeches/2010/10/Michael_Gove_All_pupils_will_learn_our_island_story.
aspx
Gove, M. (2013a). The Progressive Betrayal. Speech presented at the Social Market
Foundation, February 5th 2013. Retrieved from: http://www.smf.co.uk/michael-gove-
speaks-at-the-smf/
Gove, M. (2013b). “I refuse to surrender to the Marxist teachers hell-bent on destroying
our schools”. Mail on Sunday 23 March 2013. Retrieved from: https://www.dailymail.
co.uk/debate/article-2298146/I-refuse-surrender-Marxist-teachers-hell-bent-destroy-
ing-schools-Education-Secretary-berates-new-enemies-promise-opposing-plans.
html#ixzz2e6pSqyVv
Green, B. (2017). Engaging Curriculum: Bridging the Curriculum Theory and English Education
Divide. Abingdon: Routledge.
Grumet, M. (2014). Imago, Imago, Imago. Journal of the Canadian Association for Curriculum
Studies, 12(1), 82–89.
Guillory, J. (2013). Cultural Capital: The Problem of Literary Canon Formation. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
Hunter, I. (1988). Culture and Government: The Emergence of Literary Education. London:
Macmillan Press.
Loughran, J., Brown, J., & Doecke, B. (2001) Continuities and discontinuities: The transition
from pre-service to first-year teaching, Teachers and Teaching, 7(1), 7–23.
Mayer, D., Allard, A., Bates, R., Dixon, M., Kline, J., Kostogritz, A., Moss, J., Rowan, L.,
Walker-Gibbs, B., White, S., & Hodder, P. (2015). Studying the Effectiveness of Teacher
Education – Final Report. Deakin University. Retrieved from: http://dro.deakin.edu.au/
eserv/DU:30080802/walkergibbs-studyingthe-2015.pdf
McIntyre, D. (1993) Theory, theorizing and reflection in initial teacher education. In J.
Calderhead & P. Gates (Eds.), Conceptualizing Reflection in Teacher Development. London:
Falmer, 39–52.
McIntyre, D. (1995) Initial teacher education as practical theorising: A response to Paul Hirst.
British Journal of Educational Studies, 43(4), 365–83.
McLean Davies, L. (2012). Auditing subject English: A review of text selection practices
inspired by the National Year of Reading. English in Australia, 47(2), 1139–52.17.
McLean Davies, L., Martin, S. K., & Buzacott, L. (2017). Worldly reading: Teaching Australian
literature in the twenty-first century. English in Australia, 52(3), 21–30.
244 Victoria Elliott and Larissa McLean Davies

