This chapter positions the importance of theory as a means of informing and thus constituting a secure knowledge-base for teaching practice. It begins by asking from whence the belief in the value of theory came?
Looking back at my study of education over the years, theory was ever present and used to inform teaching practice. From initial study of education in the late 1970's to Masters study in the early 2000's and then in doctoral study when the relevance and influence of context was also becoming clear.
Whilst studying education at masters level I was supporting students at an art and design university with the theoretical content of their degrees. The influence of cultural theory and educational theory was changing my socio-cultural interpretive schema and causing an ontological shift.
This chapter reveals how my doctoral research became a study of context, by that time as a teacher educator teaching staff at my institution. Cultural theorists whose work I had become familiar with including: Barthes, Lyotard, Harvey and Foucault and educational theorists including: Vygotsky, Rogoff, Lave and Wenger were simultaneously influencing my interpretive schema. How they contributed to the design of my doctoral study and informed the findings is laid bare. Other theorists whose influence was profound as my work progressed are featured, with the major ontological~epistemological shifts identified.
In this chapter a Foucaultian approach to discourse analysis exemplifies how theory was employed in my study and how it contributed to the findings. What Foucault usefully provides is a methodology that brings discoursal formations, mechanisms of control and the subjectivities they produce into view. Once visible, I began to see that my role as teacher educator working with staff involved not only helping course participants to navigate these discourses but also encouraging them to make the discourses and subjectivities of their own art and design disciplines visible to their students.
![[img]](/style/images/fileicons/application_msword.png)
