**4. Reconceptualising teacher education courses: supporting PSTs understand teaching as an interactive activity**

This chapter draws on a three-year empirical study conducted at a rural Australian university which investigated how learning teaching practice is not only informed but formed through interrogating the theory-practice nexus *in enactment*. It was notable that in this particular university site, classroom talk and interacting with students in classrooms was not the focus of explicit instruction in coursework or practicum placements for PSTs; it was taken-for-granted that PSTs could interact with students in classrooms. As a response to this enduring issue, the project presented in this chapter formed part of a broader study investigating teacher education practices aiming to support PSTs move towards pedagogical efficacy. Pedagogical efficacy, according to [24], depends not only on what one does, but also on the depth and quality of the understandings by which it is guided. Therefore, establishing what knowledge and theory actually guides and determines a PST's actions in the context of their interacting with students in classroom lessons in order to develop their practices from the onset of their careers, is a fundamental platform from which professional practice is improved.

The specific project, *Talking to Learn*, called for teacher educators to reconceptualise their courses and approaches for supporting PSTs develop core skills and teaching practices [17, 18, 25, 26]. Central to the project was making explicit the theory-practice nexus. The importance of the interconnection between theory and practice is also expressed strongly by Hughes [27] who suggested that without theory, practice consists of a set of unrelated actions with little or no basis for improvement.
