Why deliberate practice is not a basis for teacher expertise

In this paper the authors examine the notion of ‘deliberate practice’, which has formed the basis of several teacher education programmes in England and the United States and promises to improve the quality of teaching via highly structured training programmes. They identify early criticisms of deliberate practice and unpack the assumptions embedded in its underpinning thinking. They demonstrate that deliberate practice is insufficient as a basis for teacher expertise as teaching is not a ‘performance profession’, the activities of teachers cannot all be easily or meaningfully decomposed, and the ‘goals’ of teaching are not solely geared towards maximising measurable student attainment. The authors suggest that deliberate practice is problematically aligned with reductive assumptions about teacher and student behaviour, as well as causality in social relations and a superficial approach to learning as acquisition, and that this reflects how the notion has been extracted from its psychological roots and recontextualised into debates about teacher preparation.