ABSTRACT
Despite Terry Moore's argument in chapter 1, I believe that educational theory is not theory in any grand sense — a unified explanatory system of propositions analogous to a lot of theory in the sciences. Rather, it should be seen as a critical and systematic reflection upon practice, drawing upon, certainly, theories that have been developed elsewhere, especially in the social sciences but not itself producing theories in that way. Similarly when I talk about the teacher as researcher I do not have in mind someone who conducts complex experiments with control and experimental groups and with sophisticated techniques for testing evidence and measuring results. Rather have I in mind the person who takes seriously the injunction to theorize about practice or to think systematically and critically about what he is doing. It is part of the extended professionalism that Hoyle (1976) talked about and that Peter Gordon refers to in chapter 21.
