1æ ́g”‡·‚„‰C:\MS\WORD\NORMAL.STYIBMGRAPHÂy UNDERSTANDING PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE THROUGH THE IDENTIFICATION OF IMAGES HELD BY STUDENT TEACHERS SUE JOHNSTON DEPARTMENT OF CURRICULUM AND TEACHING STUDIES BRISBANE COLLEGE OF ADVANCED EDUCATION CARSELDINE CAMPUS

A paper presented at the Annual Conference of the Australian Association for Research in Education, Adelaide, 28th November 2nd December, 1989. INTRODUCTION In spite of much research and scholarly writing, the way in which teachers make decisions about their professional practice is not well understood. Mechanistic decision-making frameworks seem inappropriate to explain how solutions are found for the complex practical problems continually faced by teachers within the milieu of their classrooms as well as in the many longer term decisions they must make. There is considerable evidence that practice for these professionals is usually not guided directly by the conscious application of theoretical knowledge. Unfortunately, this uncertainty about how teachers make decisions is reflected in the difficulty which teachers, particularly those who are inexperienced, have when discussing their own professional practice. Yinger (1987) uses the term "language of practice" to describe this avenue through which teachers articulate why they make particular decisions about their teaching and through which they engage in professional discourse. Yinger (1987) argued that teachers are disadvantaged in their professional development and in their standing as professionals because they often lack a language a practice. This language of practice, as defined by Yinger (1987), is not merely a "verbal matter" (p.295).