Teacher Pedagogical Knowledge Research Articles

Building a Knowledge Base for Teacher Education: An Experience in K–8 Mathematics Teacher Preparation

Abstract Consistent with the theme of this issue, we describe the details of one continuing effort to build knowledge for teacher education. We argue that building a useful knowledge base requires attention to the processes used to generate, record, and vet knowledge. By using 4 features of knowledge‐building systems we identified in the introductory article for this issue—shared goals, tangible products, small tests of small changes, and multiple sources of innovation—we examine the knowledge‐building processes for K–8 teacher preparation under way at the University of Delaware. We conclude that the 4 features provide a useful mirror for clarifying the strengths and weaknesses of our local system and, at the same time, reveal a number of institutional obstacles for knowledge building that lie ahead.

More than just jargon – the nature and role of specialist language in learning disciplinary knowledge

Teachers of English for Academic Purposes (EAP) and academic language and learning advisors have long recognised the importance of developing students' academic vocabulary for successful writing and learning at university. There is little, however, in the EAP literature on the place of teaching and learning discipline specific vocabulary, despite the growing attention paid to differences in disciplinary discourses in the EAP field. This paper aims to raise awareness of the role of the specialist language of academic disciplines in learning disciplinary knowledge. It identifies the nature of specialist language in a learner discourse of one academic discipline as well as examines how students incorporate this specialist language in their writing as their disciplinary knowledge increases. The data are drawn from a longitudinal study of undergraduate Education students' writing. The students' incorporation of specialist language in their writing is explored through the concepts of technicality and abstraction as they have been developed within systemic functional linguistics. The findings from this study show that learning specialist knowledge in pre-service teacher education involves adopting technical terms as well as coming to terms with the abstract dimension of the discourse. This paper also provides an analytical tool which can be adapted for examining the ways in which language represents experience in academic discourses. This analytical tool can assist academic language researchers and teachers to investigate variation in disciplinary discourses beyond the level of text organization and purpose so as to inform the teaching of specialist language.

Preservice Teachers Conducting Action Research in Early Education Centers

The purpose of this study was to investigate the use of action research by ten preservice teachers earning their associate's degree in early childhood education from a small university in the West. Their goal was to assess the impact of their teaching on student learning with children birth to 8 years of age. This study represents the use of undergraduate action research in early childhood at the associate degree level, and also contributes to the early childhood teacher education knowledge base in the use of the action research method in early learning centers as a means of professional development as well as a tool to guide daily instruction, problem solving, and decision making. Using a variety of informal assessment procedures, the preservice teachers studied the effects of specific learning strategies or activities, first upon the development and learning of the young children they taught, and then upon the results from the assessments in order to guide further instruction.

Diversity Knowledge in Science Teacher Education-Translating Concept to Instruction: An Example Specific to African Americans

Science education reforms promote access to quality science education for all students. Outcome disparities in various measures indicate that such access remains elusive for African Americans. Cultural incongruence is one among many explanations for this previously described inaccessibility. The intent of this article is not to report additional research findings, but to translate the information provided in the literature into an instructional form that science teacher educators can employ in the preparation of prospective science teachers or the further development of practicing ones. Pivoting around a role play, the authors discuss communication within African American communities, its incongruence with the discourse patterns typically valued and reinforced in school science, and the importance of such knowledge for science teacher educators.

Will They Know Enough?: Pre-Service Primary Teachers’ Knowledge Base For Teaching Integrated Social Sciences

A significant issue in primary teacher education is developing a knowledge base which prepares teachers to teach in a range of subject areas. In Australia, the problem in primary social science education is compounded by the integrated nature of the key learning area of Studies of Society and Environment (SOSE). Recent debates on teaching integrated social sciences omit discussions on the knowledge base for teaching. In this paper, a case study approach is used to investigate primary pre-service teachers’ approaches to developing a knowledge base in designing a SOSE curriculum unit. Data from five teacher-educators who taught primary SOSE curriculum indicates that novice teachers’ subject content knowledge, as revealed through their curriculum planning, lacked a disciplinary basis. However, understanding of inquiry learning, which is fundamental to social science education, was much stronger. This paper identifies a gap in the scholarship on teaching integrated social science and illustrates the need to support and develop primary teachers’ disciplinary knowledge in teacher education.

