CHAPTER 9:

SUGGESTIONS FOR
DEVELOPMENT PRACTICE
AIMIE NADIA BINTI MOHD NASIR
823132
• In subject disciplines. Different conception of the nature of the subject or
different paradigms can effect the way one perceives that area of human
activity.
• This is true of teaching. If one conceives of the teaching as a list of skills,
qualities, aptitudes and disposition, then the focus in improving one’s
teaching is achieving that particular skill or acquiring a quality.
• In the model of teaching knowledge bases, there is material for thought and
reflection, to inform one’s experimentation and practice.
• If one just applies the model briefly to this one standard, we can see which
knowledge bases are implicit in its wording, and therefore which one need
development.
• This model suggests an alternative way of thinking about teaching and
reflecting on practice.
 SUBJECT KNOWLEDGE: SUBSTANTIVE
AND SYNTACTIC STRUCTURES
• For each subject taught, it is worth examining the substantive and syntactic
structures of that subject.
• A further problem with not understanding the structures of the disciplines lies
in the resulting tendency to treat the fruits of the subject discipline as if they
are uncontested facts or literal truths, instead of interpretation of facts.
• Schwab argue that the process of change to include the structures of the
discipline in school subjects would be difficult and painful.
• This may be overstating the problem, but the two attendant problems he
suggests certainly need to be considered by teachers.
• He argued that teachers would need to find appropriate ways of including
structure as a facet of curriculum content.
 CONT..
• A full understanding of the shifting and dominant paradigms in each subject,
and the modes of enquiry or creation, are necessary in order to devise
lessons which accurately reflect the parent discipline of the subject taught in
school.
• What does this means to teachers?
As part of subject knowledge, they must come to know structures of the
subjects they teach.
This might mean some sort of mapping exercise of each subject they teach:
a tall order for primary teachers in present school organisation, for in the
class teacher system, they have to teach all the subjects of the National
Curriculum.
 CONT..
• A slight difficulty is that disciplines are of different type:
1. Pure forms of enquiry about universe in which we find ourselves
2. What might termed practical or productive disciplines, in that their purpose
is to make or create object, devices, pictures, works of art, drama,
literature or music or aesthetic experiences to be use and appreciated by
others.
• However, it is still possible to map out the key or first-order concepts of each
discipline, examples of second- and third-order concepts, and ways in which
these concepts might be related to each other.
• As far as syntactic structures are concerned, one would need to map out
which skills and processes are fundamental to a particular subject.
 CONT..
• However, the mere process of engaging in consideration of the essential
substance of a subject, its organising paradigms and key concepts, and in
syntactic structures of how knowledge, understanding or art are produced
within the subject, may force one to look at the subject differently, and to
comprehend it in ways which might have been hidden before.
 BELIEF AND ATTITUDES ABOUT
SUBJECTS
• Before undertaking such a mapping exercise as describe in the previous
section, it is worth writing down what one considers a subject to be.
• One’s beliefs about a subject can influence one’s attitudes towards it.
• Attitudes are complex things for they are shape by perception and
experiences but beliefs do play a part.
• Attitudes again can be altered through quality in-service training: the kind
which gives adequate time developing teachers abilities in writing poetry or
prose music; or courses which develop deep subject knowledge and
understanding
• This knowledge based of beliefs and attitudes about subject knowledge is
closely bound up with knowledge itself.
 CURRICULUM KNOWLEDGE
• Have 3 dimension
1. Curriculum knowledge relate to subject knowledge for teaching
Deep subject knowledge
Without this deep subject knowledge, one cannot judge the
appropriateness and teaching power of particular representation of
concepts, skills and processes.
2. Knowledge of the curriculum differentiated subjects and integrated
subjects
Is important of developing an understanding of the whole curriculum, and
how the different subjects relate to each other.
3. Critical understanding of the curriculum
Is not so easy to acquired
History of education is a somewhat unfashionable and discredited area of
study, seen as belonging to the applied science paradigms of teaching, and
to the ‘raiding the disciplines’ approach to teacher education popular in the
1960s and 1970s.
It is necessary to have some understanding of change and continuity in the
primary curriculum ; to know that the present curriculum is only one of many
possible curricula for primary children; and to be able to treat the present
curriculum documents with this critical awareness, looking beyond the glossy
packaging to the meaning beneath.
 MODEL OF LEARNING AND
TEACHING
Learning Teaching

