Hi all, I hope you’re all doing well and safe. I have been preoccupied with job hunting at this difficult time and therefore did not get a chance to update my blog for more than 10 days. My bad!!
Well…however crazy the world becomes, I try to stay positive, grateful, and excited about all potential opportunities ahead by keeping a habit of upgrading myself through learning, reading, and networking.
Although recently I encountered a couple of blogs/websites that are overwhelmingly informative, I believe I still have something to offer and I hope my notes here can be helpful to you.
Today, I’d love to share notes about 3 prominent conceptions of teacher learning (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1999, p. 250).
Learning and teacher learning are centrally about forming and re-forming frameworks for understanding practice (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1999, p. 290).
(1) knowledge-for-practice
It refers to formal knowledge and theory (known by outside experts and researchers) for teachers to use in order to improve practice.
(2) knowledge-in-practice
It refers to practical knowledge embedded in practice and in teachers’ reflection on practice with an emphasis on the landscape and milieu in which teachers’ work is conducted (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1999, p. 265).
Practical knowledge includes “that body of convictions and meanings, conscious or unconscious, that have arisen from experience and are expressed in a person’s practices (Clandinin & Connelly, 1995, p. 7, as cited in Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1999, p. 265).
(3) knowledge-of-practice
Knowledge-of-practice starts where teachers are and pushing for the ideal (J. Slayton, personal communication, April 18, 2019).
It assumes that the knowledge teachers need to teach well is generated when teachers treat their own classroom and schools as sites for intentional investigation at the same time that they treat the knowledge and theory produced by others as generative material for interrogation and interpretation. Teachers generate local knowledge by working within inquiry communities to theorize and construct their work and to connect it to larger social, cultural, and political issues.
Teachers’ roles as co-constructors of knowledge and creators of curriculum are informed by their stance as theorizers, activists, and school leaders (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1999, p. 276). This knowledge is co-constructed collectively/collaboratively within local and broader communities (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1999, p. 274) in and out of their classrooms (p. 280).
In the image of practice embed in knowledge-of-practice, teaching for change is an across-the-professional-life-span project (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1992, as cited in Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1999, p. 277).
The point of action research groups or inquiry communities is to provide the social and intellectual contexts in which teacher at all points along the professional life span can take critical perspectives on their own assumptions as well as the theory and research of others and also jointly construct local knowledge that connects their work in schools to larger social and political issues (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1999, p. 283)
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