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The theory-practice problem manifests itself in education generally and in teacher education specifically. The divide is evident in diverse literatures internationally. The theory-practice split, which is one of many expressions used to describe the phenomenon, cannot be apprehended in a material sense. Instead, it emerges as a perennial problem that educators live through the stories they tell of their lives. This chapter particularly captures the struggle over rigor versus relevance in teacher education. It offers five different categories of pedagogies (teacher leadership, diversity, family, social justice, and technology), which together comprise this volume, International Teacher Education: Promising Pedagogies (Part B). These five pedagogies join five earlier categories of pedagogies (teacher selection, reflection, narrative knowing, teacher identity, and mediation and mentoring), which are found in International Teacher Education: Promising Pedagogies (Part A), and a new lineup of promising teacher education pedagogies that will appear in International Teacher Education: Promising Pedagogies (Part C). In all cases, the featured international pedagogies are not recipes to follow. Rather, they are contextualized artifacts that produce a synergy between teaching and learning and show promise where international transferability is concerned.

This study aims to investigate marketing managers’ views on the existence and nature of the academic–practitioner gap in the branding domain.

Using a purposive sampling method, the researchers conduct semi-structured qualitative interviews with 20 experienced marketing managers from a wide range of industries and organisations, whose roles are focussed on the planning, implementation and management of broad marketing and branding strategies.

Branding practitioners have little or no contact with academics and their theories-in-use with regard to brand management suggest they do not consider academic research relevant to their work.

The process of describing and explaining the gap provides valuable insights into bridging the gap; it provides actionable branding strategies that include raising awareness, building relationships, improving the benefits offer and communicating more effectively.

This research has practical implications for branding academics. The interviewed practitioners confirm the gap, viewing it as academics’ (not practitioners’) problem and responsibility. They characterise it as a branding problem that academics can overcome using branding strategies, to establish themselves as credible sources of branding expertise for practitioners. Key areas for increasing collaboration stem from practitioners’ desire for independent, credible, ethical and timely third-party advice on branding issues; relevant, timely and shorter professional branding education across their organisations; and closer connections with universities to identify new branding talent and ideas.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first to empirically examine and recommend solutions to the academic-practitioner gap in the branding domain by studying marketing professionals with branding responsibilities, using in-depth interviews.

The theory–practice relation in professional programs like teacher education should be a fruitful challenge that inspires students to learn through reflecting on practical experiences with theoretically based concepts. However, instead of being a learning-promoting challenge it often is a problem that causes students to consider leaving teacher education.

Universities and colleges have developed different strategies to make the theory–practice relationship easier for students to handle. One of these strategies is to introduce a third learning space between theory at college and practicum experiences. A Danish university college developed a so-called Teaching Lab to establish a laboratory-like relationship between theory at college and practices in schools. Observations and interviews showed that the college managed to realize its goal and bridge the gap between theory and practice.

The purpose of this editorial is to bring together thoughts and opinions from the Editors and Senior Advisory Board of EJM regarding the nature of the long‐debated “theory‐practice divide” in marketing scholarship.

The authors synthesise diverse opinions from senior academics in order both to inspire further debate in marketing scholarship, and to draw some important conclusions for marketing academia as a whole.

The authors propose that, for marketing scholarship to mature and progress, room must be found for those who wish to focus both on practical and on pure marketing scholarship. Career advancement from both routes is vital.

The topic of the theory‐practice gap is complex. Many diverse opinions are cited and, due to space constraints, the coverage of many issues is necessarily brief.

Scholars should find the thoughts contained in the paper of significant interest.

The paper appears to be the first to bring together such a set of diverse opinions on the subject, and to try to draw some overall pragmatic conclusions, while still recognising the multiplicity of valid thought in the area.

The purpose of this theoretical paper is to propose that museums can be useful sites in intervening the theory–practice divide in teacher education. The authors draw from their visit to the Center for Civil and Human Rights (CCHR or Center hereafter) to explore the potential of a local museum as a powerful intervention in the preservice teacher education theory/practice divide.

The authors’ theoretical framework draws off of “thinking with theory,” a method of using concepts to make sense of data by “plugging” a concept “into” data (Jackson and Mazzei, 2011). The authors believe that everyone, even their preservice teachers think with theories in an attempt to make sense of information and events. In their social studies methods courses, the authors offer readings, texts, videos and experiences that present ideas and concepts that are new to their preservice teachers in order to expose underlying theories that frame worldviews.

