Teaching and Teachers’ Knowledge

4 Responses to Teaching and Teachers’ Knowledge

1. Mark Surzyshyn

   June 3, 2018 at 14:11

   One thing I have learned so far, and it was definitely a bit of an epiphany, was the concept of “teach for understanding, rather than acceptance or adoption”. I already knew that a valuable part of teaching, and the classroom learning environment as a whole, was the notion of not only allowing but encouraging students to share their past knowledge. For the teacher, this exercise provides a baseline from which the process of learning may be measured, and for the student, an assurance that they are valued, included, and essential to the classroom community. The idea of first peoples knowledge or other ways of knowing is then clarified through the idea of teach for understanding, where knowledge does not separate from belief or take a quantified higher or lower level of importance. Drifting away from the Western Platonic paradigm of knowledge and belief, we as teachers do not have to grasp the esoteric concepts surrounding the argument fully, so long as we always remember and teach that the idea of knowledge is intricately intertwined with our beliefs, and that our beliefs will look different as we welcome the diversity of other cultures into our classroom environment. The meeting of many cross cultural beliefs and metaphors only serves to enrich the learning environment, and ensure that successive generations will benefit from knew ways of obtaining and understanding knowledge in its non-absolute form.

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   • Ashenafi Alemu Aboye

     June 10, 2018 at 19:31

     This is interesting and it reminds me of the discussions about teachers’ knowledge and what teachers should know to teach. Knowing the Western perspectives of knowledge such as Platonic heritages may help us understand how the question of knowledge is developed. The way I see it, it is more important to justify why we need to consider other ways of knowing and how we will be able to exercise “epistemic justice”. And to know the justifications about the need to include “Other” ways of knowing, we need to reflect on the Western perspectives as well. The short video about decolonizing knowledge might also be related to this one, especially from the point of view of embracing other ways of knowing. I like your idea that ” it was definitely a bit of an epiphany”. I also felt the same while reading the required article for the first time. I was thinking that I certainly have the intuitive grasp of the subject but a close reading of the arguments therein made me grasp the rationale clearly.

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2. Ines Palaz

   June 3, 2018 at 23:31

   In my opinion, there are a lot of things that I need to know in order to teach well.
   Firstly, I agree with Shulman’s argument that emphasis should be put on the importance for teachers to know their content because if they do, if they truly understand it, they will be able to explain it and make it accessible to others. From my personal experience, I have found that being comfortable with my subject helped me gain students’ respect, and more importantly, it allowed me to be creative in my teaching. I believe that having a strong mastery of the content allows for more improvisation and engagement in the classroom by following students’ curiosity.
   Secondly, my faculty advisor told me that a good teacher should aspire to be a “Renaissance person” and gain knowledge in areas that are not his or her subject. The idea is that we should be curious about things that happen outside of our classroom and have some knowledge of other contents as it will allow us to make cross-curricular connections. These connections are important to reach a maximum of students in our classroom, as well as to make students’ learning more relevant and engaging. I thought that this was an interesting perspective on teachers’ knowledge.
   Thirdly, teachers need to know about pedagogy, about how to deliver their content to the students to enhance their learning experience. Shulman’s three forms of knowledge is one way of looking at this, but personally, I thought that the distinctions he made where not very helpful. I think that a teacher need to know about as many instructional strategies as possible in order to make the best choice when delivering his or her lesson to support students’ learning and understanding.
   This brings me to my final point, a teacher also, and maybe most importantly, needs to know his audience. We should have knowledge on children and teenagers’ development to understand our students. We need to know the context in which we are working, the diversity of learners we have in our classroom and their needs to plan and use our content knowledge adequately. Without knowing our audience, and the many possible ways of delivering a lesson, there is no point in having very deep content knowledge. I think that it is by combining all these different areas of knowledge that one goes from being an expert to being a teacher.

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3. Jasmin Gadey

   June 4, 2018 at 22:46

   To be a teacher, it is not enough to only be skilled in a specific field. Having specialized knowledge makes someone knowledgeable, but it does not make them a teacher. A teacher is one who is knowledgeable and additionally has the ability to effectively pass on their knowledge. I agree with some key points from our first reading (an article by Shulman), where it was stated that there are three areas of content knowledge that need to be fulfilled in order to be a successful teacher. Subject matter knowledge, pedagogical knowledge, and curricular knowledge are the key components needed to be a true teacher. This requires that a teacher knows what/why/how something is, knows how to portray the subject to make it understandable, and has the ability to formulate connections to other subject areas/ideas.

   In addition to this, over the course of this class it has been made known to me that there is another important factor in what it means to be a teacher. This is the notion that teaching does not involve the student accepting what they are learning. Teachers are supposed to be providing opportunities for the evolution of students’ knowledge; allowing students to question, criticize, and analyze what is being taught. This in turn allows room for students to judge, compare, and contrast theories, taking away what they decide as worthy knowledge.

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