Introduction
This book, as has already been pointed out, is based on the fundamental principle that education studies can provide one with key themes that can facilitate reflection on education more broadly than just at the classroom level. It has also been pointed out that this is the third of three principles which, it is held, should guide the development of programmes on how classroom practitioners at the pre-service and on-going teacher-development levels should be prepared for, and guided in, their work. The principles are as follows: teachers should have a very good command of the subject matter of their teaching areas; they should know how to teach; and they should engage in reflection not just in relation to their work at the classroom level, but also in relation to education more broadly. The view is that these principles need to underpin programmes of pre-service and on-going teacher preparation in order for teaching to be considered a profession and for teachers to be considered professionals. It is also held that students of education studies, student teachers, practising teachers, and others, including parents, politicians, education leaders and policy makers, could benefit from understanding this view, from embracing it, from supporting teacher educators in their efforts to produce teachers educated in accordance with it and from supporting teachers who are the product of it.
The book is primarily concerned with the third principle outlined above, namely, that teachers of education studies, student teachers and practising teachers should engage in reflection not just in relation to work at the classroom level, but also in relation to education more broadly. On this, it provides a set of concepts to assist one in the task. Before outlining these themes in subsequent chapters, it is necessary at this point to elaborate on each of the three principles so that the relation of the third one to the first two can be fully appreciated.
Teachers should have a very good command of the subject matter of their teaching area
Back in 1968, Stanley (1968) could state with confidence that there can be no argument with the proposition that teachers should have a good general education and that they should be thoroughly grounded in the subject or subjects they are expected to teach. At the time, there was little contestation of this position. Indeed, there were growing calls for an increase in academic studies for future teachers (Bloom, 1987; Hirsch, 1987). The countries that were loudest in their advocacy in this regard were those that were most concerned about, and critical of, the education standards in their schools, and of the perceived lack of basic knowledge and skills on the part of their teachers. In the USA, for example, the National Commission on Excellence in Education (1983, p. 5) had this to say about standards in the nationâs schools:
If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war. As it stands, we have allowed this to happen to ourselves.
The Holmes Group (1986, p. 4) took the same line when it stated that âAmerica cannot afford any more teachers who fail a twelfth grade competency testâ, as did the Carnegie Task Force (Carnegie Corporation, 1986), which was concerned that some people who were unable to spell, write, speak grammatically correctly or solve arithmetical word problems were graduating from college and becoming teachers.
The concerns expressed in the USA in the 1980s and early 1990s continue to be voiced in other parts of the world today. This is not surprising since, in many, though certainly not all, countries the academic calibre of recruits to teaching has presented challenges (Cochran-Smith and Zeichner, 2009). The problem is that many are drawn from the lower half or even the lower quarter of the range of achievement of all students in higher education. This is unfortunate because both common sense and empirical evidence reveal that teachersâ knowledge of their subject matter has a major influence on student achievement (Cochran-Smith, 2005). Thus, what is alarming at present is not that authorities in many countries continue to advocate for high academic standards for those entering teacher preparation courses, but that there are some who argue that we can settle for the status quo as long as applicants display a love of children, a desire to teach and an aptitude for teaching. This, rather disturbingly, is like saying that those with lower levels of academic achievement on graduation from high school could become good doctors if they could indicate that they would be likely to have a good bedside manner, or could become good lawyers if they could indicate they would be likely to have a commitment to social justice.
Anyone in a position of power and authority arguing against the need for high academic achievement for those entering programmes of teacher preparation is indicating either an ignorance of, or an ulterior motive regarding, the results of decades of research conducted by those embracing the âeffective schoolsâ movementâ (Calman, 2010). As early as 1991, Lockheed and Verspoor (1991) were able to conclude convincingly from the large body of studies produced as part of this movement that teachers and parents agree that academic achievement, basic skills acquisition and appropriately structured learning activities are important in the development of effective schools. Because such schools establish clearly defined goals for academic achievement and set high expectations for work (Ainscow, 2006), it follows that teachers themselves need to be of a high academic calibre. It is also arguable that both primary and secondary school teacher preparation should take place in institutions which are an integral part of the university system so that not only can student teachers be brought to an undergraduate degree level of achievement in their teaching areas, they can also be exposed to, rub shoulders with and benefit from engaging with undergraduate peers intent on other career paths.
There is also a significant body of literature arising out of research focused on the âsubject-matter knowledgeâ (SMK) of the subject disciplines or learning areas one teaches ( Darling-Hammond and Bransford, 2005; OECD, 2008). While it has long been recognized that SMK is an essential aspect of teaching, it was not the focus of sustained research until the mid-1980s. Since then, there has been a growing number of studies on the SMK of teachers in such subject disciplines as mathematics, English literature, history, biology and social science. Overall, the conclusion has been that one needs a depth of SMK to help shape and orientate teachersâ planning, selection of teaching materials, classroom teaching and the assessment of student learning (Kind, 2009).
