Week 3: Creating a learning organisation

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2. Building a learning organisation

2.3. Focus on knowledge for teaching

Experienced teachers have a great deal of knowledge: some is formal and academic, and some is informal, developed through experience.

  • If they have been formally trained, they will know about theories of learning, of child development, curriculum design, and they will have the subject knowledge required to teach the syllabuses in their school.
  • Over the years, they will have developed sound instincts – everyday they will make many decisions during their teaching about who to ask a particular question, how to respond to students, how to manage time in a lesson and so on. They will know how to pick up clues that tell them whether students are learning effectively and, if necessary, they will be able to change their lesson plan to help them learn better.
  • They will also ‘know’ a great deal about the context in which they work – the culture in the towns or villages where their student come from, their aspirations, their attitudes, and where they live. They will have certain resources available to them and they will know how to use these most effectively.

The first type of knowledge is relatively easy to learn: they will have had lectures, read books and probably passed an examination. The second and third types of knowledge are more difficult to acquire, yet they are what are needed to be a really effective inclusive teacher.

If you studied the first course, you will have encountered these ideas in Week 4 where they were termed as:

  • knowledge for practice (theoretical knowledge about teaching);
  • knowledge in practice (knowledge about how to organise and teach a lesson, and how to respond to learners);
  • knowledge of practice (knowledge of the context in which you are working).

You also learnt about reflection – a tool that individual teachers can use in order to evaluate and improve their own teaching. In this course, the focus is on working collaboratively to develop skills, through the process of ‘school-based professional development’.

Activity 3.3: Being an effective inclusive teacher

You are advised to spend 40mins on this activity

Think about the attributes of an effective inclusive teacher. In your study notebook:

  • Write down 4 or 5 attributes of an inclusive teacher.
  • For each of the points that you have made, identify the knowledge and skills that they need to have.  
  • Classify the knowledge as skills according to one of the bullet points above.  For example: knowledge of learning theories is ‘knowledge for practice’ because you can learn it from a book or lecture. Knowledge of different ways of organising effective group work is ‘knowledge in practice’ because it will be learnt through experience and practise, and how best to put the students in groups to help them learn could be described as ‘knowledge of practice’ because it depends on knowing the students and the context.

Now, look back on your response to Activity 3.2, and at some of the responses in the Week 3 course forum. If you are a teacher, consider what sort of PD opportunities your need. If your work involves supporting teachers, consider how you might support teachers in developing the different types of knowledge.