Theoretical Discussions and Pedagogical Practice: How “Theorization” can Help in Teacher Training

Abstract

I would like to examine the relationship between theory and practice in teachers’ professional lives. This question is not only academic, because I worked for more than twenty years in an École Normale, and latterly, in a Institut Universitaire de Formation des Maîtres, where I have to teach students all they have to know about language teaching in the primary school. So I had to involve myself in literacy and in new knowledge and research in the field. My own field was first didactics, but little by little, I expanded my interest into historical process of teaching literacy in school. So I know, as everybody working in this field, what is the dilemma of training. On the one hand, too many things are to be said in too short time, and yet they are (or they seem) very important in helping children learn and young teachers teach. On the other hand, when students have first experienced teaching, they change their point of view. Information on reading or writing processes seems to them too theoretical. They want the tools to work immediately, they ask for practical gimmicks and recipes. They say: “We haven’t enough time and we need to know how to do it.” Teachers we meet in schools often consider what we are learning at college as useless in becoming efficient in practice. Numerous studies confirm that the knowledge produced by researchers (in all disciplines) rarely satisfies the expectations of practitioners. When teachers seek documentation, they prefer information that is directly usable (Huberman, 1983), they want “how to” suggestions rather than “why” explanations, they look for recommendations for specific types of activities, rather than explanatory talks or models. What I tell through my experience, shows a dilemma between two opposite ways of treating literacy in teacher training. One takes into account what is well known, or what is in debate today in this field. The other takes into account what teachers are doing and how they can be used as models by young teachers.