Retrieving possibilities: confronting a forgetfulness and deformation of teaching/learning methodology

This paper draws on data collected in a one‐year research project focusing on elucidating theory/practice relations in learning to teach. As a teacher educator I grapple with the nature and role of teaching methodology. The notion of method, with its implied order and certainty, is confronted alongside prospective teachers throughout their coursework and student‐teaching experiences. Reflexivity is considered essential to this research process, providing a means to address the interface between the empirical data collected alongside student‐teachers and its interpretations. In this regard I draw on the historical writings of Dewey (1904 Dewey J (1904) The relation of theory and practice in education in: C. A. McMurry (Ed.) The relation of theory to practice in the education of teachers: the third yearbook of the National Society for the Scientific Study of Education (Chicago, IL, University of Chicago Press) 9 30  Google Scholar], 1910 Dewey J (1910) How we think (Boston, MA, Heath) Crossref] , Google Scholar], 1938 Dewey J (1938) Experience and education (New York, Collier Books) Taylor & Francis Online] , Google Scholar]) and Bakhtin (1990 Bakhtin MM (1990) Art and answerability (Austin, TX, University of Texas Press)  Google Scholar], 1993 Bakhtin MM (1993) Toward a philosophy of the act (Austin, TX, University of Texas Press)  Google Scholar]), found to provide insights into theory/practice relations. Through Dewey's thinking, bearings are retrieved that reorient teaching/learning methodology toward neglected needs and opportunities in learning to teach. Through Bakhtin's early aesthetic essays, a language is retrieved that addresses forgotten assumptions central to reformulating teaching methodology. This paper pursues the necessary character of a teacher preparation course fostering a mode of method that is radically different from the technical one. It is a mode of method that attends to the voices of prospective teachers in schools confronting the nature of learners and learning, teachers and teaching. It is a mode of method that reminds all involved in the schooling process of the power of teaching/learning restored to its participatory and complex nature.