ABSTRACT
People sometimes distinguish between ‘practical teaching’ and ‘abstract theories of learning’. ‘Practical teaching’ reflects the professional knowledge teachers build up through their experience in the classroom. It is tacit knowledge because it shows itself when a teacher just knows what is the right thing to do on the spur of the moment. This tacit knowledge builds up through different experiences and the ways in which teachers interpret those experiences. However, given the same situation, one teacher may think one action is right while another teacher thinks it is wrong. Sometimes this difference simply reflects what is right for them, given their personality, strengths and weaknesses. However, each teacher’s sense of what is right assumes some kind of theory of how students learn. It is just as much a theory when it is tacit as when it is explicitly stated.
