The Complex Nature and Sources of Teachers’ Pedagogical Knowledge

Abstract

The concept of pedagogical knowledge has been given short shrift in most discus-sions of Shulman's (1 987) model of teacher knowledge. Shulman himself seems to limit the parameters of pedagogical knowledge in presenting his initial set of Categories of teacher knowledge, describing the category only as: general pedagogical knowledge, with special reference to those broad principles and strategies of classroom management and organization that appear to transcend subject matter (p. 8). This limited view of pedagogical knowledge may have been a side effect of Shulman's concern for reinstating content as a critical facet of teacher knowledge, and a contextual feature too much ignored in classroom research at the time. One of the important effects of Shulman's introduction of the concept of pedagogical content knowledge was to restore some balance in the attention given to content vs. pedagogy in research on teaching. 2 Now that that goal has been accomplished, it is time to acknowledge the true complexity of pedagogical knowledge, and to identify the varieties of sources that contribute to that knowledge. A carefully detailed reading of Shulman's full essay (1 987) reveals his acknowledgement of several aspects of pedagogical knowledge in addition to the initially identified principles of classroom management and organization. More recent research and scholarship provides further material to flesh out this important category of teacher knowledge. The conception of pedagogical knowledge to be explicated in this chapter can be summarized briefly in two graphic displays. Figure 1 shows our interpretation of the place of pedagogical knowledge in relation to the full set of categories of teacher knowledge identified by Shulman (1987). Three points are important to note here. First, we contend that knowledge of educational ends and purposes is inseparable from knowledge about evaluation and assessment procedures. Second, we hold that curriculum knowledge is fed by both content knowledge and knowledge of goals/assessment procedures, while pedagogical knowledge is fed by both knowl-edge of learners/learning and knowledge of goals/assessment procedures. Third, in our display only the category of knowledge of general educational contexts is further delineated to the sub-category of knowledge of specific contexts, but each of the other categories contributing to pedagogical content knowledge can be so delineated, i.e., knowledge of specific content, specific curriculum, specific goals/assessment procedures, specific pedagogy, and specific learners. Figure 2 shows our conception of the various facets of pedagogical knowledge that have been informed by recent research on teaching. Studies in the three major areas contributing to general pedagogical knowledge (classroom organization and management, instructional models and strategies, and classroom communication and discourse) have been attentive to educational goals/evaluation and learners as critical contextual features of pedagogical practice, confirming the relationship depicted in Figure 1. Of particular importance here is the interplay between general pedagogical knowledge, which is derived from the research and scholarly literature, and personal pedagogical knowledge, which is fueled by personal beliefs and personal practical experience. The process of reflection promotes the interplay between general and personal pedagogical knowledge such that perceptions formed