Muhammad Ilyas Khan
Lecturer in Education, Hazara University, Pakistan.
PhD student, University of Leicester, UK
Email: ilyasjans@yahoo.com
Paper presented at TEAN conference, 18 May 2012 at
Aston, Birmingham
How did it begin?
Education as
transformation
what?
a process
from what
of
to
How?
Why?
The teacher as a the centre of
‘educational’ process
Teacher Education
The ‘thinking’ teacher
Source:
http://www.khaledhosny.org/files/images/e
gyptian_education.jpg
From ‘thinking’ to
‘REFLECTION’.
Who is a ‘thinking’ teacher?
What is reflection?
How is reflection
incorporated in the PGCE and
what is the impact of theorypractice interaction on the
development of effective
reflective teachers?
 What kind of initial teacher education (ITE) prepares effective,
reflective teachers?
theoretical grounding to student teachers
or one that prepares them on a more practical basis? Or is it the
 An ITE that provides more
one that caters to both theory and practice in equal proportion?
 What kind and form of theory helps in the effective preparation of
student teachers for their profession? What is the respective role of
the university and the school in effective ITE programmes?
 Is the current structure of the PGCE in terms theory-practice and
school-university suitable for preparing effective reflective teachers
or does it need to be restructured? What are the factors that
influence the theory-practice and university-school aspects of the
PGCE?
Theory-Practice
interaction
Teaching
• Intricacy
of
the
theory-
practice interaction
Theory(Teaching as a
science)
Practice (Teaching as an
art)
• Three competing but not
exclusive positions:
Technical
rationality/Topdown model
Critical
understanding/Cri
tical reflection
Artistry/practical
theorizing/Bottomup model
•1.Technical/practical focus
•2. Critical focus
•3.
Practical
theorising/collaborative
Teacher as
technician/imple
menter
Teacher as
‘transformative
intellectual’
Teacher as
artist/practical
theoretician
approach (McIntyre, 1993;
Korthagen
and
Kessels,
1999; Birmingham, 2004)
 A representative quote: ‘…educational theory is nothing
other than the name we give to the various futile
attempts that have been made over the last hundred
years to stand outside our educational practices in order
to explain and justify them. And what I am going to
propose on the basis of this argument is that the time
has now come to admit that we cannot occupy a position
outside practice and that we should now bring the whole
educational theory enterprise to a dignified end’. Carr
(2006).
 Previously O’Hear (1988) and Lawlor (1990)
 Teaching as ‘practical competence’ and as ‘craft’
 The idea of ‘teaching schools’ where new entrants
are provided training on job and where ‘trainee
teachers can observe and learn from great
teachers’. Michael Gove, Secretary of State for
Education.
 School White Paper (2010), ‘The importance of
Teaching’, supports the idea of School-based ITT and
the Teach First concept
 Although the structure of the PGCE under this study was two-
third school-based, the White Paper seems to propose taking
the ITE (or rather ITT) further down the school road in a bid to
‘Reform initial teacher training, to increase the proportion of
time trainees spend in the classroom, focusing on core
teaching skills, especially in teaching reading and
mathematics and in managing behaviour’ (DfE, 2010: 9).
 White Paper and the policy of the incumbent government seem
to be based more on some ideological position (or rather a
superficial form of it) and less on any credible research
regarding the role of theory and practice and hence of the
school and the university in the preparation of beginning
teachers.
 The ‘what’ or subject-matter coming in the form of a
centralised curriculum
 The ‘how’ or teaching ‘craft’ with a focus on ‘skills’
 Possible neglect of the ‘why’ of education/teaching
 A teacher is not just a subject expert such as a biologist
or a chemist or a mathematician. In addition ‘The
teacher needs to understand the subject in its relation to
other subjects and a part of the overall education of
students’ (Pearson, 1989: 147)
 Theory and practice go together
 University and school cannot be exclusively associated
with either theory and practice
 The balance of theory and practice and university-school
is adequate
 Shifting the ITE completely to school will lead to de-
intellectualisation and de-professionalisation of the
teaching profession and the university, therefore, has a
vital role in the ITE
‘I think the two go hand in hand and naturally you
can’t say right now we have done the theory go and
put into practice because I think that all part of the
reflection is using the theory to inform your
practice. So I think it should be a constant practice
of theory feeding into the practice. But you got to
have the practice; you can’t ever become a good
teacher by just theorising. So I think it should be
integrated…’
 ‘I actually think that to say that you have got theory and
practice as two separate things is a difficult one … there
is this notion of cognitive apprenticeship where um if
you take apprenticeship traditionally as being something
practical, you know learning as something like making
furniture, or repairing cars. That apprenticeship was
very practical thing; have to be done in a very practical
work place. The notion of cognitive apprenticeship as
far as I can see is the notion that actually is more about
ways of thinking, ways of approaching things but doing it
in a practical sense…’
 ‘… my issue with taking Higher Education out of initial
teacher education, is that it actually de-intellectualises it
and makes it into an apprenticeship and it gives the
impression that teaching is an easy job…’
 ‘I think we have it about right in this course. We have
about two-third of their time in the school. When they are
in schools they are getting the practical practice but they
are also doing some theory. They are not just on
teaching practice because they have Directed Tasks to
do, they have reading to do while they are in schools. So
we don’t let them go completely by just saying off you go
take over your class…’
 ‘I think how we have got it at the moment is about right
in terms of the balance. But it does make for a much
pressurised year and a very demanding year in terms of
assignment work and practice. But we do stress the
importance of theory, the importance of looking at other
people’s research…’
 ‘It’s better now. It’s much more difficult now. We had a
very nice year, you know we felt very much like university
students, and we had a very nice leisurely time then. We
had an intensive attachment to a school but only one
attachment to one school. And now you have to have
experience in two schools which is much better…’
 ‘Previously theory was much more about things such as
history of education, and all such things but less about
more practically useful things such as pedagogy,
psychology and learning theories. So its better now with
more focus on such relevant subjects and student
teachers’ professional needs…’
 ‘If you make it too academic I am worried that you lose
teachers who are fantastic teachers but not very
academic or not academic in the way that we see
academic. They might be actually academically very good
but because of the way we look at it and its all written
work and then they might not just be good at written
work and then they lose out…’

