Science Teaching as Knowledgability: A Case Study of Knowing and Learning during Coteaching.

It is a common lore among teachers that teaching (as it happens in their classrooms) and talk about teaching (as it happens in universities) are incommensurable. This study was designed to learn about teaching as practice by investigating what two teachers learned from each other as they engaged, over a period of 3 months in coteaching an engineering curriculum to a grade 4–5 class. The data sources for this interpretive study included ethnographic and videotaped records of lessons, planning and debriefing meetings, and staff development efforts. This study provides direct and indirect evidence for teachers' knowledgability; that is, their knowing and learning in and about practice, including tacit and explicit aspects of teaching practice. Coteaching afforded experiences that have been shown to arise from coparticipation in other domains: learning as changing participation in a changing practice. There is evidence that science content and content pedagogical knowledge fully unfolded only when embedded in and supported by appropriate practical pedagogical knowledge (which often resisted teachers' own efforts in formalizing it). ©1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Sci Ed82:357–377, 1998.