McLean Davies, L., Doecke, B., & Sawyer,W. (2018). Blowing and blundering in space: English
in the Australian curriculum. In A. Reid & D. Price (Eds.), The Australian Curriculum:
Promises, Problems and Possibilities. Australian Curriculum Studies Association, 33–42.
McLean Davies, L. & Sawyer,W. (2018). (K)now you see it, (k)now you don’t: Literary knowl-
edge in the Australian Curriculum: English. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 50(6), 836–849.
Medway, P. (2010). English and Enlightenment. Changing English, 17(1), 3–12.
Neumann, E., Gewirtz, S., Maguire, M., & Towers, E. (2020). Neoconservative education
­policy and the case of the English Baccalaureate. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 52(5),
702–719.
New Matilda, (October 16, 2014). Curriculum Reviewer Barry Spurr Mocks. ‘Abos,
Mussies, Women, Chinky-Poos’. Retrieved from: https://newmatilda.com/2014/10/16/
curriculum-reviewer-barry-spurr-mocks-abos-mussies-women-chinky-poos/
Ofsted (2019) School Inspection Update. Manchester: Ofsted.
Pinar, W. (2012). What Is Curriculum Theory? (2nd ed.) [electronic resource] New York, NY:
Routledge.
Porter, A. C., Smithson, J. L., & Consortium for Policy Research in Education. (2001).
Defining, Developing, and Using Curriculum Indicators. CPRE Research Report Series.
Schubert, W. H. (2010). Outside curricula and public pedagogy. In J. A. Sandlin, B. D. Schultz,
& J. Burdick (Eds.), Handbook of Public Pedagogy: Education and Learning beyond Schooling.
New York: Routledge, 10–19.
Reid, A. (2018). The journey towards the first Australian curriculum. In A. Reid & D. Price
(Eds.), The Australian Curriculum: Promises, Problems and Possibilities. Canberra: ACSA.
Spencer, H. (1860). Education: Intellectual, Moral and Physical. New York: D. Appleton and
Company.
Spurr, B. (2014). Subject matter specialist report on the Australian Curriculum: English, with
particular attention to Literature, prepared for the Review of the Australian Curriculum.
Stenhouse, L. (1980). Curriculum research and the art of the teacher. Curriculum, 1 (Spring
1980), 40–44.
Tyler, R. W. (1949). Basic Principles of Curriculum and Instruction. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.
Vygotsky, L. (1978). Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Warner, J. (2019). Why They Can’t Write: Killing the Five-Paragraph Essay and Other Necessities.
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Watson, M. (2019). Michael Gove’s war on professional historical expertise: Conservative
curriculum reform, extreme Whig history and the place of imperial heroes in modern
multicultural Britain. British Politics, 15, 271−290.
Wood, D., Bruner, J. & Ross, G. (1976). The role of tutoring in problem solving. Journal of
Child Psychology and Child Psychiatry, 17(2), 89−100.
Wright, A. (2012). Fantasies of empowerment: Mapping neoliberal discourse in the coalition
government’s schools policy. Journal of Education Policy, 27(3), 279−294.
Yates, L., (2018). The curriculum conversation in Australia: Review essay of The Australian
Curriculum: Promises, problems and possibilities, ed. Alan Reid and Deborah Price
(ACSA, Canberra 2018). Curriculum Perspectives, 38,137−144.
Yates, L., Davies, L. M., Buzacott, L., Doecke, B., Mead, P., & Sawyer, W. (2019). School
English, literature and the knowledge-base question. Curriculum Journal, 30(1), 51–68.
Young, M. (2013). Overcoming the crisis in curriculum theory: A knowledge-based approach.
Journal of Curriculum Studies, 45(2), 101–118.
Young, M. (2008). Bringing Knowledge Back In: From Social Constructivism to Social Realism in
the Sociology of Education. Abingdon: Routledge.
INDEX

Page numbers in Italics refer to figures; bold refer to tables and boxes; and page
numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes numbers.

Abrahams, I. 67 Bacon, Francis 67

Academies Act (2010) 27 Baird, J. -A. 71, 166
acceptance, in diverse contexts 26 Bate, Jonathan 236
Adams, R. 67 BERA-RSA Inquiry 202, 207
adaptive expertise 27 Berliner, D. C. 109, 118, 218, 220
additional course requirements 174 Biggs, J. 174
Adey, P. 218 Big Questions (BQs) 222, 224
Ainscow, M. 115 Bird, T. 39
A-level syllabus 57 Black-Hawkins, K. 117, 119
Alexander, R. J. 18–19, 216 Bleiman, B. 88
anti-racist theory 241 Boomer, Garth 232
argument testing process 167 Booth, T. 115
Askew, M. 130, 133, 139 Brandon, R. 73, 163
assessment process, of student-teachers’ Brandon’s matrix: practical work 74–75;
professional learning 5; conceptualisation pupil-friendly language 75; quadrants of
162–164; formative assessment activity 75; of scientific methods 73, 73, 74
169–171; in ITE 165–166, 168; overview British Educational Research
of 160–162; peer assessment 169; Association 199
profile, of practical theorising 173–174; Bruner, J. 232
recontextualisation 164–165, 167–169, Burn, K. 23
171; socially situated student-teacher 162;
summative assessment 172–173; teacher Canrinus, E. 174
knowledge and 166–168 career-long research engagement 202
Atherton, C. 82 Carr, W. 20, 21
audio-recorded assessment 168 Carter, A. 114
Australia: praxis in 82–84; curriculum 233, Carter Review of Initial Teacher
238–240 Training 13
autism 113, 120 changing context, practical work in 70–73
auto-ethnographic approach 51 Cheng, M. M. H. 37
Avramidis, E. 116 Childs, A. 71, 162, 163
246 Index

