Teachers’ conceptions focus on a greater variety of knowledge

Teachers use a wider range of knowledge than academic conceptions do for their practice, including a good deal of knowledge specific to the practice of teaching, providing further evidence that teachers’ knowledge is different from academic knowledge. For example, many studies of teachers’ conceptions of teaching reading have shown that academic issues such as the nature of reading are only a small portion of the factors taken into account in teachers’ practice. Other factors such as student motivation, curriculum, and school politics are, in addition to academic issues, integral parts of the conceptions teachers use to guide their practice (Davis, Konopak & Readence, 1993;

Duffy & Anderson, 1984; Graden, 1996). The six foreign language teachers in Graden’s (1996) study used their knowledge of what increased student motivation more than their conceptions of reading in designing reading-focused instruction. Mori (2002) looked at the reasons for the corrective feedback of two ESL teachers. While one teacher based his feedback practice mainly on knowledge about language, the other teacher principally used her knowledge of fostering student autonomy, so that her feedback practice supported this goal. The three PE teachers in Chen and Ennis’ (1995) study felt that student enjoyment was a more important goal than learning many of the basic skills for volleyball, and their lessons reflected this.

Studies of literacy education have produced similar results. For example, Konopak, Readence and their colleagues conducted several studies of elementary school teachers.

They found that other factors (such as state-mandated curriculum, student interests, school climate, etc.) were often at least as important as conceptions of reading for the design of the teachers’ reading lessons (Davis, Konopak and Readence, 1993; Wilson, Konopak, & Readence, 1992). This finding was supported by Brindley and Schneider’s (2002) survey of 124 4^th grade teachers. As Duffy and Anderson said about the 24 elementary teachers in their four year study: “[the] teachers made decisions about what to do for a variety of reasons. While some of these reasons reflect implicit beliefs about reading, many reflect beliefs about the nature of instruction and of classroom life” (Duffy

& Anderson, 1984: 101-2).

Differences between teachers’ and academics’ knowledge has also been found in research on teacher educators’ conceptions of teaching. In Kagan’s (1993a) study of two teachers and two teacher educators, she found that the teacher educators’ conceptions of teaching excluded many factors important for teachers.

[The teacher educators] have not only objectified the task of classroom teaching, they have also narrowed its function to that of cognition: to help students acquire knowledge and problem-solving skills. To [the teachers], a teacher’s job goes far beyond helping children achieve academically: it includes building children’s self-esteem and self-discipline;

teaching them to distinguish fact from opinion, to question their own values, and to interact effectively with individuals from different backgrounds (Kagan, 1993a: 123).

Teachers’ knowledge has been shown to be different from academic knowledge of the same concepts. Early studies showed L2 teachers’ understandings of communicative language teaching (CLT) is different from academic conceptions. For example Mitchell (1988) found that the conceptions of communicative competence of the 59 foreign language teachers in her study differed significantly from academic conceptions, for example by not including grammatical competence within a definition of communicative competence or viewing oral work as the only way to teach it. Fox (1993) gained similar findings from her survey of 147 teaching assistants [TAs] who were teaching university-level French classes. According to Fox, “TAs do not conceptualize language according to the model of communicative competence proposed by Canale and Swain…For instance, the TA model [of communicative competence] does not have a discourse component and elements such as determiners are treated as sentence level grammatical phenomena” (Fox, 1993: 320). Later studies showed that teachers’ knowledge of CLT was different in that it focused on those aspects which are specifically important for language teaching. For example, Sato and Kleinsasser (1999) used interviews, a questionnaire and observations of teaching to study the CLT conceptions of ten teachers of Japanese as a foreign language. Some of these conceptions were clearly teaching-specific: that CLT involves time consuming activities (both in classroom and preparation time is obviously important, domain-specific knowledge for L2 teachers). For the teachers, even conceptions such as “CLT uses mainly speaking and listening” involved teaching-specific knowledge, for example, the problems with assessing oral language skills in ways considered legitimate in their institutions. Furthermore, the teachers in their study included knowledge in their conceptions of CLT missing from academic conceptions, for example how to maintain class discipline while using CLT activities or how to implement CLT at different grade levels.

Studies by Mangubhai and his colleagues produced similar results. In a case study of a German teacher’s conceptions of CLT, they found that her conception included many aspects which were important for her teaching in her specific context, but were either not part of academic conceptions of CLT or where not central to such conceptions. For example, for her part of CLT were things like: “seeking to develop in students’ tolerance of others”, “Helping the students form an integrated view of the German language and not see it as isolated individual topics”, “Building up student confidence” or “going from the known to the unknown” (Mangubhai, Marland, Dashwood, & Son, 2004: 307). “In summary, Doreen’s understanding of CLT as revealed in her practical theory incorporates many of the commonly listed features of CLT, other features of CLT not usually listed and many features of her general approach to teaching” (Mangubhai, Marland, Dashwood, & Son, 2004: 308). A follow up study of six foreign language teachers’ conceptions of CLT (Mangubhai, Marland, Dashwood, & Son, 2005) showed a

similar mix of academic and non-academic ideas. This study included a questionnaire which included 62 aspects attributed to CLT by academics. In general, the teachers agree with these 62 items as defining CLT: all six teachers agreed with 71% of the items and the majority (four) with 95% of the items. The interviews and stimulated recall protocols, however, showed that the teachers in the study only included half of these 62 items in their own conceptions of CLT and that these academic ideas only represented 30% of their ideas of what CLT is. Mangubhai and his colleagues concluded that “the six teachers have a different conceptualization of CLT approaches from that represented by the experts’ list of 62 criterial attributes” (Mangubhai, Marland, Dashwood, & Son, 2005: 52).