• Knowledge and understanding of how • Again lessons can be analysed using

children learn comes from two main this model of the pedagogical
sources; private theory, or one’s own repertoire, as well as planned using it.
experience of learning, and of (page152)
observing and teaching children; and • Human like variety: the kind of teaching
public theory, or reading and ideas in which the pedagogical or
from courses. organisational strategy is the same day
• Two approaches are suggested for after day, week after week, can easily
development of the models of learning: generated boredom and disaffection.
• 1. Involves some reflection on one’s
own experiences of learning anything
at all.
• 2. Having analysed one’s own learning
in this way, one could apply some or all
of these theories to episodes of
children’s learning
 GENERAL PEDAGOGICAL
KNOWLEDGE
• This is broad knowledge of classroom management, management of
resources, of pupils, and of helpers and assistants, which is common to all
subjects.
• It is often the minutiae of teaching: decisions have to made, often on the
spot, for example, as to whether to hand out materials for a task right in the
beginning of part way through an explanation, to avoid having the children
fiddling with them.
• It is also the pedagogical tactics and relationship-building from knowledge
of learners, self and context, which can pre-empt such problems in the first
place.
 KNOWLEDGE OF LEARNERS:
EMPIRICAL AND COGNITIVE
Empirical Cognitive

• Might reflect on how one came • Needs to treat with similar

to know what one knows about
six-year-olds, or ten-year-olds.
• Might consider teaching
activities or representation one
has chosen for particular children
and examine why those ones
were chosen.
caution the various fruits of
assessment.
• Assessment information is best
treated as ongoing and
provisional. To be revised as
children learn and develop.
• Might consider how knowledge
of child development has
informed one’s teaching.
 KNOWLEDGE OF EDUCATIONAL
CONTEXTS
• Expert teachers need to have had experience of a number of classroom
contexts, preferably in several schools.
• The reason for this is that because knowledge of contexts is so crucial in
teaching, moving from one contexts to another can be initially deskilling.
• The next level of context, that of school community, is of equally crucial
importance.
• The point has already been made about the necessary of ‘fitting in’ in terms
of relationships with people, working in teams, impression management and
the introduction of change or new ideas.
• Knowledge of all these give a sense of perspective to teachers, and they
can be aware of how political initiatives can impact on their daily classroom
practice.
 KNOWLEDGE OF SELF
• The twin aspects of this knowledge base are the investment of self, of one’s
own personality in teaching and the impact of teaching on the self.
• The first of these aspect, teachers might reflect on what sort of people they
are, which aspects of their personality they utilize most in teaching, and how
their personal interests and passions feed into their teaching.
• The second aspect, one could examine the kinds of emotions that teaching
has engendered in oneself on a variety of occasions.
• Teaching is also character-building: one needs courage, determination,
stamina and staying-power among other qualities.
 KNOWLEDGE OF EDUCATIONAL END
• Three sets of educational ends merit study by teachers and reflection on
their manifestation in the classroom and the broad educational context: the
educational ends of society, the educational ends of schools and the
educational ends of self as teacher.
• Part of its usefulness is in provoking consideration of the purpose of primary
education and the ways in which these have changed over the years.
• The next layer of analysis is at the level of school aims: these again should be
examined and analysis to discover which of the competing traditions might
underpin them, whether explicitly or tacitly, and to match them agains the
third layer of educational ends.
• One need to be aware of own values. A useful starting point might be
considering why one entered teaching.
• Other points for analysis are key or critical incidents which illuminate one’s
values, the ethos which tries to create in the classroom, the values, skills and
abilities one tries to promote in children, and the intrinsic rewards of the job.
 PEDAGOGICAL CONTENT
KNOWLEDGE
• Material for reflection and development are the twin aspect of the
amalgamation of all these knowledge bases which is pedagogical content
knowledge and representations for teaching.
• Having considered a lesson for the knowledge bases which underpin it, one
can begin to identify gaps in one’s knowledge. This gaps can be remedied.
• A teacher may have excellent knowledge of learners, a variety of models of
teaching and learning on which to draw, and good pedagogical content
knowledge, but lack the knowledge of substantive and syntactic structures
of math or science which would make for expert teaching.
• With a full amalgam of pedagogical content knowledge, one can judge the
appropriateness, worth and teaching potential of a whole range of
representations, analogies, illustrations and activities.
 CONCLUSION
• Through thinking of teaching in this way, one can become aware of the
knowledge bases which underpin acts of expert teaching.
• The many and varied skills, processes and qualities listed as effective
teaching characteristics in published sets of teaching competences
become part of the different knowledge bases.
• Teaching is thus a highly complex, knowledge-based profession in which the
rich bodies of knowledge interact and blend to produce teaching of quality.