W Carr, 1987, What is Educational Practice?, Vol 1 Reader, p160

Education: Theory considers and practice delivers.

What is educational practice? It is the delivery of education. What is educational theory? It is any theory associated with educational practice by practitioners. I assert these statements here for the sake of clarity; and there is not much of that in Carr's article. He does not want to look at how educational practice is presently understood. That is the failure of his paper.

Theory considers and practice delivers education. They are related to each other: theory is the academic or philosophical tool of practice, usually to seek to improve it. Carr's worry seems to be that practice is becoming the tool of educational theorists and, in my words, the tail is wagging the dog. The engineering model of education research was in vogue at the time, and that may explain this odd paper.

Why does Carr have a problem with simple but effective answers? It may be that he is worried by educational research being ruled by practitioners (those practising it) and non-practitioners (theorists) being rendered subordinate. If so, he should have realised that things have their day. A balance returns in the long run, as it has. He references the Aristotelian praxis and tries to wrench it into a different meaning to practice, saying that it implies underpinning theory. Actually, theory and praxis were quite different to Aristotle.

Was Educational Practice being misinterpreted and applied beyond its traditional commitments and roles 20 years ago? Did it need to be rescue? Unfortunately, the best Carr does is to "spell out core concepts".

The elephant-in-the-room in this paper is theory of education: Carr finds it threatened and its role and the relationship between it and education practice ambiguous.

Carr is sure that practice "can not be reduced to a form of theorising" and that "it is always the achievement of tradition". He looks into the historical roots of the word, hoping it will help him understand the answer to his eponymous question. Carr wants to rescue "practice" from misuse by "those cultural tendencies which now undermine it and degrade it." (These seem to be its practitioners ...)

He sets 3 tasks, but whether he achieved them or not becomes irrelevant because he fails to create a rationale whereby educational practice is an inherently ambiguous term or widely misunderstood. The mind and the body are one in the healthy human. The body is subordinate to the mind at most times but sometimes the body rules, as in sleep when the autonomous systems keep one alive. Carr is contriving a rational that educational practice has been ambiguously defined to put theory into a subordinate role. He does not come out and say so. He does not mention the engineering model. He does not even show that the practice of education is more esteemed than theorising about it. His arguments are invalid because he does not prove there is any real misunderstanding, or that theory and practice are out of harmony in the first place.