Evidence and its integration into teacher knowledge: foucaultian perspectives to link research knowledge and teaching

TY - JOUR

T1 - Evidence and its integration into teacher knowledge

T2 - foucaultian perspectives to link research knowledge and teaching

AU - Wieser, Clemens

PY - 2018/10/20

Y1 - 2018/10/20

N2 - Evidence receives elevated attention in teacher education today, and this attention fuels the urge to identify the impact of evidence for teaching. However, this identification turns out to be difficult: Evidence is only infrequently used by teachers to explain or justify action, and this empirically documented situation is argued to be due to a missing connection between evidence and contingent decision-making in teaching, and a lack of recognition of characteristics of teaching in research that produces evidence. The argument points to a schism between the knowledge researchers construct and the knowledge that teachers use for teaching. To address this schism, educational research requires a robust conception of knowledge, and a recognition of differences between knowledge-that and knowledge-how is argued to contribute to such robustness. The paper introduces a Foucault perspective that recognises this difference, and illustrates the relationship of knowledge-that and knowledge-how based on Foucault’s concept of care of the self. Care of the self is described from an educational perspective to highlight that teachers develop professional knowledge on teaching through reflective knowledge-how, and to describe evidence as a resource in this development when it enables the problematisation of personal knowledge.

AB - Evidence receives elevated attention in teacher education today, and this attention fuels the urge to identify the impact of evidence for teaching. However, this identification turns out to be difficult: Evidence is only infrequently used by teachers to explain or justify action, and this empirically documented situation is argued to be due to a missing connection between evidence and contingent decision-making in teaching, and a lack of recognition of characteristics of teaching in research that produces evidence. The argument points to a schism between the knowledge researchers construct and the knowledge that teachers use for teaching. To address this schism, educational research requires a robust conception of knowledge, and a recognition of differences between knowledge-that and knowledge-how is argued to contribute to such robustness. The paper introduces a Foucault perspective that recognises this difference, and illustrates the relationship of knowledge-that and knowledge-how based on Foucault’s concept of care of the self. Care of the self is described from an educational perspective to highlight that teachers develop professional knowledge on teaching through reflective knowledge-how, and to describe evidence as a resource in this development when it enables the problematisation of personal knowledge.

KW - care of the self

KW - professional development

KW - teacher education

KW - Teacher knowledge

KW - teaching practice

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85053272393&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1080/02607476.2018.1516352

DO - 10.1080/02607476.2018.1516352

M3 - Journal article

AN - SCOPUS:85053272393

SN - 0260-7476

VL - 44

SP - 637

EP - 650

JO - Journal of Education for Teaching

JF - Journal of Education for Teaching

IS - 5

ER -