Practice-based teacher education (PBTE) is a dominant trend in the general field of teacher education (Philip et al., 2019). This approach offers a significant conceptual shift, moving away from teachers' beliefs and context-based aspects of preparing new teachers to a focus on actual classroom practices emphasizing how knowledge is used in action (Ball & Forzani, 2009). This shift promoted many studies, stressing what has become known as "core," "high leverage," or "ambitious" teaching practices. Ultimately, such practices are defined as "an attempt to weave together novices' development of meaningful knowledge for teaching with their capacity to actually enact ambitious teaching in particular disciplines in the classroom" (McDonald et al., 2013, p. 379).

This scholarly endeavor of core practices has mainly emerged from specific content areas such as math, science, and literacy studies (Kavanagh, 2017). Thus, an emerging question is if this emphasis on practice is the desired route for teacher education in socially and politically loaded topics such as democratic civic education. Such topics are highly influenced by contemporary social and political realities (Westheimer & Kahne, 2004), deriving directly from the foundational assumption that the goal of teaching such subject matters is not limited to the transmission of a specific academic discipline but rather the development of competent democratic citizens (Zeichner, 2020).

From the social justice perspective, it has already been suggested that the emphasis on practices overlooks the development of student teachers’ critical thinking abilities and is insufficient in helping them relate to students’ social and political realities (Souto-Manning, 2019). Whereas this emphasis on future teachers’ skills to promote a more just society is undoubtedly crucial, missing from this discourse is an examination of the implications of the practice-based approach on the core content of democratic citizenship.

The purpose of this theoretical essay, therefore, is to critically examine whether PBTE can fully support the preparation of teachers who will be successful in promoting democratic knowledge, values, and dispositions. To conduct our analysis, we draw on complexity theory. This theory, which has been developed in the natural sciences, is increasingly applied in social sciences in general (Byrne, 1998), and in teacher education in particular (Cochran-Smith et al., 2014). At large, complexity researchers tend to distinguish between simple, complicated and complex systems. Simple systems are ordered and influenced by a limited number of variables. These systems can be, therefore, relatively easily controlled and predicted. Complicated systems are influenced by many variables, and the connections between them are not always evident (Geyer & Rihani, 2010). Nevertheless, the relationship between the variables is essentially “fixed and clearly defined,” and they can be understood by reducing them to their parts (Davis & Sumara, 2006, p. 11). Complex systems, on the other hand, are partly ordered and comprise multiple variables that interact in unexpected ways (Morrison, 2008). It is on these systems that complexity theory focuses. What complexity theory does, among else, is to point to some of the key features shared by such complex systems, seen as essential for understanding and managing them.

What is offered then herein is a reconsideration of the practice-based approach for teacher education as viewed from the lens of complexity theory. We argue that while emphasizing teaching practices can contribute to the preparation of new teachers, its potential benefits are limited due to the complex nature of democratic citizenship. We claim that in light of the current fragile state of democracy worldwide, placing PBTE at the center of teacher education may have counterproductive consequences.

In this theoretical essay, will use the central ideas of complexity theory to review the practice-based approach to teacher education. Using this theoretical lens, we will critically examine the guiding assumptions, goals, and insights of this approach, leading to the connections to democratic civic education. Around the middle of the 20th century, it became clear that scientific investigation methods had a blind spot. Science could deal well with an organized and closed system, such as those familiar with physics. To do so, it relied on reductive measures that broke them into their constitutive elements. It could also provide valuable insights into systems that contain vast numbers of disorganized variables through statistical measures. Science, nevertheless, had little to offer regarding systems that are influenced by many factors but that are organized into organic wholes (Weaver, 1991). These systems, which are common in biology and the social world, can best be described as systems of partial order and are typically termed as “complex” (Morin, 2005). Teaching in general, and the process of teacher education in particular, enclose many complex systems’ characteristics (Cochran-Smith et al., 2014). Therefore, we will examine four central characteristics of complex systems through the perspective of teaching and teacher education. First, complex systems are open or semi-open systems. Namely, they are influenced by elements that, at least initially, are external to them (Geyer & Rihani, 2010). Teachers and teacher educators are highly influenced by such external elements that are situated outside of the school’s classrooms or the university’s lecture halls. Second, complex systems contain at least some interdependent variables and act in spontaneous, unpredictable, and nonlinear ways (Semetsky, 2008). Teacher education deals with human beings who already hold knowledge, beliefs, and dispositions on teaching. A third characteristic of complex systems is that they tend towards self-organization, leading to patterns that tend to repeat themselves (Comfort, 1994). The fact that teacher education is situated in gestalts that form the desired type of teaching results in such models. Finally, complex systems are path-dependent, meaning that the trajectory in which the systems evolve and develop stems from the initial conditions of the systems and the events that take place during their development (Macau & Grebogi, 1999). Student teachers who share the same initial backgrounds and study in the same program will emerge as very different teachers due to first teaching experiences and interactions with actual students.

Viewing PBTE from the lens of complexity brings to light characteristics and assumptions of the approach that often remain implicit or rarely discussed. First, PBTE attempts to bring order to what is perceived as the messy reality of teaching. In PBTE, the focus is placed on those components of teaching that can be categorized, ordered, and duplicated, while the disorganized elements are marginalized, pushed aside, or simply ignored. As Lampert and Graziani (2009) note, PBTE is grounded in the assumption that “teaching involves stable and learnable practices and that we could specify the kind of skills and knowledge needed to perform these practices” (p. 492). To identify the stable elements, the teaching system is broken into its constitutive parts, and those that are ordered are isolated (Grossman et al., 2009). In a sense, what PBTE aims to do is find ways to minimize the interference of disorganized and external elements on learning to teach, while relying heavily on reductive methods. The existence of multiple interfering variables, such as culture, identity, or socioeconomic backgrounds, are seen as an obstacle to achieving predetermined aims that can be better surmounted through the use of teaching practices. Examining tenets of democratic citizenship highlights the complex, and not just complicated, nature of fostering democratic citizenship. Elements of affiliation and voice, for example, reflect the complex reality of life as a democratic citizen, holding the ability to interact with fellow citizens from different backgrounds while promoting social reform (Barber, 1984). Thus, preparing for democratic citizenship should be seen as an example of a complex endeavor where borders are blurred, interactions are nonlinear and ongoing, and reality changes frequently. As such, teacher education cannot be limited to teaching practices alone, but should rather be situated within the broader contexts of participatory democratic citizenship.

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