Practical Knowledge of Teaching: What Counts?

Contexts and concepts: analysing learning tasks in a foundation phase teacher education programme in South Africa

“…She found a similar pattern, where in the previous version of the curriculum, 64% of the tasks had strongly demarcated COS, while this was the case for only 26% of tasks in the current version of the material. Together, these analyses of student teacher activities support Shalem and Slonimsky (2013) claim that current teacher education shows a focus on personal reflection in and on practice rather than on the acquisition of theoretical and conceptual educational knowledge. A study of recent reforms in England also supports this (Hordern, 2015).…”

“…The argument from this perspective is that teaching is essentially a practice that is learned through experience and through reflection in and on practice and that learning to be a teacher is about developing practical wisdom in the classroom. On the other side, the argument is that good teachers draw from a reservoir of academic and diagnostic knowledge (Shalem & Slonimsky, 2013) and not only on intuition and everyday experience (Ball & Forzani, 2009;Hordern, 2015). Ball and Forzani argue that the nature of teaching practice is intricate and unnatural work and thus requires deliberate training to make choices using professional judgment.…”

“…Research studies have tended to focus on the delivery models of these programmes (Aluko, 2009), on the learning outcomes (Adler & Reed, 2002), or students' perceptions (Ndlovu, 2011), rather than on curriculum questions about the structure, nature and selection of knowledge that is taught to teachers and how it is assessed. Some claim that there is a growing support for the view that teachers' socialisation into professional practice should take place predominantly through "learning from doing" and less from formal "concept building" (Hordern, 2015;Shalem & Slonimsky, 2013). The argument is that teaching practice is contextually-bound and thus is best learned in situ.…”

Exploring the complexities of describing foundation phase teachers’ professional knowledge base

“…Suffice to say that there are some who claim that knowing how is learned in practice, through experience (Cochran-Smith & Lytle 1999); while others believe in articulating theoretical perspectives to obtain a better purchase on practice (see Shalem & Slonimsky 2013 for a discussion). We would place ourselves within the camp that understands that knowing how and knowing that are in some ways inseparable (Muller 2014;Winch 2014).…”

“…On the one hand, we argue that with regard to a professional practice like teaching, practical knowledge or knowing how benefits when inferences are made from a systematic body of knowledge, not only from everyday experiences. In other words, knowing how is 'stronger' when it is underpinned by specific knowing that (Muller 2012), and 'diagnosing' situations with useful discriminations as well as choosing an appropriate response benefit from drawing on knowing that (Shalem & Slonimsky 2013). This knowing that of teaching contains academic as well as diagnostic classifications.…”