Within the associated academic literature, the notion of SMK has not been limited to discussion on the length of time spent on learning oneâs teaching subject area or the grades obtained in it, although both can serve as observable indicators of a teacherâs SMK. Grossman et al. (1989) paved the way in systematizing thinking on this when they produced a model of SMK with four dimensions:
- Content knowledge: this is what is generally understood as subject matter by the layperson. It can roughly be interpreted as the contents of textbooks and it comprises factual information, organizing principles and central concepts. Also, content knowledge is shaped by both substantive and syntactic knowledge.
- Substantive knowledge: this is the knowledge of âparadigms or frameworks within a discipline that guide the focus of inquiry, dictating in many ways the questions researchers ask and the directions they pursueâ (Grossman et al., 1989, p. 29).
- Syntactic knowledge: this consists of the âcanons of evidence that are used by members of the disciplinary community to guide inquiry in the field. They are the means by which new knowledge is introduced and accepted into the communityâ (Grossman et al., 1989, p. 29).
- Beliefs: while not part of the structure of a discipline, beliefs are seen to be so closely intertwined with the three dimensions of SMK that Grossman et al. (1989) consider it to be a fourth dimension. Beliefs are seen to be different from knowledge in that they are more difficult to investigate and they are subjective, drawing more on the affective aspect of human nature.
Back in the 1990s, Borko and Putnam (1996) carried out a thorough review of studies on knowledge and beliefs about subject-matter as part of their analysis of research on the learning of teachers and found a strong positive correlation between teachersâ depth and breadth of SMK and the way they carried out their teaching in class.
Ball and McDiarmid (1995) also found that studentsâ learning opportunities were affected by their teachersâ understanding of SMK; there was a qualitative difference in teaching performance between teachers with greater SMK and those who had superficial understanding of their subject. Teachers with greater SMK organized and planned their teaching differently from those with less knowledge. They also tended to stress the conceptual, problem solving and inquiry aspects of their subject. On the other hand, teachers with superficial knowledge of their subjects were found to adhere closely to textbooks, emphasizing facts, rules and procedures. These teachers missed opportunities to focus on key ideas, or draw links between them. The importance of such findings was reiterated by Ball et al. (2008) in more recent years.
The evidence from the comparative education literature on the need for teachers to have a solid grasp of the subject matter they teach is also compelling. Finland is a good example of a country that produces extremely high-achieving students academically. Simola (2005) has pointed out that this outcome is related to the relatively high image of schooling in the country. This image can be seen in the popularity of the teaching profession among Finnish students year after year (Kansanen, 2003). Simola (2005) has also pointed out that, in 2004, it was found amongst those in the final grades in upper secondary school in Finland that teaching was clearly the number one career choice and had overtaken such traditional favourites as physician, lawyer, psychologist, engineer and journalist. This ensured that those embarking on a university course to become teachers were already at a high level of academic achievement. More recently, Sahlberg (2011) has recorded that, due to the popularity of teaching and becoming a teacher, only Finlandâs best students in terms of possessing high scores in their matriculation examinations are able to gain a place in teacher preparation programmes.
Teachers should know how to teach
The second main principle underlying the thinking upon which this book is based is that teachers should know how to teach. In other words, not only do teachers need to be competent in the subject matter that they teach, they also need a range of pedagogical skills to implement the curriculum (Roehrig, 2015). At the broadest level, these skills include classroom management and organization, appreciation of each studentâs characteristics and preconceptions, and formal and informal evaluation of students, along with personal reflection and critical self-analysis. On the more specific matter of knowledge transmission, there is a clear connection between knowledge of oneâs subject and how one needs to think about it from a pedagogical point of view. Lockheed and Verspoor (1991, p. 98) summarized Shulmanâs (1986, 1987) position on this as follows:
Teachers must understand the subject matter for themselves and be able to elucidate that knowledge in new ways, recognize and partition it, and clothe it in activities, emotions, metaphors, exercises, examples, and demonstrations so that it can be grasped by the students.
Coupled with this is the argument that it is important not to try to impose pre-ordained teaching approaches uncritically without considering the cultural context of the school, the pupils and the wider socio-economic environment (Clarke and OâDonoghue, 2013, 2015).
The latter point takes on major significance when one considers the extent to which, over the past two decades, with greater centralization in many countries of various aspects of education than has hitherto been the case, not only are there calls for the invention and discovery of sure-fired prescriptive approaches to teaching and learning (Darling-Hammond, 2006), great credence has also been given to the exponents of these calls by education policy makers, administrators and leaders at the school level (Luke et al., 2013). Associated with this is the expectation that teachers should be âtrainedâ appropriately in order to ensure the successful implementation of the prescribed approaches.
To adopt the latter position is to ignore the wisdom of the past, including that of William James, one of the most famous psychologists of the modern era. Back in the 1890s, when considering the function of the study of psychology for educationists, he stated that one makes a great mistake to think tha...