Chin, C. 222 dialectic process 157

Clarke, D. 130, 132, 192 Dinkelman, T. 181
close child observation 122 discriminatory practices, of special
Cochran-Smith, M. 182–183 education 116
co-construction of meaning 83 Doecke, B. 82–83
Code of Practice 123 Donnelly, Keven 239
‘cognition in practice’ 165 Doyle, W. 15–16
collaboration 77–78 Dunne, M. 217
collaborative research 203
Collins, Kevan 14 Eagleton, Terry 235
complex learning profiles 118 early career teachers (ECTs) 81, 84; in
Conceptual Challenge in Primary Science praxis 89–90; understand essay writing
project 218 90–93
conceptualisation 162–164; of history Education Act (1981) 115
teaching 61 educational theory 13
constant comparative method 103 Education Endowment Foundation (EEF)
constructivism 220–223, 221 56, 208, 210, 211, 218–219
context, of practical theorising 84–85; Edwards, A. 162, 163
student-teachers’ experiences in 85–89 EEF see Education Endowment Foundation
contextualised knowledge 194 Elliott,V. 236
Cope, J. 149 Ellis, S. 116
Core Content Framework 27 Ellis,V. 26, 27, 162, 163, 181, 186, 194, 195
core curriculum 45 ELO see extended learning opportunities
core practices 39 emancipation 64
critical phase, of teaching-learning 43 emancipatory phase, of teaching-learning 43
critical reflection 21 emancipatory reflection 21
Cuoco, A. 98 Emanuelsson, J. 130
curriculum assignment 143; affordances embedded practicum model 36–37
151–152; aims of 144; alternative embodied knowledge 167
structures 157–158; crystallisation empirically-based model 34
144; dialectic process 157; distinction- England: Core Content Framework 27;
level mark 148–149; legacy 155–156; initial teacher education in 162, 167;
low mark 146–148; merit mark, at national curriculum 236–238; practical
master’s level 149–151; ‘messaging’ science at GCSE in 71
157; misalignments 145; pressure and English educators’ engagement in
performativity 152–153; research practice 83
literature 157; school context 153–154; English Language Arts 233
sophisticated process 156–157; structure English Literature: A Very Short Introduction
154–155 (Bate) 236
curriculum/curriculum theory 6, 231–234; English PGCE programme 84, 89
in Australia 238–240; in curriculum Enstone, L. 82
development 234–235; defined 230; in essay writing process 81–82
England 236–238; intended 231; practical ethnography-in-education methodology 85
theorising mindset in 240–242 Evans, A. 35
extended learning opportunities (ELO) 119,
Davies, C. 23 120, 122
deductive/inductive approach 103
Derry, J. 163 Falkenberg, T. 36
Descriptors 172, 173 Fancourt, N. 162
Desforges, C. 18 Fenstermacher, G. 171
design experiment 100 Fitzgerald, A. 217
Developing Expertise of Beginning Florian, L. 117, 119
Teachers project 200, 201 follow-up study 100–101
Developmental Work Research 26 Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety
Dewey, J. 99 Scale 149

