According to Wilfred Carr, professor of Education at the University of Sheffield, theory is not a theory when it’s merely a belief. In his lecture to the 2006 Annual Conference of the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain entitled, "Education without Theory", Carr’s argues that there’s no such thing as an educational theory. He claims that the idea of an educational theory is based on foundationalist modes of thought that state that theory is everything that practice is not: that whatever else it is, educational theory is abstract rather than concrete, general rather than particular, context – free rather than context – dependent.
Carr points out that
“far from being a special activity that is conducted from outside of practice, educational theory is itself a historically formed practice inextricable from the local and parochial contexts within which it is produced and always embedded in, and dependent on, the kind of contingent norms, values and beliefs that it claims to examine and assess in the practice of others.”
He argues that
“educational theory is aspiration to escape the world of practice in order to justify it from without is futile, that practical justification is the only kind there is, that we should stop searching for ‘theoretical justifications’ for educational practice and finally concede that there are no epistemological foundations that enable us determine whether what educational practitioners believe to be true really is true.”
Carr spends quite a large proportion of this article in outlining the change in educational philosophy away from "foundation" philosophies towards studies of practice in context. For example, Carr tells us that through the process of ‘reflection-on-action’ practitioners engage in a research process in which their ‘theories–in–use’ are made explicit, critically reformulated and tested through further actions.
When I look back to my readings for this class, I remember that I couldn’t understand or agree with some theories at first. What bothers me is that the more I read the more it starts made sense to me. I see different educational values coming from different philosophies and each of them to some degree is reflected in my teaching practice. Whether I see myself as a theorist or not, I am a theorist and I need those theories. In fact it is a bit handy because I think that the way we are built as humans. It is a part our species to have this strong tendency to classify and organize the world even if we are not trained in the area we are theorizing. We are cognitively or psychologically unable to see things or to understand things without imposing some kind of order on ourselves.