Preparing to teach with ICT: subject knowledge, Didaktik and improvisation

The article argues that preparing to be, in Shulman's words, ‘ready, willing and able’ to teach with ICT can be supported by an integrative framework of teacher professional knowledge which recognizes connections between subject domain knowledge, the didactic relation with information and communications technology (ICT), and an openness of mind in the moments of teaching, similar to improvisation. A study of teaching with ICT in an English primary school illustrates links between understandings of Didaktik and improvisation as teachers draw imaginatively upon subject knowledge to represent content and purpose appropriately for their pupils. The article discusses a relationship between understandings of Didaktik and improvisation, and the importance of conceptual subject domain knowledge in primary teacher education at a time of debate about curriculum, technology and professional knowledge.

Reconceptualizing Teacher Educator Knowledge as Tensions: Exploring the tension between valuing and reconstructing experience

This paper reports my efforts as a teacher educator to improve our understanding of the process of learning to teach. It illustrates how the nature of the knowledge developed by teacher educators about their practice is often embedded in complexity and ambiguity. This knowledge is explored as a source of tensions that teacher educators can learn to recognize and manage within their work. By examining one of these tensions within my practice, that of valuing and reconstructing experience, I consider how conceptualizing knowledge as tensions can enhance teacher educators' understandings of practice and contribute to the professional knowledge base of teacher education.

Examining Reflective Thinking: A Study of Changes in Methods Students’ Conceptions and Understandings of Inquiry Teaching

This study has resulted in an elementary science methods course that facilitates the identification and description of the changes in students’ conceptions and understanding of inquiry teaching, and the cultural influences, reflections, and situational factors influencing these changes. Written responses to open-ended questions, reflective journals, teaching plans, and videotapes of lessons were used as data sources. Results of the written responses and the lesson plans indicated that an elementary science methods course with social-constructivist and reflective assessment strategies appears to enhance methods students’ conceptual changes regarding inquiry teaching. The significance of this study lies in the provision of insights into three apparent explanations: impacts of cultural myths, conditions for critical reflection, and unit design as performance of understanding. By identifying the elementary methods students’ reflections and situations, the elementary science methods course provides knowledge for teacher educators about how such students expressed their conceptions and understanding of inquiry teaching and, therefore, potentially provides indications about appropriate teaching strategies for science methods courses.

Professional Knowledge in Initial Teacher Education (ITE): a Preliminary Review of Hispanic Literature

The global dominance of English as the principal language of international interchange in the teacher education field has, perhaps, diverted English-speaking scholars from the task of reviewing discourses in non-English languages. Taking as its focus the issue of professional knowledge in ITE, the present article considers scholarship predominantly of Spanish origin - to a lesser extent Portuguese and Latin American also - in an effort to begin to form an understanding of both historical antecedents and more recent approaches to professional knowledge in a Hispanic context. While the remit of the present article is one of introducing the work and ideas of significant scholars, it ends in pointing towards the need for further research in seeking to identify more fully what might be distinctive about the Hispanic contribution to a global discussion in the face of new 21 st -century realities in teacher

Taking the next step: Connecting teacher education, research on teaching, and programme assessment

We cite four disconnections among teacher education programmes, research on teaching, and programme assessment that contribute to a paucity of systematically collected evidence and the inability of teacher educators to fully address the “outcomes question” [Cochran-Smith, M. (2003). Assessing assessment in teacher education. Journal of Teacher Education, 54, 187–191] now central to the conduct and future of teacher education programmes. To reduce those disconnections, we present the Development, Research, and Improvement model of programme assessment [Metzler, M. W., & Tjeerdsma, B. L. (1998). PETE program assessment within a development, research, and improvement framework. Journal of Teaching in Physical Education, 17, 468–492] that has guided a comprehensive, longitudinal, and research-based assessment project at Georgia State University in the United States for 13 years. We situate this work in the framework of Self-Study of Teacher Education, now gaining attention worldwide as a legitimate approach to bridging the methodological and evidentiary gap between teacher education programmes, research on teaching, and programme assessment. Examples of data collected in the longitudinal programme are described, along with illustrations of how those data have guided decisions about our teacher education programme, and how those findings can add to the empirical knowledge in teacher education.