formative assessment activity
169–171, 175
foundational framework 86
foundational knowledge 68–70
Furlong, J. 21, 25, 46n1, 185–186, 194, 195
Gallivan, H. R. 131
General Certificate of Secondary Education
(GCSE) 57, 70–72, 71, 75
geography peer group assessment 171
Gibbons, S. 81–82, 85, 87, 88
Goldenberg, E. A. 98
Goodnough, K. 36
Goodwin, A. L. 181
Gove, Michael 12, 236; enemies of promise
236–237
Government Grant Programme 35–36
Graduate Teaching Programme 35
Grapheme-Phoneme Correspondences
(GPC) 148
Green, B. 230, 233, 234
Guile, D. 161, 164, 165
Guilfoyle, L. 38
Haggarty, L. 22, 23
Hagger, H. 52, 59, 62, 124, 173
Hake, C. 22, 23
Hammerness, K. 17, 131
Hanley, P. 227
Hawksley, F. 35
Helgetun, J. B. 28
Hicks, D. 170
higher education (HE) 180
Hirst, P. 21–23, 28, 51, 54, 62
history curriculum 51; mentor’s perspective
54–58, 63, 64; ‘planning for learning’
52; programme context 52–54;
student-teacher’s perspective 58–64
history PGCE programme 52, 54
Hobson, A. J. 186
Hodgkinson, S. 223
Holland, M. 35
Hollingsworth, H. 192
hooks, bell 64
Horwitz, E. K. 149
Horwitz, M. B. 149
Hunter, Ian 235
inclusion 113; hypothesise and
problem-solving 123; learning from
special education 121–122; observation
122–123; policies and practices 115–118;
special school placement 119–121
inclusive pedagogy see inclusion
inferentialism 163
Index 247
initial teacher education (ITE) 1, 3, 32,
33, 113, 114, 201–204; apprenticeship
12; assessment in 165–166, 168;
awareness 116; complexity 14–15;
educational theory 13–14; in England
162, 167; Government Grant
Programme for 35–36; importance,
of practice 11; inclusive pedagogy
within 117; integration, of theory
and practice 45; landscape of 160;
one-year postgraduate programme of
2; peer assessment tasks 171; practical
theorising 17–22; preconceptions
131; programmes 34–35; school-based
52; with SEND 120; theory and
practice necessity 15–17; uncertainty
within 161; universities and schools
partnerships 42
Initial Teacher Training (ITT) 114
Initial Teacher Training Market Review 1
Inquiry as stance (Cochran-Smith and
Lytle) 182
inquiry-based teaching 42, 43
instructional approach 100
Interconnected Model of Teacher
Professional Growth 192–194
international literature 3; action
research 45; contributions and
limitations in 34–39; core curriculum
45; inquiry-based teachers 42–43;
internship model 42; knowledge, for
teaching 33–34; overview of 32–33;
teacher preparation programmes
33; teachers’ learning spaces
39–41; theoretical disciplines 44;
theory-practice debate 41–42
Internship 19, 20, 42, 54–56, 58, 59,
77, 187; distinctive feature of 17;
English curriculum tutor within 26;
English PGCE programme within
84; experimental cohort within 26;
principles of 21; research within 23;
social and institutional context 21;
student-teachers within 88
ITE see initial teacher education
Jablonka, E. 130
Jansen, A. 131
Japanese lesson study model 38–39
Kavanagh, S. S. 38
Kazemi, E. 39
Kemmis, S. 20, 21
Kennedy, M. 16, 45
Kessels, J. P. A. M. 186
248 Index

knowledge: contextualised 194; embodied McIntyre, D. 11, 22, 33, 34, 38, 42,
167; local 183; personal 164; production 43, 52, 59, 62, 64, 82, 83, 200, 216,
and nature of 167–168; professional 227; acknowledgement of reality
164, 165, 167; public 164, 183; teacher 18; challenges 60; critical reflection
educators 180–181; for teaching 33–34; 19; curriculum assignment 146;
work 163 developing critically reflective
knowledge exchange model 204 teachers 84; distinctive sources 18;
knowledge-focused teaching and learning ‘individual nature of concerns’ 129;
initiative 61 initial teacher education 114, 124;
‘knowledge for action’ 201 integration, of theory and practice
Knowledge Quartet 192 45; knowledge, for teaching 44; levels
Korthagen, F. A. 34, 186 of theorising 53–55, 114; practical
Kosnick, C. 181 theorising 2, 23, 199, 203, 216;
practical theorising dialectic 109;
Lampert, M. 39 preconceptions 60, 62; preservice
large-scale international studies 33 teachers’ learning 110; process
Lawlor, S. 12 elaboration 51–52; professional
Leite,V. F. A. 35 learning 17; reflective practice 99;
Lewis, A. 116, 219 student-teachers testing 20; teachers’
Li, D. D.Y. 37 understanding 43–44; theoretical
Linklater, H. 117 disciplines, for student-teachers 44
Lloyd, C. 116 McKnight, L. 90, 93
Local Education Authorities 13 McNamara, D. R. 18
local knowledge 183 McNicholl, J. 181
lock-step approach 86 Menter I. 28
Loughran, J. 180–182, 193 mentor-student-teacher relationship 54–58
Mercer, N. 223
MacDonald, R. 36 Metacognition and Self-Regulated
Male, T. 180, 181 Learning 208
Mant, J. 215, 223 Mewborn, D. S. 99, 101
Marcondes, M. I. 35 MFL see Modern Foreign Languages
Mark, J. 98 Millar, R. 67
Marshall, B. 87 Miller, E. 131
Mason, J. 173 Mintz, J. 117
Master’s level assignment Modern Foreign Languages (MFL)
writing 156 143–145
mathematical activities see reasoning-and- modernisation, of teaching profession 160
proving activity Mok, I. 130
mathematics education research 5, 98; Monitorial System 12
complexity 130–131; developing MSc in Teacher Education 183, 183–192
reflective teaching 132; implications Mueller, Fiona 239
for 140–141; teacher beliefs 131; Mukeredzi, T. G. 38
visual models Murray, J. 180, 181
see visual models, in mathematics Mutton, T. 14
Matthew Arnold school: rationale
204–205; research-informed Nash, T. 114
professional development at 207, National Assessment Program for Literacy
207–209; teachers’ engagement in and Numeracy (NAPLAN) 240
209–212 National Curricular Guidelines 35
Maynard, T. 21, 185–186, 195 National Curriculum 70, 71, 74
McCluskey, G. 117 Newman, J. M. 60
McDonald, M. 39 Nkambule, T. 38
McGarr, O. 38 Norwich, B. 114, 116
McGregor, D. 221–223, 227 Nuffield Science Teaching Project 70

