Teacher knowledge is very much in the foreground of English early career teacher development, as articulated in the Department for Education’s (DfE) Core Content Framework and Early Career Framework, which position teacher learning largely as a matter of atomised skills to observe, practise and reproduce.
They imply a view of professionalism based on competence and compliance, underpinned by a ‘what works’ view of evidence. However, professionalism has also long been associated with the exercise of professional judgment (Sachs, 2015). With this in mind, I have revisited Shulman’s (1986) views on teacher knowledge, and this blog builds on his rationale for case learning by arguing for the power of comparing and contrasting cases.
Shulman (1986) suggests that there are three forms of teacher knowledge: ‘propositional’, ‘case’ and ‘strategic’ knowledge. The prevailing DfE view seems strongly to emphasise propositional knowledge, partly in the form of ‘principles’ (theoretical claims drawn from limited types of empirical research) but also as ‘maxims’ (knowledge of practical, highly structured routines, as also codified in many popular books and resources). Shulman’s strategic knowledge – professional judgment applied to particular situations – also draws, however, on ‘case knowledge’.
Case knowledge, in the form of ‘specific, well-documented and richly described events’ (Shulman, 1986, p. 11) itself takes different forms: ‘prototypes’, ‘precedents’ and ‘parables’. While the use of cases continues to be advocated within teacher education internationally (see for example Helleve et al., 2021), it is not prominent in the UK.