Experiencing and evidencing learning through self-study: New ways of working with mentors and trainees in a training school partnership

This paper uses self-study to analyse the development of a generative, research-based approach to mentoring initial teacher training students in a Training School/university partnership and its contribution to redefining teacher education practice. It focuses on the ontological values and co-learning of the authors as they work collaboratively with mentors to develop a democratic form of social practice and relations. The use of video to record the teaching and situated learning of mentors and trainees is explored as are the qualities and conditions which helped foster the shift in power relations between participants as they engaged in reflective dialogue and inquiry. Issues of sustainability and embedding such practices are addressed as is the contribution of practitioner-research accounts to the professional knowledge of other teacher educators, teachers and trainees.

Initial teacher preparation for special educational needs: policy and practice in the North and South of Ireland

This article reports the findings of a shared review of the initial preparation of teachers for special educational needs (SEN) in Ireland. The research was funded by the Centre for Cross Border Studies as part of its remit to support collaborative developments by teacher educators throughout Ireland, North and South. Policies for SEN and for initial teacher education in the two jurisdictions are reviewed. The special education representatives of 13 institutions of initial teacher education in Ireland responded to a survey and met in conference for focused discussion. The authors identify patterns in the positioning of what is currently construed as SEN knowledge within pre‐service courses and suggest frameworks for the audit and coordination of SEN knowledge and experience in initial teacher education.

Making Teachers in Britain: Professional knowledge for initial teacher education in England and Scotland

There is an apparent contradiction between the widespread moves towards a uniform and instrumentalist standards‐based approach to teaching on the one hand and recent research‐based insights into the complexity of effective pedagogies. The former tendency reflects a politically driven agenda, the latter is more professionally driven. Tensions reflecting such a contradiction are evident in the debates over initial teacher education (ITE) policy and practice in many parts of the world. This article examines aspects of ITE policy in two contiguous parts of the United Kingdom, England and Scotland. The authors draw on a comparative study carried out during 2002–2004, particularly on an analysis of key contemporary policy documents, in order to consider some of the similarities and differences that are apparent in these two countries. It is argued that while features of national culture, tradition and institutional politics have a significant role to play in the detail of the approaches taken, there is nevertheless evidence of significant convergence between both countries in one aspect of the determination of initial teacher education, the definition of teaching through the prescription of standards, which set official parameters on professional knowledge required for entry into the profession. This, it is suggested, reflects trends associated with neoliberal ‘globalisation’.

Pedagogical Content Knowledge Development and Pre-Service Physics Teacher Education: A Case Study

This paper addresses the question of how to develop prospective teachers' pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) in science teacher education. The main focus is on the knowledge transformation process and on the cognitive strategies used to shift prospective teachers' explanations within the domain of modelling thermal physical phenomena. This study investigates the development of PCK within a group of 28 pre-service physics teachers during the first semester of their two-year post-graduate teacher education program. It focuses on the central issue of the relationships between observable phenomena, like macroscopic thermal properties of matter and their interpretation and/or explanation in terms of corpuscular characteristics and/or thermodynamics theory. The strategy is based on the consideration that knowledge transformation is not a one-way process from subject matter knowledge to pedagogical content knowledge, as literature suggests, but a bidirectional process involving deepening of subject matter knowledge and increasing awareness of pedagogical issues.

Changing Perceptions of Knowledge : Evaluation of an Innovative Program for Pre-Service Secondary Teachers.

Pre-service programs for secondary teachers have traditionally involved method subjects, where participants are inducted into the curriculum practices of two disciplinary or subject areas. In 2003, Victoria University of Technology, Melbourne, enrolled a small group of fourteen pre-service teachers into an innovative Graduate Diploma of Secondary Education that directly challenged these program assumptions. Method subjects were collapsed into an integrated study of the theory, skills and practices of classroom work and connections were drawn between all enrolled subjects or knowledge. Another key feature of the program involved all pre-service teachers being placed at the one school for their partnership experience, including classroom teaching and a requirement to undertake an applied curriculum project negotiated as being important for the school. Mentor teachers from the school presented a series of evening tutorials on issues such as systemic requirements, curriculum innovation and school organization. This approach to site-based teacher education builds on a project funded by Department of Education, Science and Technology and conducted by Victoria University some years ago. The paper describes the evaluation of the program and suggests some curriculum changes and the resources required. It also provides some advice for the establishment of similar site-based work that attempts to break the mould of traditional thinking on separated knowledge in teacher education.

