ABSTRACT
This chapter sets teachers the challenge of considering what they want to achieve by becoming a teacher and what it means to be a teacher. Over teacher teaching career, they can expect demands on teachers to be able to demonstrate evidence-informed practice to become the norm. The chapter draws on the evidence base for educational practice in providing information and background, then exploring these through linked tasks. The relationship between explanation and practice is a dynamic one; explanations are needed to make sense of experience and inform developing practice. Some explanations will be teachers' own, to be tried and tested against the theories of others, often more experienced teachers. Explanations, in turn, generate working theories, responsive to practice and experience. Theory is important, as it provides a variety of ways of thinking about the complex world of the classroom and directs further personal research into improving the quality of teaching and learning.
