Tapping into the mental resources of teachers' working knowledge: Insights into the generative power of intuitive pedagogy

Abstract

Abstract This paper provides novel insights into the kinds of mental resources on which teachers draw in their pedagogical sense-making (about everyday teaching decisions), and into the origins of these mental resources. The paper examines how teachers' knowledge is grounded in diverse social, cognitive and metacognitive experiences of learning and teaching phenomena. It contributes to the development of new ways of theorising the links between (a) experiential knowledge resources, which originate in specific activities and interactions, and (b) an integrated conceptual understanding that organises professional sense-making across diverse situations and contexts. By combining conceptual ideas about knowledge fragmentation with original empirical observations from a study of the form and functioning of teachers' working knowledge in higher education, the paper advances two lines of theoretical argument. Firstly, teachers' working knowledge is better seen as contextualised and fragmented rather than as a systematic personal theory. There are advantages to pedagogical ‘knowledge-in-pieces’ that can be activated and combined in different ways in interaction with various contexts. Secondly, pedagogical ideas and ways of knowing that originate in one's personal experience (‘intuitive pedagogy’) can be a productive resource in teacher thinking, action and professional learning. The paper suggests that the view of professional learning in, and through, practice should be expanded from its traditional focus on social and material interactions to also include the consideration of simultaneous interactions with one's mind.