Link specific knowledge

Research indicates that novice teachers need to experience multiple examples of practice and to work on connecting ideas and concepts derived from these examples in many ways (Bereiter, 1997). In order to acquire a dynamically organized network of teaching knowledge, teachers need to engage in teaching-similar activities in which they have multiple opportunities to link knowledge in different ways. In such activities teachers should abstract more general concepts from concrete teaching-related examples, cases or experiences. (Cobb & Bowers, 1999; Guskey, 1986; 2002; Kumaravadivelu, 1999;

Tigchelaar & Korthagen, 2004; Triggs & John, 2004; Wubbels, Korthagen &

Brekelmans, 1997). In other words, begin with “what to do on Monday” but then teachers also need to work on what happens on Tuesday, what happened on Friday to justify the Monday plan, how the Monday plan needs to be changed for different groups of students, how the Monday plan for beginning students could be adapted for more advance students, etc. “For learners to develop cognitively flexible prossessing skills and to acquire contentive knowledge structures which can support flexible cognitive processing, flexible learning environments are required which permit the same items of knowledge to be presented and learned in a variety of different ways and for a variety of different purposes” (Spiro, Feltovich, Jacobson, & Coulson, 1991: 24).

This can be seen in Tsui’s (2003) documentation of the learning of four EFL teachers in Hong Kong. While one teacher (Ching) did not seem to progress much with her teaching, the others all showed signs of this process. The other teachers, however, actively sought to generate generalizations from their experiences, a process Tsui calls “theorizing practice”.

In contrast to Ching, Eva often engaged in theorizing her role as a teacher and her classroom practices…while Ching followed the textbook and the scheme of work drawn up by the form coordinator closely, Eva asked questions relating to what the objectives meant and whether they were put down in the scheme of work for their own sake…Eva formulated her own theory of ‘continuity’ in the curriculum…As Eva implemented process writing, she formulated her own theory of process writing (Tsui, 2003: 262-263).

In a number of studies it has been shown that linking information and schemata in multiple ways helps learners to use knowledge in new situations in fields such as history (Jang, 2000; Spiro, Vispoel, Schmitz, Samarapungavan, & Boerger, 1987), biology (Jacobson & Archodidou, 2000), psychology (Fitzgerald, Wilson, & Semrau, 1997), and literature (Eilam & Poyas, 2006). Jonassen, Ambruso and Olesen (1992) claim that computer-based hypermedia programs should be ideal for generating flexible knowledge and two subsequent studies have investigated this hypothesis. Jacobson and Spiro (1995) had college students work on short history texts which were either linked in typical linear fashion or which contained multiple links to each other. Demetriadis and Pombortsis (1999) worked with computer science students learning about computer networking.

Both studies showed when students received linear presentation of material, they were able to remember and recount much more information than in the other condition.

However, when information was presented with multiple linkages, students were much more likely to actually use that information in working on other problems. Thus, while

linear presentation may seem like a better instructional method because students appear to have learned more (due to higher recall), this view is short sighted. If we want to prepare teachers to actually use knowledge gained in SLTE programs in their practice, then we need to provide opportunities for teachers to develop multiple and flexible linkages within the knowledge gained in SLTE courses and programs.

Furthermore, many studies have shown that learning by comparing examples of a practice is important for gaining competence in that area (Catrambone & Holyoak, 1989;

Gentner, Loewenstein, & Thompson, 2003; Mason, 2004; Thompson, Gentner, &

Loewenstein, 2000). For example, in a study of college students solving physics problems, VanLehn (1998) found that those students who actively attempted to extract the salient features of the example learned more than those who simply tried to solve those types of problems. These students enriched their knowledge by going beyond the specific information in the example to surmise other information implied by the example problems and solutions. In a similar study, Chi and Bassok (1989) found “the explanations generated by the good students tended to be qualitatively better than those granted by the poor students. That is, the good students’ explanations tended to infer additional tacit knowledge, whereas the poor students’ explanations were often paraphrasings of the diagram, with no new information generated” (Chi & Bassok, 1989:

269-270).

Research shows that people are good at abstracting more general ideas about a situation or course of action from examples in practice. For example, Chi and her colleagues studied two groups of high school students solving problems related to human blood circulation. One group were asked to use the examples provided to solve the problems whereas the other group was specifically asked to compare the examples, saying what they had in common or not, before using them to solve the problems. This second group performed much better on the circulation problems, indicating that students can abstract from examples and that such abstractions help problem-solving (Chi, de Leeuw, Chiu, &

LaVancher, 1994). Ross and Kennedy (1990) used a similar series of experiments with college students learning about probability. The results indicated that learners who compared examples had abstracted generalizations from them and used these in problem-solving. In a more in-depth study, Chi and VanLehn (1991) had college students think aloud while solving physics problems. The data showed that students used generalizations from previous problems when working subsequent physics tasks. This also seems to be the case for professionals; for example, research has shown that experienced doctors abstract disease schemata from individual cases rather than using general bio-chemical frameworks (Hatala, Norman & Brooks, 1999; Kulatunga-Moruzi, Brooks & Norman, 2001; Norman & Brooks, 1997; Norman & Eva, 2005; Norman, Rosenthal, Brooks, Allen & Muzzin, 1989).

Learning from practice seems to be a bottom-up process. For example, Anderson, Fincham and Douglass (1997) had participants work on a series of abstract rules. They found that the learners went through three basic stages in abstracting information. First, they used examples individually, finding one example to help them with a current problem and not using other examples. Next, they related several examples or problems to each other to create generalizations used for problem-solving. Through this process they developed abstract concepts and, in the final stage, referred exclusively to the principles rather than specific examples. “[I]nitial problem-solving involves explicitly referring to examples…With repeated practice, however, general rules develop and the

specific example is no longer accessed” (Anderson, Fincham, & Douglass, 1997: 932).

The knowledge of pathological in medicine appears to develop in the same way (Boshuizen, 2003; Boshuizen & Schmidt, 1992; Boshuizen & Schmidt, 1995; Boshuizen, Hobus, Custers, & Schmidt, 1992; Boshuizen, Schmidt, Custers, & van de Wiel, 1995;

Schmidt & Boshuizen, 1992; Schmidt & Boshuizen, 1993). Each step is basically a bottom-up process of organizing knowledge already acquired, rather than a top-down process of starting with generalizations and adding information to them.

Teachers each possess a very different internal knowledge base acquired through different experiences in education. “[k]nowledge is always idiosyncratic, reflecting the vagaries of a person’s own history” (Alexander, Schallert, & Hare, 1991: 317). The personal nature of teachers’ knowledge can be seen in the idiosyncratic ways teachers learn in SLTE programs. For example, Almarza (1996) studied four L2 teachers taking part in a year-long teacher certification in the UK. Despite similarities in their teaching performances, interviews revealed that each teacher had acquired a very individual, rather than general, set of knowledge from the program. “[A]t the end of the course, they left with different kinds of knowledge about the dynamics of teaching and learning languages” (Almarza, 1996: 69). Even when teachers are educated with a very uniform and narrow conception of teaching, they do not implement the teaching approach uniformly, but rather in a personal, idiosyncratic way. Richards, Ho and Giblin studied five novice teachers on a 4 week certificate course in TESL. They found that “while a program such as the UCLES/RSA Certificate is built around a well-articulated model of teaching, the model is interpreted in different ways by individual trainee teachers as they deconstruct it in the light of their teaching experiences and reconstruct it drawing on their own beliefs and assumptions about themselves, about teachers, about teaching, and about learners” (Richards, Ho, & Giblin, 1996: 258). Schocker-von Ditfurth (2001) studied 16 novice teachers before, during and after their teaching practicum. One of her findings was that the teachers only used academic knowledge when they were able to adapt it to and integrate it into their own personal knowledge base. Research has also shown that teachers do not use academic models of instruction as designed, but combine them with other models and adapt them to fit their own personal knowledge base and interests (McIntyre & Freppon, 1994; Scott, 2003).

Thus, teachers’ eclectic use of knowledge is perfectly normal given the nature of human cognition. When teachers’ understandings diverge from academic knowledge and they resist academic perspectives, SLTE teachers should not respond by trying to “correct”

their knowledge. Instead, SLTE teachers should understand teacher resistance as a signal that the academic knowledge or conception does not fit with their personal knowledge base. For example, Silin and Schwartz (2003), as a result of a 5 year study on curriculum development, argue that we should see teacher resistance to new knowledge as a positive part of this process. They “came to read smaller moments of teacher resistance…as a form of communication to be interpreted rather than a roadblock to be overcome…Resistance can be an occasion for people with divergent perspectives to join together to make sense of the situations in which they find themselves” (Silin &

Schwartz, 2003: 1599). Resistance can be seen as an opportunity to explore these ideas and teachers’ knowledge more deeply in order to create more sophisticated knowledge, rather than as a call for a clearer explanation of the academic knowledge.

The suggestion that teachers should construct their personal theories by testing, interpreting, and judging the usefulness of professional theories proposed by experts creates only a narrow space for teachers to function fruitfully as reflective individuals.

Indeed, this suggestion leaves very little room for conceptualization and self-construction of pedagogic knowledge (Kumaravadivelu, 2001: 541).

A dynamically organized network of implicit, practice-specific knowledge for teaching is acquired by participating in a wide variety of teaching-similar activities which require participants to focus on a variety of knowledge specific to particular teaching situations and to compare, contrast and link knowledge (such as knowledge about teaching activities, student cues, curriculum, feedback, input, etc.) in multiple ways. Humans appear to excel at abstracting from specific examples and such processes result in professional competence and knowledge which is easier to transfer from one context to another. This is a bottom-up process and the result is not all encompassing abstractions like academic theories, but rather idiosyncratic, dynamically organized “theories for practice” (Burns, 1996).