Teaching as a craft: making links between pre-service training and professional practice

It is acknowledged in the literature and in professional practice that there are "gaps" between the theory of pre-service teacher education and the realities of classroom practice. The report from the 2002 National Meeting of Professional Educators identified tensions between theory and practice and suggested that teachers were "living these out in everyday learning environments" as a "creative tension" (Cumming, 2002, p. 3). We believe the challenge for teacher educators is to assist beginning teachers in making links between pedagogical theory they have accrued in their pre-service training and practice they are attempting to put into place in their classrooms. From our work with teachers in schools it is apparent that beginning teachers find it difficult to link theory with their practice This article describes a model of profession learning that greatly assisted one beginning teacher begin to make connections between her pre-service training and the relevance of this training to her classroom practice.