Pre-service teachers often encounter a "reality shock" when they enter schools, finding that the theories they learned at university do not neatly apply to the complexities of real classrooms. This divide between the-knowing and the-doing has been a global concern in initial teacher education for decades.
In a study published online on September 14, 2026 in ECNU Review of Education , Professor Ge Wei and Professor Haiyan Wang from Capital Normal University, Beijing, examined a service-learning program at a Chinese normal university. The program was launched in response to China's "double reduction" policy, which aims to reduce the homework and after-school tutoring burdens on schoolchildren. Pre-service teachers designed and delivered online courses to schoolchildren nationwide, guided by experienced mentors.
"We invoke the ancient Chinese concept of Yin and Yang (阴阳) as a metaphor for the dialectical relationship between practice and reflection in teacher education," explain Wei and Wang, "it offered culturally grounded resources for rethinking teacher learning beyond dualism."
The researchers found that the theory–practice divide has historically been treated as an individual, psychological problem rather than a collective, socio-cultural one. Their study found that China's "double reduction" policy, combined with university–school collaboration and digital mediation, created a fertile ecology for this dialectical unity to emerge. Notably, the study reveals that when pre-service teachers engage in service learning guided by mentors and peers, their practice and reflection become mutually transformative rather than sequentially separated.
Their study offers practical implications for initial teacher education programs globally. First, rather than treating theory as something to be simply applied to practice, the service-learning program created opportunities for both to transform each other, as pre-service teachers reworked their theoretical knowledge in light of real classroom encounters and generated new professional understanding. Second, continuous mentoring and peer collaboration proved essential to pre-service teachers' development, with participants designing, rehearsing, and revising their teaching together rather than working in isolation. Third, the program cultivated pre-service teachers' professional responsibility to society by engaging them in a national policy initiative and in serving schoolchildren across the country, helping them see teaching not merely as a job but as a socially meaningful commitment. Together, these principles suggest that bridging the theory–practice divide requires more than increasing practicum hours; it requires designing authentic, socially consequential activities in which pre-service teachers can practice, reflect, and grow with the support of mentors, peers, and meaningful mediating tools.
The study also proposes a critical activist role for initial teacher education in transforming societies, a perspective that resonates with global calls for more equitable and socially engaged teacher preparation. "The making of high-quality teachers depends on both a sustainable policy ecology and locally grounded spaces in which practitioners can collectively redesign the practices of teacher education," Wei and Wang conclude.
