The name is absent

350

ɪf this is the case then what counts as relevant educational theory
should itself be open to debate and modification» But of more impor-
tance is the consideration of the place of the theory within the
⅛

practices of staff and of students. Stones illustrates how far this
applied in his own work.

books have a limited

potential for the building

up of

concepts ..... (Stones 1984 Pi38)

In the research on -the Alternative Course it was apparent that the

links

between the personal and the political needed to be explored.

Students needed to be able to work with both in such a way as to

inform and illuminate their own classroom practice. If this could

be achieved then critical areas of debate, decision and action could

be accepted as personal and professional matters for all teachers.

The process of theorising

knowledge
knowledge

can be possessed by

must

rely

on being

itself ,
tacitly

understood and applied. Hence all knowledge is

either tacit or rooted in tacit knowledge. A wholly
explicit knowledge is unthinkable (Polanyi ’64).

This statement perhaps more

than any other represents the position

of the Alternative Course in

relation to reflection and theorising.

It underlines the problematic

and provisional nature of the relation-

ship between theory and practice and accords a central place to the

active process of theorising.

It may have been the lack of explicit

on those previously adopted which constantly underlined the high