Understanding Subject Knowledge for Primary Teaching

Deborah Pope

• Publisher: Learning Matters
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781526479273
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Elementary Education

How can trainee teachers begin their careers with a clear understanding of all the curriculum subjects? This book addresses the nature of subject knowledge in all foundation curriculum subjects. It deconstructs the elements of each subject through an exploration of the nature of the subject, a coverage of the ?skills? a study of this subject develops and through detailed analysis of case studies from practice. At a time when concerns about the lack of breadth in the primary curriculum are being voiced, this book supports busy trainee teachers to truly understand and be ready to teach all curriculum areas.

1 Introduction

Deborah Pope

Chapter objectives

This chapter supports you to:

• consider the nature of subject knowledge for teaching and its theoretical underpinnings;
• develop a framework for thinking about the components of subject knowledge for teaching;
• understand why subject knowledge is an important feature of teacher training courses;
• recognise some of the challenges specific to subject knowledge development for primary teaching.

What is subject knowledge for teaching?

It is useful, at the start of this book, to reflect on your current thinking about subject knowledge for primary teaching and consider what has influenced your perspective. There is a general tendency to view subject knowledge in a very narrow sense, perhaps in the manner of the typical sorts of knowledge required to pass a GCSE or A-level examination. Pope (2019) found that, although beginning teachers conceptualised the finer details of subject knowledge for teaching in highly individualistic ways, there was some consensus in ideas centring around the content of the curriculum. While teachers are naturally concerned with curriculum delivery in practice, a preoccupation with this singular focus can potentially reduce the true complexity of the nature of subject knowledge to more simplistic ideas to fit with this approach. This chapter aims to do the opposite, by exploring the intricacies of subject knowledge for primary teaching.

Much of the interest in teachers’ knowledge stemmed from the seminal work of Shulman (1986, 1987), who proposed a classification of the knowledge base required for teaching. His taxonomy provides a useful starting point for considering the types of knowledge, of which subject knowledge for teaching is comprised, along with those that are closely connected. Over subsequent decades, Shulman’s knowledge bases have been re-examined and supplemented. The theoretical framework adopted in this book extends Shulman’s typology to incorporate additional dimensions contributed by other scholars to provide a more nuanced perspective.

The framework for thinking about subject knowledge for teaching presented here adopts the idea that subject knowledge comprises three key knowledge bases:

• subject matter knowledge;
• pedagogical content knowledge (PCK);
• subject-specific aspects of curriculum knowledge.

In turn, each of these categories of knowledge incorporates a number of elements. To access the case studies in each of the subject chapters, it is important first to have an understanding of the nature and scope of these types of knowledge.

Subject matter knowledge (or content knowledge)

The first of Shulman’s (1986, 1987) categories refers to the amount and organisation of knowledge per se in the mind of the teacher. It is tempting to think of this in simple terms as the factual knowledge that underpins the material that is to be taught, but this does not represent its full scope. Shulman drew upon the ideas of Schwab (1964, 1978), who characterised knowledge structures as ‘substantive’ or ‘syntactic’.

Substantive knowledge structures relate to the facts, concepts, key ideas, terminology and principles of a discipline, and how they are organised into frameworks. Syntactic knowledge encompasses the ways in which ideas have been generated within a discipline, and how they have come to be accepted and established. It includes how an idea is connected to others within, and between, disciplines, and between theory and practice. A critical element for teachers to understand is the fundamental nature of working practices of the discipline. In other words, teachers need to capture the essence of what it means to work like a historian, a scientist or a designer, for example. In their research about immersing children in authentic learning contexts, Clayden et al. (1994, p172) underlined the importance of teachers understanding the authentic practices and cultures of academic disciplines, including their specialist language and discourse. They described learning as enculturation into these practices.

Teachers’ beliefs about a subject influence their interpretation of the subject matter for teaching and the approaches they take to planning, preparation and teaching (Grossman, 1987; Wilson and Wineburg, 1988; Turner-Bisset, 1999). Turner-Bisset (1999) proposed that this form of knowledge held just as much significance as substantive and syntactic knowledge structures within Shulman’s (1987) subject matter knowledge category. The evidence suggests that beliefs about the subject is a useful additional element to incorporate into our understanding of subject matter knowledge.

To summarise, isolated facts are of limited value to a teacher’s subject matter knowledge. Gaining an understanding of the fundamental principles, structure and processes of disciplines will reorientate teachers’ beliefs about subjects and will provide a much deeper foundation for subject knowledge, into which new substantive knowledge can be integrated more coherently by teachers as they approach new topics.

Pedagogical content knowledge (PCK)

Shulman (1986, p9) coined the phrase pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) to represent subject matter for teaching (emphasis in original) as a distinct phenomenon representing that special amalgam of content and pedagogy that is uniquely the providence of teachers (Shulman, 1987, p8). In other words, Shulman identified PCK as a special form of knowledge that distinguishes teachers’ professional understanding from other specialists’ knowledge of the subject matter. Shulman described PCK as

the most useful forms of representation of ideas, the most powerful analogies, illustrations, examples, explanations, and demonstrations – in a word, the ways of representing and formulating the subject that make it comprehensible to others.

(1986, p9)

PCK is the vehicle through which teachers make the subject matter meaningful and accessible for learners.

It is important to note that Shulman (1986, p10) describes PCK as pedagogical understanding of the subject matter rather than a body of knowledge. He suggested that pedagogical research offers much to better inform teachers’ understanding of children’s preconceptions and conceptions, to illuminate which teaching strategies might be best to reorganise their understanding. This enables teachers to foresee the complexity of particular concepts for children, and anticipate this in their teaching approaches. A key feature of PCK is that it is subject-specific in nature.

Because Shulman’s concept of pedagogical content knowledge was highly significant for teacher education, it stimulated numerous studies that re-examined it. For example, Cochran et al. (1993) challenged the idea of PCK...