Pedagogical craft and its science: Janus-faced in pre-service teacher education

The authors of this article propose that theory and practice, as the science and the craft of teaching, are reciprocal and interfacing. To manifest this construct in teacher preparation courses, they suggest the analogy of ‘bootstrapping’ as a way of thinking about the epistemologies of theory and practice in tandem. With this analogy in mind, they explore the use of a specific curriculum tool to bring theory and practice closer together. Survey and interview data in a study they conducted indicate that new teachers’ experience of their first year or two in the workplace is largely positive with regard to what they think they know and can do pedagogically, while revealing that they nevertheless perceive themselves as unprepared to cross the boundary into the workplace. The authors conclude that more can be done in teacher education programmes to amalgamate the epistemologies and the discourses of the science and the craft of pedagogy in non-clinical work.