The authors provide four “snapshots” or findings. These include: heroification and villainification, White–Black binary and messianic meta-narratives, empathy and simulation and critical Black patriotism. Each of these snapshots is grounded in theories from scholars in the field of social studies, demonstrating one way to put theory to work.

As the aforementioned snapshots show, the authors found a place like CCHR that can serve as important space to think with theory and deconstruct presented narratives. The authors “plugged” concepts from social studies scholarship “into” the narratives presented at the CCHR. Specifically, the authors used villainification (van Kessel and Crowley, 2017), AsianCrit (Chang, 1993), Black Patriotism (Busey and Walker, 2017) and messianic narratives and martyrdom (Alridge, 2006).

This study aims to expose the challenges associated with theory development and its implementation, as it relates to services marketing and hospitality management. The author summarizes the literature, creates a conceptual model and proposes directions to bridge the theory–practice divide.

The author synthesizes and extends the literatures of services marketing, general marketing and hospitality management through a systematic literature review. A conceptual model is created to illustrate the challenges related to theory development and implementation.

Four types of theory challenges and three contemporary practical challenges are presented. The challenges for theory development include a communications gap, difficulties in applying universal theories into idiosyncratic organizations, researchers disconnected from practice and practitioners disconnected from research. Contemporary practical concerns include: human resource constraints, customer behavior and misbehavior and the organizational and business environment.

Managers can bring contemporary business challenges to the forefront by collaborating and writing with scholars. Similarly, keeping abreast of the latest advances in customer service, applying best practices in human resource management, educating and cocreating with customers are among several recommendations proposed to managers and marketers. Internal and external scanning can assure that managers engage in efforts to reduce barriers to implementation and improve services in their organizations.

Despite the decades-long study of customer service, organizations still struggle to deliver exceptional service. This study informs scholars on developing and communicating theories and managers on how to better access and interpret the latest research. In order for research to be successfully generated and implemented, scholars can engage in efforts aimed at joint (researchers and managers) idea generation, publication in multiple outlets, sampling that resembles real life, adoption of contingency theories and reconsidering journal editorial and institutional policies.

This chapter introduces the theory–practice divide through surveying highly diverse sources of literature that document its existence and call for ways in which it can be overcome. After that, gaps between theory and practice as they appear in the field of education are foregrounded and presented as a challenge, particularly in the Western teacher education enterprise. The authors contend that the gap between theory and practice can be addressed nationally and internationally through focusing on pedagogies that are locally deliberated and enacted. Such pedagogies would be specifically named by teacher educators; the origins (cultural/practical/theoretical/policy roots) of the pedagogies would be traced; and live, evidence-based exemplars of the pedagogies unfurling in their home settings would be presented from an insider point of view. Through this approach, promising pedagogies with potential portability to other national and international contexts would be made known. In this manner, a dialectical relationship between theory and practice – where each speaks productively to the other – would be established. This relationship, the authors reinforce, would need to be continually negotiated when the enactment of the promising pedagogies is attempted in different settings and/or at different junctures of time.

This chapter explores the use of Lesson Study (LS) as a strategy for co-constructing pedagogical knowledge and draws on data from a series of interviews with student teachers. Sixteen student teachers, undertaking a postgraduate teacher training program in higher education in England, engaged in LS as an official assessment of their ability to jointly plan, deliver, and evaluate a lesson. LS is thus seen to promote an intense collaborative working relationship between participating student teachers that engenders fresh opportunities for learning. It is argued, then, that this approach can challenge the prevalent model of individually led professional development by facilitating a space for the co-construction of pedagogical knowledge. LS is also explored for its potential to bridge the theory-practice divide by enabling participant student teachers to generate theory from practice.

The purpose of this paper is to provide the rationale underpinning this new journal in addressing the apparent gap and fragmented nature of the emergency services research, to introduce the papers in this inaugural issue and encourage readers and potential contributors to support the International Journal of Emergency Services (IJES).

The paper introduces the new journal, and its intention to challenge the current “silo approach” which isolates the academic and practitioner community. It also outlines the editorial intentions for the journal, linking the theme and selected papers for the inaugural issue to the future editorial direction of the journal.

Emergency function resides with a host of agencies including the three “blue light” services (police, fire and ambulance). IJES is an opportunity to publish up‐to‐date and original research contributions for the benefit of scholars, policy makers and practitioners in these areas, including the interface of policy and practice at national, regional and global level.

Articulating the IJES vision in addressing the apparent gaps in emergency services research, including the theory‐practise divide, this paper provides useful knowledge to potential readers who are interested in emergency services research. It also highlights some potential areas for research.