{"id":1160,"date":"2015-05-21T05:03:47","date_gmt":"2015-05-21T13:03:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/iiqbal\/?p=1160"},"modified":"2017-01-25T15:01:24","modified_gmt":"2017-01-25T23:01:24","slug":"educational-development-common-sense-or-content-expertise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/iiqbal\/2015\/05\/21\/educational-development-common-sense-or-content-expertise\/","title":{"rendered":"Educational development: common sense or content expertise?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As teachers and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.stlhe.ca\/constituencies\/educational-developers-caucus\/about-the-edc\/\">educational developers<\/a>, we have all undoubtedly come across people who believe our work is \u201ccommon sense\u201d. Though I am convinced we apply common sense to our work, I am equally convinced that our content expertise (in this case, our subject knowledge of teaching and learning in higher education) factors in strongly.\u00a0 As <a href=\"http:\/\/www.leeshulman.net\/biography\/\">Shulman<\/a> (1986) asserts: The way you understand your subject influences the way you teach. In my work at the <a href=\"http:\/\/ctlt.ubc.ca\/\">teaching and learning centre<\/a>, the educational developer is the teacher, and the students are the learners who participate in our workshops and with whom we consult.<\/p>\n<p>Because of the <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/edst403\">course I am teaching<\/a> (Education, Knowledge, and Curriculum, in the Bachelor of Education Program), I have been reading again about pedagogical content knowledge (PCK), or \u201c<strong>the ways of representing and formulating the subject that makes it comprehensible for others<\/strong>\u201d. It has gotten me thinking about how PCK might apply to my educational development work.\u00a0 Like the teacher candidates in my course, I wonder if I\u2019m under-rating my knowledge of \u201cthe subject\u201d\u2014in this case educational development.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/iiqbal\/files\/2015\/05\/knowledge-eyechart.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-1161\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/iiqbal\/files\/2015\/05\/knowledge-eyechart.jpg\" alt=\"knowledge eyechart\" width=\"226\" height=\"240\" \/><\/a><br \/>\nHere are some of statements and questions, pulled from the references below and modified, that I find particularly useful as I think about our educational development knowledge and work:\u00a0 (I have replaced the word \u201cteachers\u201d with \u201ceducational developers\u201d):<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>How does somebody who really knows something teach it to somebody who doesn\u2019t?<\/li>\n<li>Educational developers are often unaware of the knowledge they possess&#8211;it being often contextualised and associated with particular learners, events, and teaching situations.<\/li>\n<li>What are the most powerful examples, explanations, analogies that I use to promote the learners\u2019 understanding of x, y or z?<\/li>\n<li>Teaching in educational development is not generic (was \u201cteaching is not generic\u201d)<\/li>\n<li>How do I prepare to teach (in an ED context) something I have never previously learned?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>On Monday in class, I urged the teacher candidates to honour their content knowledge.\u00a0 I think I need to take my own advice.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Photo credit: <\/strong>Nancy White, &#8220;Knowledge eye chart&#8221;. https:\/\/flic.kr\/p\/5Sy5Cq, Creative Commons CC BY-NC-SA 2.0<\/p>\n<p><strong>References:<\/strong><br \/>\nShulman, L. (1986). Those who understand: Knowledge growth in teaching. Educational Researcher, 15(2), 4-14.<br \/>\nShulman, L. &amp; Sparks, D. (1992). Merging content knowledge and pedagogy: An interview with Lee Shulman.\u00a0 Journal of Staff Development, 13(1). 14-16.<br \/>\nBerry, A., Loughran, J. &amp; van Driel, J.H. (2008). Revisiting the roots of pedagogical content knowledge. International Journal of Science Education, 30(10). 1271-1279.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As teachers and educational developers, we have all undoubtedly come across people who believe our work is \u201ccommon sense\u201d. Though I am convinced we apply common sense to our work, I am equally convinced that our content expertise (in this case, our subject knowledge of teaching and learning in higher education) factors in strongly.\u00a0 As [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":792,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60,1484100],"tags":[1484100,573],"class_list":["post-1160","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","category-educational-development","tag-educational-development","tag-teaching"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/iiqbal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1160","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/iiqbal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/iiqbal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/iiqbal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/792"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/iiqbal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1160"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/iiqbal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1160\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1171,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/iiqbal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1160\/revisions\/1171"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/iiqbal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/iiqbal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/iiqbal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}