There is often a suspicion in teacher education of anything that practising
teachers might not understand immediately, and linguistics has a reputation
for conceptual difficulty. Many teachers have an image of themselves as
practical and down-to-earth folk, having to cope with everyday life at the
chalk-face, in the blackboard jungle, and as taking a sensible standing against
the impractical theorising of linguists, sociologists and psychologists of
education, and all the rest,