Placing professional experience at the centre of the programm illustrates the
priority afforded to experience and forces a consideration of how things from either
side should feed into, and inform knowledge and practice development. In con-
sideration of the‘traditional’features of teacher education (e.g. Foundation studies
and teaching methods) the pairing of discipline studies (for example, science,
physical education, history, etc.) with curriculum and pedagogy studies provides
support for bridging theory and challenging the more typical fragmented connec-
tions or worse,‘siloed’forms of knowledge and practice. In so doing, curriculum
and pedagogy studies are able to move beyond being positioned as‘method’units
and become more interwoven with professional experience informing and
responding to the knowledge based of discipline (Foundation) units.
Through intersections, boundaries serve to foster what Bernstein ( 2000 ) iden-
tified as possibilities to become key to transformative ideas and practice in edu-
cation. Reframing boundaries as points of ‘intersection’ creates ‘nodes of
connection’so that new ways of working with them in partnership can strengthen
education, engagement and research imperatives within a university as well as
impact on the teaching profession and the organizational capacities of schools.
Instead of conceptualising professional experience as something to be negotiated in
isolation of other academic imperatives and disconnected from theory, placing
professional experience at the centre of teacher education demonstrates how
working in partnership at the intersections yields multiple opportunities.
- Professional knowledge grows through early and consistent practice
The example of professional experience implemented at Midland school shows
how students of teaching were transitioned into the role of teacher (they were not
simply neophyte observers) in which they assumed responsibility for planning and
implementation from early on in theirfirst semester as students of teaching,
reconceptualizing notions of what it means to be prepared to teach. The Midland
school example suggests that a carefully considered cohort experience situated in a
planned curriculum and supported through a structured partnership facilitates
powerful teaching and learning experiences that extend beyond the students of
teaching themselves. Participants’professional knowledge of practice grew through
on-the-job learning experienced as existing in a two-way relationship with uni-
versity coursework such that practice supported theory which supported practice.
- Purposeful partnerships yield significant outcomes
Without intentional partnerships, students of teaching canfind themselves spread
thinly across many professional experiences as they are positioned as observers of
practice whilst not necessarily having a specific lens through which to make those
observations meaningful in terms of theory or practice. The Midland
School-University partnership showed how moving beyond uncritical observation
of practice can foster learning about practice by engaging in teaching and learning
in focused ways. Additionally, forming a significant and purposeful partnership
enabled dimensions to be included in the experience that was not possible on a
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