This event was originally due to take place on Wednesday 01 February and will now be taking place on Wednesday 03 May, 14:00-15:00 (GMT). We apologise for the inconvenience and hope that you can still join us in May.

This event is part of the School of Education's Bristol Conversations in Education research seminar series. These seminars are free and open to the public.

Hosted by: Centre for Teaching, Learning and Curriculum (TLC)

Speakers: Katharine Burn, Trevor Mutton and Ian Thompson, University of Oxford

Arguments about the nature of the role that ‘theory’ and ‘practice’ should each play in the preparation of new teachers have raged for decades. Government policy in England has recently shifted from an apparent rejection of educational theory to stringent prescription of specific research-based claims of what all qualified teachers should ‘know’ and be able to enact. But neither the promotion of craft knowledge (implied by apprenticeship models), nor advocacy of a technicist ‘What works’ conception of teacher knowledge are new. Practical theorising – the model of teacher learning explored in this seminar – is not new either. First elaborated by Donald McIntyre more than 30 years ago, it offers an alternative both to reflective practice (which risks confining teachers to their existing store of knowledge), and to naïve assumptions about the ease of translating ideas from theory into practice.

A commitment to practical theorising accepts the fundamental importance of experience in the process of learning to teach, but also recognises the need for teachers to go beyond the limits that experience alone imposes, insisting that the development of adaptive expertise depends on drawing ideas from diverse sources and subjecting them all to critical scrutiny. Despite the endurance and influence of this idea (reflected, most recently, in the initial teacher education accreditation criteria in Wales), practical theorising has also attracted strong criticism, both at its inception and subsequently. Challenges and tensions highlighted by its earliest critics have been compounded by the increased pressures of performativity that characterise the prevailing neoliberal education policy context.

This seminar briefly outlines this history and then reflects on insights from the recent book Practical Theorising in Teacher Education: Holding Theory and Practice Together (co-edited by the two presenters with Ian Thompson). Faced with the fierce constraints on practical theorising inherent in Stage 2 of the current re-accreditation process in England, we explore the spaces that exist and those that must be (re)created within teacher education programmes if practical theorising is to survive. It cannot do so in the margins or as an occasional exercise. In acknowledging the profound threats that practical theorising faces, we are also alert to the opportunities and stimuli presented by the process of curriculum review and identify the tools likely to prove most useful in sustaining the practice.

Katharine Burn is an Associate Professor of Education at the University of Oxford and PGCE Course Director. 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 Director for Graduate Studies. He is Deputy Editor of the Journal of Education for Teaching and until recently was vice-chair of the University Council for the Education of Teachers.

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