A frequent complaint among early-career teachers is that their preparation program was not practical enough. When this concern is taken seriously, one solution often advocated is (i) increasing the amount of time student teachers spend in schools; another is (ii) enhancing the quality of their practicum experiences (e.g., by strengthening the mentor teacher-student teacher relationship, or having the university supervisor visit more often). These are important measures; but in this paper we wish to propose an additional solution, namely, (iii) increasing the practical component of the university campus program. This can be achieved in at least three ways: • exploring the practical implications of the theory studied in the campus program • modeling good teaching practice in the campus program; and • facilitating discussion of the student teachers’ practicum experiences after their return to the campus Of course, campus courses usually have a practical component; but often it is limited in extent and not integrated sufficiently with the theory. The theoretical stance taken in this paper is “reflective practice,” the position that theory and practice are intimately connected and must be explored together (Carr, 1995; Dewey, 1916; Loughran, 2010; Schon, 1983; Zeichner & Liston, 2014). According to Dewey (1938), “all principles by themselves are abstract...everything depends upon the interpretation given them as they are put into practice” (1938, p. 20). Similarly, Allen (1989) maintains that, practical knowledge (phronesis) is “not simply one legitimate way of making sense but...the most fundamental and inclusive way” (p. 366). Cochran-Smith and Lytle (2009) state that teachers “are deliberative intellectuals who constantly theorize practice as part of practice itself” (p. 2); they reject “the widely held assumption that there are two kinds of knowledge, formal and practical” (p. 129). In this paper, we describe our attempts to link theory and practice in our own pre-service teaching and report on the relative effectiveness of various strategies. Our research approach was qualitative, and may be referred to more specifically as grounded theory in that our conclusions emerged from our experiences over time. It was also a form of reflective practice, as our own experiences as teacher education practitioners was a major data source.

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