Odd One Out (OOO) 222, 224, 225
Office for Qualifications (Ofqual) 71
Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted)
27, 88, 114, 217, 237
O’Grady, E. 38
O’Hear, A. 12
OOO see Odd One Out
Orchard, J. 15
out-of-context factual knowledge 242
Oxford City Learning 202
Oxford Education Deanery 200; case study
see Matthew Arnold school; initial teacher
education 201–204; research champions
205–206
Oxford Internship Scheme 4,
114, 129, 130, 160, 180, 200;
auto-ethnographic approach 51;
development of 11; extended
learning opportunities 119; practical
theorising approach of 2
Oxford programme 59, 62
Pantić, N. 117
Peacock, A. 217
pedagogical content knowledge 32
peer assessment activity 169
Peercy, M. M. 39
personal knowledge 164
Peters, R. S. 13
PGCE see Postgraduate Certificate in
Education
Piaget, J. 220
Pinar, W. 230
Pinnegar, S. 182
PMI see Positive, Minus and
Interesting
point, evidence, example, link (PEEL) 86,
88, 90
point, evidence, example (PEE)
paragraph 88
Positive, Minus and Interesting (PMI)
221–222, 224, 225
Postgraduate Certificate in Education
(PGCE) 35, 55, 143, 144; assessment
172; assignments in see curriculum
assignment; student-teacher’s
perspective 58–60
power relationships 186
PP4T see Practical Prompts for
Thinking
practical phase, of teaching-learning 43
Practical Prompts for Thinking (PP4T)
222, 223
practical reflection 20
Index 249
practical theorising; see also McIntyre, D.;
beginning teachers’ professional learning
62–63; elaboration of 21–22; initial
teacher education see initial teacher
education; notion of 42–45; praxis and
82–84; pre-service teachers’ professional
learning 58; principles of 22–24; profile
of 173–174; student-teachers’ experiences
in 85–89; for teacher educators 183–195;
tools for 151–152
practical work: in changing context 70–73;
pandemic challenges 77; in science
education 66–70, 69; student-teachers’
framework 76
practice, defined 41–42
praxis, in Australia 4, 82–84; dimensions of 83;
early career English teachers in 89–93;
process, defined 93; university-based
learning communities 85
preliminary coding scheme 103–104
preservice teachers 113; adaptive skills
117; analytic framework 102–103, 103;
assignments for 101–102; challenging
preconceptions 114; experiences
38; frequencies of occurrences 104,
105; illustrative excerpts for 104,
106–109, 107; inwards and outwards
124–125; professional education of 100;
professional learning 58
primary mathematics education: analytic
framework 102–104, 103; challenges 98,
98–99; mathematics teacher education
98; preservice teachers see preservice
teachers; process and data sources
101–102; research context 99–101; unit
of analysis 102
primary schools, science education in
216–218
primary teachers, professional development
of see Thinking Doing Talking Science
(TDTS) project
Principles of Instruction (Rosenshine) 86
professional development programme
64, 121
professional knowledge 164, 165, 167
professional learning, of teachers 17, 62–63,
199–201
Project Calibrate 4, 66, 73–77
public knowledge 164, 183
quadrant model 130, 132, 132–133;
student-teachers working with 134–135
Qualified Teacher Status 20
Quality Initial Teacher Education Review 1
250 Index
Ramos, R. K. 35
randomised controlled trials (RCTs)
219, 227
RCTs see randomised controlled trials
reasoning-and-proving activity 4, 97;
analytic framework 102–104, 103;
challenges 98, 98–99; mathematics
teacher education 98; preservice
teachers see preservice teachers;
process and data sources 101–102;
research context 99–101; unit of
analysis 102
recontextualisation 161–162, 163–165,
167–169, 171
reflection and activity portfolio 184, 185
reflective practice 19, 99
rejection of theory 38
research and development project 184, 187
research champion 200, 203; across Oxford
Education Deanery 205–206
research culture 206
research-engaged professional learning 203
research-informed clinical practice 24–25
Robinson, J. 13
Rosenshine, B. 86
Rouse, M. 117
SATs see Statutory Attainment Tests
scaffolded approaches, to essay writing 82
Schneider Kavanagh, S. 39
school-based mentors 54–58, 66
school-based professional tutors 3, 57
School-Centred Initial Teacher Training
(SCITT) 14
school curriculum 230
School Direct model 28n1, 46n1
School Improvement Groups 208
science education: in primary schools
216–218; practical work in 66–70, 69
second curriculum assignment (CA2) 146
Second Language Acquisition theory 144
Secretary of State for Education 12, 237
self-study 181–182, 184
SEN see special educational needs
SEND see special needs and disabilities
Shayer, M. 218
Shilling-Traina, L. N. 98, 99, 101, 102
Shulman, L. S. 32
Smagorinsky, P. 89
Smith, D. 219
Smith, K. 217
Social Science report 155
sophisticated process, of professional
learning 156–157
Sosu, E. M. 117
special educational needs (SEN) 115, 116,
120, 121
special needs and disabilities (SEND)
113–115, 121, 122; placement
experience 119; policies and practices
115–118
special school experience 122
special school placement 119–121
spiral curriculum 232
Spurr, Barry 239
State and Territory jurisdictions 238
Statutory Attainment Tests
(SATs) 217
Stenhouse, L. 230, 233
student-teachers’ developing practice,
implications for 130–132
Stylianides, A. J. 98, 99, 101, 102
Stylianides, G. J. 98, 99, 101, 102
summative assessment 172–173
Swan, M. 130, 133, 138, 139
Tang, S.Y. F. 37
target language (TL) 146–148, 150
TDTS project see Thinking Doing Talking
Science (TDTS) project
teacher beliefs 131
teacher education programmes, proliferation
and variety of 1
teacher education systems 34
teacher educators: knowledge 180–181;
learning 5, 181–183; MSc in Teacher
Education 183, 183–192; overview
of 179–180; practical theorising for
192–195
teacher preparation programmes 33
teachers’ learning spaces: action
research/self-study 41; professional
graduate schools 40; schools 40–41;
universities 40
teachers’ professional learning 62–63
Teachers’ Standards 165, 166
Teach First 35
Teaching History journal 57
teaching primary mathematics see primary
mathematics education
technical phase, of
teaching-learning 43
technical reflection 20
TEEL-structured essays 90–93
theory: acceptance/rejection of 38;
defined 41
‘theory as intellectual process’ 129
theory-based models 131
 Index 251

