Resumen de Teacher Education Needs an Epistemology of Practice
Tom Russell, Andrea K. Martin
For how many decades has teacher education struggled with the tension between theory and practice? For how many decades have pre-service teachers reported that practicum experiences are more valuable than their learning in education courses? Are these issues being recognized and addressed by teacher educators? Certainly they are challenging. Our most recent research has focused on improving the quality of professional learning in the pre-service practicum and has led us to approach such questions from the perspective of epistemology and reflective practice. The traditional epistemology of the university focuses on propositional knowledge, with little or no attention to the epistemology of learning from experience. As teacher educators, we have struggled with this issue for many years and have concluded that the theory-practice tension will not be resolved until teacher educators recognize and address the need for dual epistemologies that speak not only to the theoretical background for teaching but also to the unique nature of learning from practicum experiences. Teacher candidates need the metacognitive understanding of what it means to be a teacher and how teachers learn from experience. They deserve no less than a significant reframing of the epistemology of teacher education in order to address the unique nature of learning from experience.
