Learning the Language of Practice

This article describes learning to teach as a task involving learning to think and act in ways appropriate to the demands of the profession—a task referred to as “learning the language of practice.” The language of practice is described using common sense and practical analyses of knowledge and action. A study of student teachers is presented to illustrate processes and concepts involved in acquiring a language of practice. The paper concludes with a description of a pattern language developed in the field of architecture and a discussion of its implications for a descriptive language of teaching.