Service Learning May Close the Theory–Practice Gap in Teacher Education, Chinese Study Finds

Every teacher educator knows the moment well: a confident graduate steps into a real classroom for the first time and discovers that the elegant theories memorized at university do not map neatly onto thirty restless children, an unexpected fire drill, and a lesson plan that collapses in the first ten minutes. This “reality shock,” as researchers call it, has haunted initial teacher education across the globe for decades. A new study from China argues that the problem is not a lack of practicum hours but a deeper conceptual error — the habit of treating practice and reflection as two separate, sequential activities rather than as a single, mutually transformative process. The research, published online on September 14, 2026, in ECNU Review of Education, offers a fresh theoretical and practical account of how that unity can actually be built.

The study was conducted by Professor Ge Wei and Professor Haiyan Wang of Capital Normal University in Beijing, who examined a service-learning program at a Chinese normal university. The program emerged in direct response to China’s “double reduction” policy, a national initiative designed to ease the burden of homework and after-school tutoring on schoolchildren. Within the program, pre-service teachers designed and delivered online courses to schoolchildren across the country, working under the guidance of experienced mentors. The setting mattered: rather than a brief, isolated teaching placement, the participants were embedded in an extended, socially consequential service activity with continuous institutional support.

Theoretically, the researchers grounded their analysis in activity theory, a framework that treats human learning as mediated by tools, communities, and social structures rather than as a purely individual mental achievement. They then added a distinctly Chinese philosophical layer. “We invoke the ancient Chinese concept of Yin and Yang (阴阳) as a metaphor for the dialectical relationship between practice and reflection in teacher education,” Wei and Wang explain. “It offered culturally grounded resources for rethinking teacher learning beyond dualism.” In this framing, practice and reflection are not opposing poles to be balanced but complementary aspects of one activity, each containing and generating the other, much as the yin and yang of traditional Chinese thought interpenetrate rather than exclude one another.

One of the study’s central findings is a critique of how the theory–practice divide has historically been understood. The authors found that the problem has typically been framed as an individual, psychological failing — a deficit in the student teacher’s knowledge, skills, or ability to “apply” theory. Their analysis reframes it instead as a collective, socio-cultural problem. On this view, the divide persists because the activity systems surrounding novice teachers — universities, schools, policies, and digital infrastructures — are not designed to let theory and practice transform each other. Fixing it therefore requires redesigning those systems, not simply exhorting student teachers to reflect harder.

The Chinese context proved unusually fertile for such a redesign. According to the study, the “double reduction” policy, combined with university–school collaboration and digital mediation, created what the researchers describe as a fertile ecology for dialectical unity to emerge. The national policy supplied purpose and urgency; the university–school partnership supplied mentors and authentic classroom connections; and the online delivery format supplied a mediating tool through which pre-service teachers could reach real learners at scale. Each element alone would have been insufficient. Together, they formed an activity system in which teaching practice and theoretical reflection could feed continuously into one another.

The most striking result concerns what happened to the pre-service teachers themselves. The study reveals that when novices engage in service learning guided by mentors and peers, their practice and reflection become mutually transformative rather than sequentially separated. Instead of first learning theory and then applying it, the participants reworked their theoretical knowledge in light of real classroom encounters and generated new professional understanding in the process. Reflection was not a post-hoc journaling exercise appended to teaching; it was woven into the act of designing, delivering, and revising instruction for actual children with actual needs. Theory, in turn, was not a fixed script but a living resource that the novices reshaped as they taught.

From these findings, the authors draw three practical implications for initial teacher education programs worldwide. First, programs should stop treating theory as something to be simply applied to practice. Well-designed service learning creates opportunities for the two to transform each other, as novices confront the gap between their assumptions and classroom reality and rebuild their professional understanding accordingly. Second, continuous mentoring and peer collaboration are essential. In the studied program, participants designed, rehearsed, and revised their teaching together rather than working in isolation, making the collective — not the lone student teacher — the basic unit of professional learning. Third, service learning can cultivate a sense of professional responsibility to society: by engaging in a national policy initiative and serving schoolchildren across the country, the pre-service teachers came to see teaching not merely as a job but as a socially meaningful commitment.

Taken together, these principles point to a conclusion that challenges a common policy reflex. Bridging the theory–practice divide, the authors argue, requires more than increasing the number of practicum hours. What matters is the design of authentic, socially consequential activities in which pre-service teachers can practice, reflect, and grow with the support of mentors, peers, and meaningful mediating tools. Hours spent in poorly structured placements, where novices are dropped into classrooms without collective inquiry or genuine purpose, may reproduce the very divide they are meant to close. The quality of the activity system, not the quantity of exposure, is the decisive variable.

The study also stakes out a broader ambition for the field. The authors propose a critical activist role for initial teacher education in transforming societies, a perspective that resonates with growing international calls for more equitable and socially engaged teacher preparation. On this account, teacher education should not merely reproduce the existing schooling system but equip future teachers to question and improve it — and service learning, by tying professional learning to real societal needs, offers one concrete mechanism for doing so. The Chinese program’s alignment with the “double reduction” policy illustrates how national priorities, when paired with university infrastructure, can become a vehicle for socially engaged professional formation rather than a top-down mandate alone.

“The making of high-quality teachers depends on both a sustainable policy ecology and locally grounded spaces in which practitioners can collectively redesign the practices of teacher education,” Wei and Wang conclude. The claim is a pointed one for policymakers and deans alike: high-quality teaching cannot be manufactured by curriculum documents and exam requirements alone. It requires an ecology — stable policies, collaborative institutions, digital tools, and communal spaces — in which the ancient dialectic of doing and thinking can operate as a unity. For a profession long divided between the seminar room and the classroom, the message from Beijing is that the bridge between the two is not built by adding more of either side, but by redesigning the activity that connects them. The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, or publication of the article, which appeared in ECNU Review of Education under the title “Practice and Reflection as a Dialectical Unity: Pre-Service Teachers’ Experience in a Service-Learning Program.”

Subject of Research: Service learning as a means of integrating theory and practice in pre-service teacher education

Article Title: Chinese study reveals how service learning bridges the theory–practice divide in teacher education

Article References: Chinese study reveals how service learning bridges the theory–practice divide in teacher education. (n.d.). Original publication

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: teacher education, service learning, pre-service teachers, theory-practice divide, activity theory, yin and yang, double reduction policy, Capital Normal University, ECNU Review of Education, mentoring, reflection, China