Birmingham, C. (2004) Phronesis: A model for pedagogical reflection. Journal of Teacher
Education, 55 (4), 313–324.

DfE. (2010) The Importance Of Teaching. Retrieved July 7, 2011 from
https://www.education.gov.uk/publications/eOrderingDownload/CM-7980.pdf

Khan, M.I. (2005c, May 15) Are All Teacher Training Programmes A Complete Waste Of Time?.
DAWN, p.25

Kessels, J. P. A. M., & Korthagen, F. A. J. (1996) The Relationship between Theory and Practice:
Back to the classics. Educational Researcher, 2(5), 17-22.

Korthagen, F., & Kessels, J. (1999) Linking Theory and Practice: Changing the Pedagogy of
Teacher Education. Educational Researcher, 28(4), 4-17.

Lawes, S. (2003) What, when, how and why? Theory and foreign language teaching. The Language
Learning Journal, 28(1), 22-28.

Lawlor, S. (1990) Teachers Mistaught: Training in Theories or Education in Subjects?, London:
Centre for Policy Studies.

McIntyre, D. (1993) Theory, Theorizing and Reflection in Initial Teacher Education. In Calderhead,
J. & Gates, P. (Eds.), Conceptualizing Reflection in Teacher Development (pp.39-52), London:
Falmer.

O’Hear, A. (1988) Who Teaches the Teachers?, London: Social Affairs Unit.

Pearson, A.T. (1989) The Teacher: Theory and Practice in Teacher Education, London: Routledge.