Critical reflective thinking through service‐learning in multicultural teacher education

This paper describes and discusses the effect of service‐learning on students’ reflective thinking about their own knowledge in multicultural teacher education at a state university in Southern California (USA). Two versions of students’ multicultural autobiographies, one at the beginning and the other at the end of the course, were examined to determine their individual progress. Two classes, one with a service‐learning assignment and the other without, were involved to identify differences. Using King and Kitchener’s model of reflective judgment, this study compares and contrasts the progress of student critical reflective thinking and differences between the two classes. The research suggests that service‐learning stimulated and increased students’ reflective thinking about their own knowledge in multicultural education.

Teacher educators’ expertise: what do novice teachers and teacher educators say?

Expertise of teachers has been the topic of many studies in the field of teacher education published in recent years. Less attention is, however, given to expertise of teacher educators; the focus of this study. The study examines the issue by discussing some of the literature on the subject, and by asking novice teachers and teacher educators about the characteristics of good teacher educators, the professional knowledge of teacher educators and the difference between the expertise of teacher educators and teachers. Findings indicate that even though there is much overlapping in the expertise of the two groups of professionals, there are also distinct differences of importance to the current discussion on standards and education for teacher educators.

Understanding Teacher Educators and Their Pre-service Teachers through Multi-media Case Studies of Practice

The challenges facing those who seek to prepare mathematics teachers are well established in the literature. Most of the research to date has focused on the perceptions and understandings of pre-service teachers, but not on the perceptions and understandings of teacher educators. In this study, we explore how four teacher educators understand their pre-service secondary teachers as the pre-service teachers attempt to make sense of teaching through the investigation of a multimedia case study of practice. We found that the teacher educators adopted two different implementation strategies: one strategy tended to be open-ended and exploratory; the other was more focused on the teacher educators' goals of anticipating student understanding and developing mathematical content knowledge for teaching. We also found that, in using the case study, teacher educators elicited pre-service teachers' thinking about the complexities of the teacher's role in small group work, about the value of explicitly revealing the teacher's reflections on the lessons, about the role of planning and preparation, and about the limits of pre-service teachers' abilities to understand and appreciate students' thinking and to extend lesson ideas. Both teacher educators and their pre-service teachers gained perspectives on the role of a teacher's mathematical content knowledge. These results imply that multimedia case studies of practice can serve as vehicles for revealing the knowledge and practice of teacher educators, as they engage in supporting the professional development of pre-service teachers.

A Bucket of EELS

This article describes a systematic overhaul of a teacher preparation program and presents outcomes based on studies of the program’s effectiveness in improving the knowledge and skills of teacher educators—university and PK-12 based—related to technology, diversity, and democratic education. The renewal program was peer designed and implemented over a 5-year cycle of 3 intact cohorts composed of education and arts & sciences university faculty and PK-12 colleagues simultaneously engaged in revising the scope, sequence, and content of a teacher education program. Presurveys and postsurveys indicate that nearly all of the instructional objectives were met and that participants made significant gains in their knowledge and skills related to the 3 target areas. Lessons learned in the process and implications for similar renewal efforts are offered.

A Veteran's View of Science Education Today

AbstractScience education in our schools is fundamentally the same today as it was fifty years ago and the scientific method has not really changed. Good science teaching is defined as the never‐ending search for evidence, for objective data, which leads to truth, and the search for truth should be at the heart of education in all subjects at all levels, and teacher training should address this objective view point. Science in our schools is watered down with derivatives such as environmental education. Steps should be taken to increase the level of science content knowledge in schools and science teacher education. Additionally, the rules of the open market should be invoked to give science teachers the latitude to offer their services as other providers of professional services do, and receive compensation greater than they would as regular full‐time teachers. These issues are discussed with implications for policy.