In an interesting study, Pinnegar and Carter (1990) compared the theories of learning of 38 experienced teachers with 3 educational psychology textbooks. They found that the teachers’ conceptions were more sophisticated than those presented in the textbook and included many factors missing from academic conceptions of student learning.

Teachers not only transformed theories of psychology as they applied to practice, but they also presented theories of classroom learning which were absent from educational textbooks…the relationship between responsibility, respect and rapport…the dynamics of confidence, trust, and success…the relationship between personal interest, honesty, and relevance (Pinnegar & Carter, 1990: 23).

They also found that the teachers’ conceptions were more complex and contained much more detail. Part of the reason for this may be that the textbooks aimed to give general information about an academic discipline rather than to explain specific problems or issues in teaching. “The purpose of the textbooks seems to be to present the discipline of educational psychology for the student in preservice teaching programs. The purpose of the cooperating teachers’ theories of classroom learning was to explain their understanding of classroom practice to novice teachers” (Pinnegar & Carter, 1990: 21).

They conclude that “[t]hese differences in purpose suggest that one explanation for why students believe that university courses do not prepare them for teaching is that the textbooks do not represent information in ways that allow students to identify the concepts presented in the textbooks in the practice they encounter” (Pinnegar & Carter, 1990: 26).

Research also shows that teachers focus on specific details, not general ideas, for teaching. For instance, Calderhead and Shorrock (1997) studied four elementary school teachers in the first two years of teaching. They found that during this time teacher learning centered mostly on developing knowledge specific to their contexts (e.g., knowledge of specific students, reactions of students to specific activities, advantages and drawbacks of assessment instruments for their context, etc.). Kagan (1993a) studied the teaching theories of two teacher educators and two teachers. She found that the teacher educators’ theories were considered valid for all contexts, whereas the teachers’

theories were for specific situations. Finally, Sabers, Cushing and Berliner (1991) compared experienced and beginning teachers’ responses to a task where they had to watch three TV monitors showing different views of a classroom and comment on what they saw. Sabers and her colleagues found that the experienced teachers related what they saw to their wealth of knowledge about specific classrooms (student grouping, student motivation, possible developments during an activity, etc.) and this comparison enabled them to make more sophisticated commentary on what transpired in the classroom video. Furthermore, research on experienced teachers who switch teaching

contexts often report that they feel like novices in their new contexts, rather than experienced teachers (Bullough & Baughman, 1995; Burns, 1996), indicating expertise, at least in teaching, is context specific.

In general, studies show that academic knowledge tends to be overly simplistic and not to describe the complexities of teaching well. For example, Sosniak, Ethington and Varelas (1991) used questionnaire data in attempting to categorize teachers as either

‘traditional’ or ‘progressive’, but found that none of the teachers cleanly fell into either of the categories. Furthermore, McIntyre and Freppon (1994) observed two elementary teachers, one who taught a whole language classroom and one who taught a skill-oriented classroom. However, they found that neither teacher strictly used either of these conceptions when teaching. “Both instructional settings provided explicit phonics instruction (albeit contextualized differently), and both settings provided time for children to read self-selected books and to write” (McIntyre & Freppon, 1994: 391). In addition, Kinzer and Carrick (1986) have shown that the conceptions used for reading instruction by 27 elementary teachers in their study not did rely on their concepts of reading, but rather on their conceptions of how reading is learned.

If academic conceptions do not include many issues important for teaching, then they likely are not very useful for teachers, in the same way that a theory of bridge design which focuses solely on the building material but does not take into account wind and traffic patterns would not be very useful for engineers entrusted with the task of bridge design. Therefore, one possible reason why teachers do not seem to be able to use academic conceptions for teaching is that academic conceptions are simply not sophisticated enough to be of much use to teachers. It is for this reason (among others) that Larsen-Freeman (1990) has suggested that we need more than a theory of SLA, which focuses almost exclusively on language issues, but rather a theory of second language teaching which would include all issues significant for language teachers In-depth, longitudinal studies focusing on the teaching of individual teachers report similar results. Clift (1992) followed one English teacher through her first two years of teaching. The teacher reported that the conceptions learned in her teacher education program did not seem to cover many of the situations in which she found herself. For example, “she found that she was not prepared to work with students who had not completed the reading assignment or to decide how much explanation to provide them…When we reviewed her course work at the university, she identified many experiences with the analysis of literature but none in which she examined how students come to engage in that process” (Clift, 1992: 368). Cohen (1990) looked at one experienced teacher and her attempt to use the concept of constructivist learning (acquired in an inservice workshop) to guide her teaching. He found that the teacher struggled to use this concept because of the superficial way she had learned it in the workshop. “[T]he framework’s mathematical exhortations were general; it offered few specifics about how teachers might respond, and left room for many different responses”

(Cohen, 1990: 313).