Thinking Doing Talking Science (TDTS) Victorian Curriculum 239

project 5; adaptive expertise 215; ‘A View from Outside’ 22
description of 219–220; features of 219, visual models, in mathematics
220; intervention principles 227; practical 130; quadrant model 130, 132,
theorising 216; science education, 132–133; triangular model 130,
in primary schools 216–218; science 133, 133–134
teaching practice 218–219; strategies and Von Esch, K. S. 38
constructivism 220–227, 221, 225, 226 Vygotskian approach 221
TL see target language
Tomlinson, S. 116 Ward, P. 118
triangular model 130, 133, 133–134; Warner, John 233
diagrammatic representations 136–139, Wellcome Trust 217
137, 139; student-teachers working with Why Can’t They Write (Warner) 233
134–136; vertices of 139–140 Wiltshire, Kenneth 239
Troyan, F. J. 39 Winch, C. 15
Tyler, Ralph W 232 Wits Student Rural Teaching Experience
Project 38
UK schools, essay-writing structures in 81–82 Wong, A. K.Y. 37
university-based tutors 3, 57, 58, 66, 83,
135, 140 Youngs, P. 39

van de Ven, P. -H. 82–83 Zeichner, K. 179

Victorian Certificate of Education (VCE) zone of proximal development (ZPD)
90, 91 221, 222