ABSTRACT
Although in some contexts the supposed gap between theory and practice is not considered to be a problem (Gilroy and Smith 1993, p.23), this is clearly not the case in the context of teacher education in England and Wales, where frequent reference has been made to the alleged gap between theory and practice (see, for example, Edwards and Furlong 1978; Shaw 1976; Stones 1976, p.59; Sutton 1975, p.335; Webster 1975). The debate has involved training teachers (for example, Crompton 1977), teacher educators (for example, McNamara 1976), philosophers of education (for example, Barrow 1990; Dearden 1980; Hirst 1966, 1979a; 1979b; 1983; Peters 1976), teacher unions (for example, NUT 1969; 1971) and validating bodies (see Wilkin 1987); the debate has also found expression in the national press (see, for example, Clare 1995; Wolstenholme 1995; Ainley 1997). The debate can be represented by the comments of two teacher educators, one of whom has argued that the years after the 1944 Education Act saw the development of a teaching force educated professionally
in conditions congenial to relating theoretical issues to classroom practice … through a structured combination of training and education in both school classrooms and institutions of higher education (Gilroy 1992, p.8),
whereas another has commented on the continuing separation (as he then saw it) of theory and practice (Barrow 1984, p.xiii) and argued that what was required was better theory (Barrow 1984, p.13), one aspect of which 48was research more closely linked with the experience of practising teachers (Barrow 1984, p.258). In initial teacher education one of the times that avoidance of these dichotomies is explicitly desired is during teaching practice; here Schön appears to offer not only an accurate description of the situation facing many beginning teachers at such a time, but also an account which can explain and resolve the apparently paradoxical learning situation with which they are confronted. The situation Schön describes (in relation to designing) thus:The student must educate himself in designing. At the outset, no one can tell him about it; for he will not understand the words they use—even so apparently simple a word as ‘drawing’—until he has had the requisite experience of doing. On the other hand, how is he to search for what he does not know when he hasn’t the least idea how he will recognize it when he finds it? (Schön 1986b, pp.315-316).
As evidence of the potential attraction of Schön’s thesis to beginning teachers, one may note the observation that many student teachers feel that, though (or, perhaps, because) teaching practice itself is a time of uncertainty and tension where coping with a variety of new situations is important (Squirrell et al 1990, pp.57-61), it is only once their teaching practice is complete that they feel that their status changes from that of ‘mere students’ to ‘embryo teachers’ (Squirrell et al 1990, p.73 cf. Schön and Nutt 1974, p. 199), that is to say, that it is only after ‘field-linked education’ that they begin to see themselves as professional teachers (cf. Schön 1967a, p. 102).