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| Lee Shulman. (CC BY-NC) Penn State |
Wondering why the public often has a low opinion of teachers' knowledge and skill, Shulman first looks at the history of teacher examinations. In the latter half of the 1800s, examinations for people wishing to teach were almost entirely content-based. In 1875, for example, the California State Board examination for elementary teachers gave a day-long, 1000-point exam that covered everything from mental arithmetic to geography to vocal music. Its section on the theory and practice of teaching, however, was only worth 50 of the 1000 points and included questions like, "How do you interest lazy and careless pupils?" (p. 5)
By the 1980s, when Shulman wrote this article, teacher examinations painted almost the opposite picture. Instead of focusing on content, they focused on topics such as lesson planning, cultural awareness, and other aspects of teacher behavior. While the topics usually had roots in research, they clearly did not represent the wide spectrum of skills and knowledge a teacher would need to be a successful teacher. More specifically, by the 1980s our teacher examinations seemed to care as little about content as the examinations a century prior seemed to care about pedagogy.
Looking back even further in history, Shulman recognized that we haven't always made this distinction between content and teaching knowledge. The origins of the names of our highest degrees, "master" and "doctor," both essentially mean "teacher" and reflected the belief the highest form of knowing was teaching, an idea going back to at least Aristotle:
We regard master-craftsmen as superior not merely because they have a grasp of theory and know the reasons for acting as they do. Broadly speaking, what distinguishes the man who knows from the ignorant man is an ability to teach, and this is why we hold that art and not experience has the character of genuine knowledge (episteme) -- namely, that artists can teach and others (i.e., those who have not acquired an art by study but have merely picked up some skill empirically) cannot. (Wheelwright, 1951, as cited in Shulman, 1986, p. 7)
Shulman saw a blind spot in this dichotomy between content and teaching knowledge. What he saw was a special kind of knowledge that allows teachers to teach effectively. After studying secondary teachers across subject areas, Shulman and his fellow researchers looked to better understand the source of teachers' comprehension of their subject areas, how that knowledge grows, and how teachers understand and react to curriculum, reshaping it into something their students will understand.
Pedagogical Content Knowledge
To better understand this special knowledge of teaching, Shulman suggested we distinguish three different kinds of content knowledge: (a) subject matter knowledge, (b) pedagogical content knowledge, and (c) curricular knowledge. It was the second of these, pedagogical content knowledge (PCK), that Shulman is best remembered for. Shulman describes the essence of PCK:Within the category of pedagogical content knowledge I include, for the most reguarly taught topics in one's subject area, the most useful forms of representation of those ideas, the most powerful analogies, illustrations, examples, explanations, and demonstrations -- in a word, the ways of representing and formulating the subject that make it comprehensible to others. Since there are no single most powerful forms of representation, the teacher must have at hand a veritable armamentarium of alternative forms of representation, some of which derive from research whereas others originate in the wisdom of practice. (p. 9)
In addition to these three kinds of teacher knowledge, Shulman also proposed we consider three forms of teacher knowledge: (a) propositional knowledge, (b) case knowledge, and (c) strategic knowledge. These are not separate from the three kinds of knowledge named above, but rather describe different forms of each kind of teacher knowledge. Propositional knowledge consists of those things we propose teachers do, from "planning five-step lesson plans, never smiling until Christmas, and organizing three reading groups" (p. 10). Shulman organized propositional knowledge into principles, maxims, and norms, with the first usually emerging from research, the second coming from a practical experience (and generally untestable, like the suggestion to not smile before Christmas), and the third concerning things like equity and fairness. Propositions can be helpful but difficult to remember to implement as research intended.
Learning propositions out of context is difficult, so Shulman proposed case knowledge as the second form of teacher knowledge. By case, he means learning about teaching in a similar way a lawyer learns about the law by studying prior legal cases. In order to truly understand a case, a learner starts with the factual information and works towards the theoretical aspects that explain why things happened. By studying well-documented cases of teaching and learning, teachers consider prototype cases (that exemplify the theoretical), precedents (that communicate maxims), and parables (that communicate norms and values). (If you're scoring at home, Shulman has now said there are three types of cases, which itself is one of three forms of knowledge, each of which capable of describing three different kinds of content knowledge.)
The last form of knowledge, strategic knowledge, describes how a teacher reacts when faced with contradictions of other knowledge or wisdom. Knowing when to bend the rules or go against conventional wisdom takes more than luck -- it requires a teacher to be "not only a master of procedure but also of content and rationale, and capable of explaining why something is done" (p. 13).
The value of this article by Shulman goes beyond the theoretical description of pedagogical content knowledge. Additionally, this article serves as a strong reminder that when we judge a teacher, we must consider a broad spectrum of skills and abilities, and not limit ourselves to only those things we think can be easily measured. As Shulman explains:
Reinforcement and conditioning guarantee behavior, and training produces predictable outcomes; knowledge guarantees only freedom, only the flexibility to judge, to weigh alternatives, to reason about both ends and means, and then to act while reflecting upon one's actions. Knowledge guarantees only grounded unpredictability, the exercise of reasoned judgment rather than the display of correct behavior. If this vision constitutes a serious challenge to those who would evaluate teaching using fixed behavioral criteria (e.g., the five-step lesson plan), so much the worse for those evaluators. The vision I hold of teaching and teacher education is a vision of professionals who are capable not only of acting, but of enacting -- of acting in a manner that is self-conscious with repect to what their act is a case of, or to what their act entails. (p. 13)
In our current era of teacher evaluation and accountability, with all its observational protocols and test score-driven value added models, this larger view of teaching presented to us by Shulman is a gift. His recommendation that teacher evaluation and examination "be defined and controlled by members of the profession, not by legislators or laypersons" (p. 13) is a wise one, no matter how politically difficult. Shulman hoped for tests of pedagogical content knowledge that truly measured those speical skills that teachers have, skills that non-teaching content experts would not pass. I don't think those measurement challenges have been overcome, but continuing towards that goal should strengthen teacher education programs while also improving the perception of teaching as a profession. As Shulman concludes (p. 14):
We reject Mr. Shaw and his calumny. With Aristotle we declare that the ultimate test of understanding rests on the ability to transform one's knowledge into teaching.
Those who can, do. Those who understand, teach.
References
Shulman, L. S. (1986). Those who understand: Knowledge growth in teaching. Educational Researcher, 15(2), 4–14. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/3202180