As I am very new to the role of an educator, and an atypical educator at that (as I am a clinical instructor for undergraduate athletic training students and teach them while providing care for my athletes), these readings gave me a great deal of insight into the research, history, and opinions regarding the knowledge of educators as well as plenty to digest and reflect on. Additionally, most of my role as an instructor at this point in my career involves mostly hands-on and informal teaching in the clinical setting, which changes my perspective somewhat regarding the necessary knowledge of a teacher, or at least the knowledge required a an educator in my position.
From the readings I have identified and defined the following types of knowledge.
Shulman (1986) felt that teaching required more than only yesterday’s emphasis on the specific content to be taught or only today’s standards of having the conceptual ability to teach. Because of that, he began to design a new framework for teaching that included three types of knowledge: subject matter content knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge, and curricular knowledge. He defined subject matter content knowledge as knowledge of the subject matter a teacher is expected to know and understand. Educators should know the facts of the content, be able to explain them, and be able to explain why they are valuable. Shulman also believed teachers should possess pedagogical content knowledge in which the educator has knowledge of the subject matter for the purposes of teaching. Teachers should know the common concepts and the best ways to demonstrate, represent, and explain those ideas to help their students understand. The third type of knowledge he defined was curricular knowledge; this required educators to be knowledgeable of the programs and relevant instructional materials available for teaching a specific content to a specific group and how to use them to effectively educate their students.
Peterson (1988) believes that not only are the students’ and teachers’ behaviors important to learning, but also the cognition and self-awareness of their knowledge, which is important for effective teaching by the teacher and learning by the student. With respect to his discussion of teachers, he finds that they should have knowledge of general cognitive processes as well as content-specific processes and both cognitional and metacognitional knowledge. In this case, teachers should have knowledge of the mental processes of students that allow them to learn as well as the ability to reflect on that cognitional knowledge to allow self-assessment. Teachers also should be knowledgeable of means of facilitating the students’ general and content-specific strategies of learning.
Mishra and Koehler (2006) offer yet another perspective on knowledge educators should possess. In this article these authors introduce the technological pedagogical content knowledge framework. According to this plan, content, pedagogical, pedagogical content, technological, technological content, technological pedagogical and technological pedagogical content knowledge are necessary for educators to know. Similar to other authors, Mishra and Koehler define content knowledge as knowledge of the specific subject matter and pedagogical knowledge as knowledge of the methods of teaching. They also introduce technological knowledge, which encompasses knowledge of standard and advanced technologies used to teach. Each of these individual types of knowledge are then overlapped and combined to create knowledge types that are influenced by one another so that teachers are expected to know how to best teach a concept, choose the best technologies to teach a concept, know of various technologies that can be used as a method of teaching, and ultimately, know how to represent concepts using technologies to create the most effective lesson.
These readings do compare to the knowledge I expect an educator to possess. I believe that of the three readings, my goal is that my techniques align most closely with those of Mishra and Koehler (2006) and the idea that content, pedagogic, and technological knowledge can occur independently as well as in various combinations. I believe that content knowledge is extremely important as insufficient content knowledge may prevent a teacher from effectively educating students, which ultimately may prevent students from fully understanding a concept. Additionally, pedagogical knowledge is necessary so that the most appropriate and effective teaching methods are employed, and technological knowledge may be used to augment the most appropriate means of representing or teaching a concept.
In addition to being competent in the subject content, the teacher also may need to be competent in the practical or field application of the content. This type of knowledge may be more applicable to some subject than others, but is especially true for educators in athletic training. Only by working with the subject matter clinically can one develop a more complete grasp of the content and obtain better and more complete perspective from which to educate the students.
Knowledge of policies and expectations also is necessary for the teacher to provide a comprehensive lesson to his/her students. Knowing exactly what must be taught, as well as any regulations on how and when it is to be taught, may help a teacher plan his/her lessons more appropriately.
And finally, I believe it is imperative that an educator has knowledge of his/her students’ motivations and goals as well as from where they have come. Understanding students’ pasts may provide the educator with insight into the students’ lives and provide a foundation on which to build additional knowledge. Knowing the students’ current motivations and future goals also may help the educator find the best means of relating the concepts he/she is teaching to the students so that they may make a personal attachment to the material that enables them to retain as much of the information as possible.
References:
Mishra, P. & Koehler, M. J. (2006). Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge: A framework for teacher knowledge. Teachers College Record, 108(6), 1017-1054.
Peterson, P. L. (1988). Teachers’ and students’ cognitional knowledge for classroom teaching and learning. Educational Researcher, 17(5), 5-14.
Shulman, L. S. (1986). Those who understand: Knowledge growth in teaching. Educational Researcher, 15(2), 4-14.
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Amy,
Thank you for highlighting the specific needs of the athletic training field. Your assertion that practical application in the field is important echoes Shulman’s discussion of case knowledge. In the assigned reading, he referred specifically to the case method in law school education but Shulman also spent a lot of time working in medical education. Perhaps the field of athletic training might resemble rotations in medical work.
You might be interested in some of the discussions of “signature pedagogy” that Shulman has spawned. I encourage you to take a look at a few of those to see if they interest you.
Athletic training clinical experience definitely mirrors medical education! Much of our clinical education was based on research about how medical students learn practical skills and decision making. We also initially learned a great deal from the research produced by the nursing profession on clinical education until we finally grew enough as a profession to begin producing our own literature on the topic. Now we’ve even done enough of our own research to begin the Athletic Training Education Journal. Since that journal and a textbook have become available, I have unfortunately limited myself to my field’s content. However, I am excited to see what Shulman has to say and give a sort-of preface to what I’m learning from the research specifically for my field today. Thanks for the suggestion!