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Chapter 1
Knowing the Subject
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Letâs start with a paradox: Teachers should know their subject matter thoroughly, but it is impossible for one person to know any subject completely. Teachers are always traveling toward complete knowledge but never arriving. Of course, every person follows the same road, whether he notices or not. Itâs a good road to travel though, always fresh and challenging. Every day we can stretch again to reach a noble goal.
We meet people with vast stores of knowledge: computer technicians, doctors, financial planners, mortgage bankers, housing inspectors, auto mechanics. Some speak in a jargon so dense we struggle to grasp a fraction of what they say.
Why donât they make their knowledge comprehensible and usable? Maybe they donât know how. If my accountant said, âHere are 11 things to know about quarterly tax returns,â my stomach would knot. To do 11 things, I need a checklist and time to comprehend each item. However, if he told me to do two things so that he could do the rest, I could confidently take appropriate action.
Communicating with the uninformed requires sorting key facts from less important details. The accountant above knew that two factors were absolutely critical, so he asked me to take action on these two only. From experience he knows that other factors are of second-tier importance. Factors that are central to basic understanding are called critical attributes. Wise experts concentrate on those things first.
Some experts choose words and examples so memorable that we can recall their words and concepts later. When we meet these jewels, we rave about the experience because itâs unusual. Its rarity hints at how difficult it is to know and impart complex knowledge well.
Many issues are complex. It is difficult, using linear speech, to capture the multifaceted relationships within any given subject. We need to simplify to build understanding, yet we must also âre-complexifyâ the same subjects as our knowledge grows, or we remain partially ignorant. Consider a toddler learning about the kitchen stove. Although his mother warns him away, he touches it anyway, learning that hot stoves are dangerous. He has a simplistic understanding: Stove-hot-danger-stay away. Later in life he needs to know more. As he matures, he will âre-complexifyâ the original knowledge: A stove may be hot and might burn me (bad), but the heat can be used to cook food (good), so follow safety procedures around stoves (balanced).
Knowing exists on many levels, and understanding deepens as people gather more information over a lifetime. Communication skills influence how well people convey what they know. Every subject-matter teacher needs excellent writing and speaking skills, but even teachers may have learning difficulties or communication barriers. A teacher with dyslexia, for instance, may teach well, yet spell poorly on the board. In such cases, he must find coping skills to compensate for his limitation. As a teacher deepens his knowledge and develops his communication skills, he will teach facts differently.
The Unaware Teacher
Everyone is unaware of somethingâcheesecake recipes, quantum physics, properties of tanzanite. When the photocopy process was first developed, businesses were unaware of its useful value; the inventor leased machines to offices to create awareness. With hindsight the value seems clear, yet we surely remain blind to certain things that will someday be obvious.
The unaware teacher knows the subject and organizational methods incompletely
Novices begin with much to learn. Although they have completed the education departmentâs coursework (or earned the HVAC certificate, MD, or BA), they are still wet behind the ears because there are thousands of facts and nuances that can be mastered only through experience. Incomplete knowledge is the normal state of the beginner.
Beginning teachers must study and then attempt to effectively organize the material. Their first efforts are often clumsy. They need to forgive themselves for not being perfectly prepared. We have learnerâs permits for young drivers, internships for doctors-in-training, and probationary periods for most new hires. No newcomer is as knowledgeable as a 20-year veteran in the same field. New doctors, consultants, and foremen all struggle to master details. With steady effort, teachers know more every year and present it better.
Limited knowledge of the subject matter triggers anxiety. Beginners lament, âI never studied this in college.â Neither the beginners nor the college failed. The body of knowledge in every subject is so deep and so wide that no matter what beginners have studied, it never matches what they need for all teaching assignments. Colleges offer a broad education, but in-depth mastery is a lifelong task.
Ms. Shinozaki, a preservice teacher who majored in history in college, offers an example. When she taught U.S. history for the first time, she read each section in the student textbook several times. She looked up additional information on the Internet and assembled lesson plans for hours, and she still made occasional factual errors. She couldnât predict what her students already knew or how to connect their knowledge to the new information; these skills develop through experience and experimentation. Provided she taught the course again and continued her efforts to grow as a teacher, her expertise in those areas would develop over time.
