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The emerging professional: an investigation into teacher education students’ developing conceptions of the relationship between theory and classroom practice before, during and after a postgraduate teaching programme

The role of theory in educational practice has long been seen as problematic (Pring 2004) and within initial teacher education (ITE) specifically, various models linking the two have been proposed (Korthagen 2010). Previous longitudinal studies of teacher education (e.g. Calderhead and Shorrock 1997; Hobson et al. 2008) have emphasised the primacy of classroom experience in students’ minds but also the complex interplay of theory and practice in the process of learning to teach, often beginning with strongly held preconceptions. In England, ITE is currently in a state of flux, with the majority of universitybased postgraduate programmes operating partly at master’s level but, simultaneously, current government pronouncements describing teaching in non-master’s terms as a craft, best learned through workplace apprenticeship (Gove 2010). A reappraisal of what constitutes teacher knowledge and how this is gained would seem to be timely. In this context, this 2011–12 study focuses on identifying student preconceptions about learning to teach and charting their development on the journey to first teaching posts. The study will examine the case of a group of student teachers on a one-year postgraduate primary programme. Specifically, this research aims to: