Three more ways of looking at theory and practice

The first is from the newish book From Experience to Knowledge in ELT (2009):

“You may often hear a teacher say, It’s all right in theory, but it doesn’t work in practice. However, as authors and teachers, our position is that, if something is not useful in practice, then it is not all right in theory, either. In fact, this book moves away completely from the view that teaching is about applying theories. The position taken here is that:

• good practice is central

• practice can always be improved

• the most likely way for teachers to improve practice is to understand their experience of it

• to understand this experience, teachers need to be able to talk about it

• to talk about practice, they need to learn relevant concepts and terminology

• as they talk about their practice in new terms, teachers build their practical knowledge out of their experience

• this process of expressing and extending their understanding enables them to develop their theories of what is happening

• on the basis of this expanding knowledge, teachers can improve their practice

So, this book does not ask teachers to apply theory. What it proposes is that it can be personally and professionally liberating to theorize one’s practice, in the sense of understanding and questioning the whys and wherefores of experience. The book aims to involve its readers in that process of developing in tandem what we know and what we do.”

pgs xiii and xiv

Only on page 10, but the approach of the book doesn’t seem to be as original as that would suggest so far.

The second idea is my own (although no doubt about as original as when I thought I’d invented roleplay debates):

For me, a good theory read at the right time is like when you read a good novel or watch a good film and it makes you conscious of something that you’d been subconsciously aware of about human nature or life. Making that understanding conscious somehow helps you see it more clearly and, even more, start to act on it. Of course, a book or film making you aware of something that you had no idea about or thought the complete opposite of would be even better, but unfortunately the human brain very rarely works that way.

The third is the way I do it:

I find some stuff on child language acquisition, the origins of human language, language in animals, bilingualism etc interesting in and of itself, and slightly (maybe very slightly) more likely to be relevant to my job than just as interesting books and articles on superstring theory or reasons for the disappearance of sparrows. For that reason, I’d probably be more interested in an MA in Linguistics than in Applied Linguistics- although possibly as unable to understand it as I was with particle physics! At the same time, I’m always interested in books with practical teaching suggestions and nuggets of theory. I’m kinda hoping that the two strands might reach each other in the middle someday, but if not at least I found both of them interesting…

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