We hope that novices find out what they donât know. Normally, only students will hear a teacherâs lectures, and only a few students will challenge the teacherâs instruction. Either somethingâa student, a colleague, the mediaâchallenges a noviceâs assumptions and gaps in knowledge, or, through continual voluntary study over time, a teacher reaches a broader and deeper understanding. Very knowledgeable teachers are usually those who feed their own curiosity, building knowledge year after year.
Beginners also lack skill in organizing information to increase the likelihood that students learn. Novices have a limited range of approaches. Because many have just experienced four years of college lectures, they gravitate toward lectures. Unfortunately, we recall only about 5 to 10 percent of what we hear; merely telling is a poor way to ensure student learning. Would a short video clip clarify the information? Is it best to go from a big idea to supporting details or start with details to lead to the big idea? Will a group discussion work? Should the teacher provide questions for students, create a diagram to be filled in, or invite personal experiences? Are kinesthetic materials needed?
Novices donât know how to organize their knowledge for learners because they are still sorting out their own understanding. Beginners have a hard time recognizing which facts are critical, which are fairly important, and which can be safely ignored. Although they may learn to prioritize facts for their lessons, dealing with the unexpected is still difficult. Preparing well to teach adjectives and adverbs, for instance, does not prepare them to explain gerunds to an inquisitive student.
The unaware teacher rarely makes connections
New teachers donât yet see clearly how knowledge fits into a bigger picture. College courses cover separate aspects of a major field. Integrating the information takes time and effort. Unaware teachers donât integrate various subject areas, and they rarely connect their own general knowledge to the subject matter or to other courses students are studying.
My second year as a high school teacher was my 14th year of teaching. In between I spent six years teaching adults seeking a high school diploma, six years teaching Job Corps students, and nearly two years leading workshops for teachers. I knew how to teach but was still a novice in teaching U.S. history to 10th graders. I had little idea of what students were learning about in other subjects from other teachers. Not until I had many teacher-to-teacher conversations did I understand what teachers of biology, math, art, and physical education were teaching in my high school and how these areas might connect to what I was teaching. As I learned, I connected history lessons to the other coursework students were taking. I teamed with the English teacher who taught the same students. Students read stories in English class about personal liberties while we studied the U.S. Constitution. They read the work of Native American writers or women writers or 18th century writers that dealt with issues covered in the history text. My partnering teachers and I gradually learned to use themes to improve our teaching.
The unaware teacher fails to link what students know to the subject
Beginners rarely check to see what students already know. Novice teachers often follow a plan developed by someone elseâusually a textbook or a prescribed curriculum. Such outlines imply that the information must be covered in the order in which itâs presented, so novices plunge forward. It may take months to notice that many students already know the material or that some lack the background information needed for full comprehension.
Novices avoid asking what students know because they want to avoid a very real problem: If everyone already knows this material, the teacher will have to teach another lesson entirely. This is an intimidating challenge for new teachers. Who could possibly prepare alternative lessons for every class? With experience, beginners become aware enough to assess student knowledge and brave enough to deal with the related difficulties.
Questions to grow by
- Do you read several sources to make sure you understand material thoroughly before planning lessons?
- Do you discuss with other teachers which issues seem most important in a given lesson or unit?
- Do you ask students to tell you what they already know about the subject under consideration?
- Have you tried asking students what they want to know or what they are curious or confused about?
- Do you help students connect what they are learning to ideas from other subjects or previous years?
- Do you write down what worked and what didnât so youâll teach the material more effectively next time?
The Aware Teacher
At the aware level, teachers are still spending a great deal of energy assembling facts and mastering intricacies of their subject matter because it is relatively new to them. They rarely think about the order that facts are presented in, how those facts relate to other matters, or their studentsâ current understanding. Their knowledge of subject matter, while fairly broad, is still incompletely processed.
The aware teacher knows the subject adequately but organizes poorly for learning
When I took 10th grade biology, I was taught by Mr. Hammond, a recent college graduate. I remember the day he explained genes and chromosomes.
