Students' Use of Theory in an Initial Teacher Education Programme

Students in the final teaching practice semester of a secondary concurrent initial teacher education programme were asked to write an account of their development as teachers making reference to one or more of a number of theoretical frameworks. These comprised two aspects of situated learning, namely the community of practice [Lave & Wenger (1991) Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press)] and learning from experts [Brown, Collins & Duguid (1998) Situated Cognition and the Culture of Learning (Palo Alto Institute for Research on Learning)]; together with competence acquisition [SOED (1993) Guidelines for Teacher Training Course (London, HMSO)] and reflective practice [Schon (1983) The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action (New York, Basic Books)]. Each of these was described in a review paper which was distributed to the students before the teaching practice began. Students' reports show that they understood the frameworks and could successfully use elements of them in explaining their progress. However, their experiences were highly context-dependent and students related them to the frameworks in a context-specific way.