I really liked what Spivak had to say about reconciliation between theory and practice ever happening. I too, feel that this is something that is impossible to achieve, especially when one considers that theory and practice depend on the culture and politics of a given time. Things are constantly changing, so what may have worked in classrooms fifty years ago is going to be more or less obsolete in a classroom today. Technology has seriously changed education since then, fifty years of history and cultural change divide these time periods; thinking, music, religion, and family structures and values are all vastly different. Educational practices have to evolve in order to cater to these changes. For example, in the 1950’s divorce was a far more rare occurrence than it is today. So, a teacher back then may not have to consider that a child from a divorced home may have different affective filter issues than many other students. Today, we consider this as a factor when it comes to education. Home structure and life has major repercussions on how someone does in school.
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One bright spot in the attempt to reconcile theory and practice is the trend of teacher research. For example, the Great Valley Writing Project is entirely based on public school teachers coming together over the summer and researching best practices of teaching writing. Then, of course, they bring these best practices right back into the classroom the next school year. I suppose in an ideal world, when professors at a university are researching, they too bring their findings back into the classroom, which hopefully completes the circle and reconciles theory and practice.