Theory and practice in in-service teacher learning: teachers' reconceptualisation of curriculum in history lessons

This paper reports on the findings of a qualitative interpretive study that was undertaken to determine how in-service teachers at Great Zimbabwe University were able (or not) to translate a theory that they were exposed to into practice during history lessons. Drawing on a range of data, the study explored how the teachers, who were purposively sampled, reconceptualised curriculum through their pedagogical practices during lessons. Teacher's utterances in the interviews helped clarify their notions of history teaching in terms of the theory they were exposed to. The study found that while the teachers could articulate the theory, they faltered and hesitated to draw on it when reframing their pedagogical practices. The paper argues that this is not because of exposure to bad theory. Rather, it reflects the need for teachers to be assisted to weave together curriculum theory and curriculum practice into one coherent interdependent landscape that reflects praxis and its dialectics and thus make the theory-practice gap difficult to perpetuate.