Why deliberate practice is not a basis for teacher expertise

In this paper we examine the notion of ‘deliberate practice’, which has formed the basis of several teacher education programmes in England and the United States and promises to improve the quality of teaching via highly structured training programmes. We identify early criticisms of deliberate practice and unpack the assumptions embedded in its underpinning thinking. We demonstrate that deliberate practice is insufficient as a basis for teacher expertise as teaching is not a ‘performance profession’, the activities of teachers cannot all be easily or meaningfully decomposed, and the ‘goals’ of teaching are not solely geared towards maximising measurable student attainment. We suggest that deliberate practice is problematically aligned with reductive assumptions about teacher and student behaviour, causality in social relations and a superficial approach to learning as acquisition, and this reflects how the notion has been extracted from its psychological roots and recontextualised into debates about teacher preparation.