The premises behind our theory of teacher education is that learning to teach is a social, enacted and re-constructive. These premises have led to the principle that knowledge of teaching is developed continuously through the inter-action of personal, professional and contextual knowledge.

Professional or communal knowledge is developed from a community of agreement (Gergen, 1991). This community can be the profession of teaching, the sub-discipline within a subject area of teaching, or a community of peers engaged in related educational endeavors. For a person’s professional knowledge to develop and adapt there has to be an adequate social network to converse with colleagues, to construct and re-construct teaching ideas and re-enact experiences of teaching. This type of professional knowledge can be public, as in widely known and expressed in textbooks and courses, or private, as in particular to a group of teachers within a certain context.

Personal knowledge relates to the experiences and ideas that a person draws upon in order to teach and evolve as a teacher. Beliefs, values, attitudes, biases and disposition are terms that relate to this personal knowledge. Clandinin and Donnelly (1994) have referred to this pre-articulated sense of teaching as personal practical knowledge. For personal knowledge to develop a person needs time and space to reflect on past, practical experiences that inform his or her perspective on teaching. In this way teaching is a dynamic process that is constructed and continuously re-constructed, as a teacher frames new experiences into their personal practical knowledge on teaching.

Contextual knowledge is a situated knowledge. This knowledge develops from the inaction of the physical, teacher being of the person as he or she interacts with the context of teaching. Contextual knowledge for teaching evolves from the enacted teaching act and the resulting learning that can be perceived by the teacher as he or she develops as a teacher. Contextual knowledge develops from the "feel" of teaching and the reactions of learners to planned and responsive teaching episodes. Drawing from Varela and Matuarna (1991) work on enactivism, teacher contextual knowledge evolves from the co-emergence of the teacher's actions with the learners' actions, the teaching space and the artifacts within the teaching environment.