Decomposition and recomposition in teacher education

Breaking down sequences of teaching into constituent practices is thought to make learning to teach more manageable. However, it also divorces teaching practices from context, which risks leaving teachers unsure as to when or why to use a specific practice. Theorists have suggested that decomposing authentic sequences of teaching into their constituent parts and then recomposing them in new, meaningful sequences combines the benefits of both manageability and contextualisation. Using a classroom simulator experiment, we compared input from a teacher educator using decomposed and then recomposed sequences of teaching practice, against input that focused on whole, continuous sequences of teaching. We found that decomposition-then-recomposition was superior to a more holistic approach, and helped novice teachers adaptively transfer their teaching practices to a novel context. The findings are consistent with the idea that recomposition is complementary to decomposition, which has implications for the design of early career teacher development.