Teacher Development: Roles of Domain Expertise and Pedagogical Knowledge

Abstract The problems of teaching have now become a domain of active, systematic research by psychologists, anthropologists, linguists, sociologists, educational practitioners, and disciplinary specialists. What did not exist 30 years ago has become a vigorous and active field of research. Our theories of teaching demand principles of both exposition and discussion. Most of the pedagogies emerging from the seminal research on student concept learning reveal that some form of dialogue, exchange, conversation, or alternating argument—some kind of social manifestation of the understanding—is central. Therein lies the enormous pedagogical complexity that derives from this work. That complexity is the reason why, even though we know discussion is necessary, the dominant form of pedagogy is the lecture. Lecture is relatively simple, and it reduces much of the technical and economical complexities of teaching. This paper centers on pedagogies for externalizing students' knowledge and then encouraging them to reconstruct the information and internalize and represent these new understandings.