Students of education and teachers on-the-job alike state a huge disparity between universityacquired skills and those needed to cope with everyday tasks in schools, often leading to a communicated disregard of theory in general. This theory-practice gap can be explained in part by looking at different understandings of the concepts of theory and practice themselves. Higher education programs can address this by employing authentic video-taped lessons as a glimpse at school reality. Then, students can grasp theories by discovering the deep structures underlying the visible tip of the iceberg a video can offer. This paper reports the backgrounds and evaluation of such a seminar concept at the University of Hamburg. It concludes that videotaped lessons can indeed serve as focal points of a didactics seminar aiming to close the theory-practice gap, given a certain understanding of theory, practice and learning.
Students of education and teachers on-the-job alike state a huge disparity between universityacquired skills and those needed to cope with everyday tasks in schools, often leading to a communicated disregard of theory in general. This theory-practice gap can be explained in part by looking at different understandings of the concepts of theory and practice themselves. Higher education programs can address this by employing authentic video-taped lessons as a glimpse at school reality. Then, students can grasp theories by discovering the deep structures underlying the visible tip of the iceberg a video can offer. This paper reports the backgrounds and evaluation of such a seminar concept at the University of Hamburg. It concludes that videotaped lessons can indeed serve as focal points of a didactics seminar aiming to close the theory-practice gap, given a certain understanding of theory, practice and learning.