The intertwining of theory and practice: influences on ways of teaching and teachers' education

In this chapter we consider the dialectical relationship between theory and practice, taking into account our model of teacher as a decision maker, whose decisions are conditioned by his/her knowledge, beliefs, emotions, and we highlight the strong implications of this model for both research and teacher education. In the first part of the chapter, we trace the significant changes determined by consolidated research results in both teaching contents and methods and we underline how these changes have influenced both researchers’ ways of looking at the teachers and their new approach to teacher education, now more focused on a reshaping of teachers’ beliefs, knowledge and ways of acting in the class. In the second part of the chapter, as an example of this new approach to both research on teachers’ practice and teacher education, we present the main characters of our studies, which are devoted to the renewal of the teaching of algebra and merge experimentations of innovative didactical paths in the class with educational processes for teachers.