âGenes are located on the chromosomes,â he said, âlike beads on a string. During reproduction, they duplicate themselves before the cell divides. That way each of the new cells is just like the old cell.â
My mind rebelled. How could beads on a string reproduce themselves? I memorized what he said without understanding how the process could possibly work. Perhaps he repeated to us the explanation he received in college. Still, I felt dissatisfied; his explanation didnât make sense to me. My knowledge of actual beads was a barrier.
The aware teacher sometimes checks prior knowledge
What the learner already knows is referred to as prior knowledge. Why would beginning teachers ignore prior knowledge? One reason is a human tendency to make assumptions: If the curriculum expects me to teach this, then the students must not know it. Another reason is that teachers fear coping with the results, such as inventing a whole new approach on the spot.
The knowledge of novice teachers is often tentative. Beginning teachers may be able to comprehend the material well enough to take a multiple-choice test or understand summaries and studies, yet they find explaining it to students much harder and they may stumble. At the aware level, teachers know more information and have some memorable ideas about organizing lessons, but they can do this only with focused effort. There is limited time for improving every lesson. Novicesâ lessons sometimes enhance learning; other times they donât.
We may be in a similar position after attending a seminar, a sales presentation, or a conference. An interested person asks what we learned and what seemed crystal clear as incoming data now sounds muddled and confusing as we hear ourselves trying to explain. Why is this true?
When we first hear or read new information, we have only a surface grasp of it, no matter how attentive we are. To have a deep understanding we must gradually construct a web of comprehension. On first hearing, we follow the line of thought as presented by the speaker or writer. This may be a good introduction, but it is a single strand of thought. We have not yet built a matrix of understanding.
Consider how memory works. If we hear â3rd gradeâ or âfirst job,â a whole set of memories pops up. We remember things in sets and groups, with attached sensations and emotions. Sometimes a long-forgotten aroma will take us time traveling. We construct our own understanding by gradually making mental connections to the cognitive structures we have previously built.
Gary Rackliffe (1998) has used an activity with teachers-in-training to demonstrate how people construct knowledge.
âForm a group of four or five people,â he says. âThen draw a poster to show the idea of a tree.â
Each group creates a complex poster that includes many details: leaves, bark, branches, and seeds; green, brown, yellow, and red; birds, nests, squirrels, and nuts; swings, yards, and fences; sun, rain, clouds, and soil. All the posters are different, yet all do exactly the same thing. Each poster reveals dozens of facts that relate to trees, and each shows a complex understanding of what trees are, what they do, and where they come from. It is a re-creation of the sort of connections people have in their minds.
Rackliffe explains that we create mental filing systems for information. He compares the process to an old post office. The postmaster sorts all the incoming mailâinto each box goes mail for one family. Similarly, in our minds we put new information into existing, related categories. When we first hear about birch bark canoes, the information may be filed with trees (because of bark), or with forms of transportation (because canoes are boats), or both, but every fact attaches to existing knowledge structures. Barring physical deterioration of the brain, people construct new knowledge for as long as they live.
What level of understanding can we expect for teachers who are still constructing knowledge in the subject area that they teach? Most states require incoming teachers to pass a test in their major and minor before receiving a teaching certificate. The tests may contain 200 multiple-choice questions on facts or issues that cover a whole field of study. To pass, candidates must answer three-fourths of the questions correctly. Some states also require essays or language proficiency tests. Future teachers must be familiar with a wide selection of details in order to pass, but how dense their matrix of understanding may be is not measured. We have to hope that they will continue to develop after they begin their jobs, in the same way that new drivers improve over time.
Beginning teachers are still in the process of constructing a complex matrix of understanding; they are often unaware of details regarding todayâs lesson and connections between those topics and other matters. Because they overlook interrelatedness, they are unable to guide students toward connections.
My daughter taught college courses as she worked on her PhD. She worked hard the first semester and received positive evaluations from her students. Nonetheless, when she started the second semester, she had a clearer idea of what students needed to know and how to present it. After the first week of the second semester she told me, âI feel like I should find all the students I had last semester and apologize to them!â This sentiment is familiar to many who have struggled through their first teaching experience and then seen growth in themselves. It can be embarrassing to look back at those first efforts.
Adequate knowledge means that presentations are free from major errors in fact and congruent with...
