Gary D. Fenstermacher

The Knower and the Known: The Nature of Knowledge in Research on Teaching

This chapter is a review of conceptions of knowledge as they appear in selected bodies of research on teaching. Writing as a philosopher of education, my interest is in how notions of knowledge are used and analyzed in a number of research programs that study teachers and their teaching. Of particular interest is the growing research literature on the knowledge that teachers generate as a result of their experience as teachers, in contrast to the knowledge of teaching that is generated by those who specialize in research on teaching. This distinction, as will become apparent, is one that divides more conventional scientific approaches to the study of teaching from what might be thought of as alternative approaches.

Chapter 1: The Knower and the Known: The Nature of Knowledge in Research on Teaching:

This chapter is a review of conceptions of knowledge as they appear in selected bodies of research on teaching. Writing as a philosopher of education, my interest is in how notions of knowledge are used and analyzed in a number of research programs that study teachers and their teaching. Of particular interest is the growing research literature on the knowledge that teachers generate as a result of their experience as teachers, in contrast to the knowledge of teaching that is generated by those who specialize in research on teaching. This distinction, as will become apparent, is one that divides more conventional scientific approaches to the study of teaching from what might be thought of as alternative approaches. A number of good reviews of the teacher knowledge literature are available elsewhere. Although these reviews tend to be confined to a particular genre of teacher knowledge research, they are thoughtful, probing, and helpful. Among them are Kathy Carters (1990) chapter in the Handbook of Research on Teacher Education, Alan Tom and Linda Vallis (1990) philosophically grounded review of professional knowledge, and Peter Grimmett and Allan MacKinnons (1992) extensive analysis of craft conceptions of teaching in a previous volume in this series. What distinguishes the present review from these others is that it seeks to be fairly inclusive of the teacher knowledge literature but restrictive in its analytical categories. I shall examine a number of different research programs that either explicitly purport to be about teacher knowledge or that expand what is known about teaching. The examination, however, will be restricted to the epistemological aspects of these programs. By epistemological aspects, I mean those features of the research that assert or imply notions about the nature of

The Place of Alternative Certification in the Education of Teachers.

The title of this article sets an ambitious task, for it is no simple matter to locate and examine alternative certification within the more general and inclusive framework of teacher preparation. The concept of alternative certification suffers two liabilities at the moment. Its meaning is obscure, and its forms of implementation are many. Thus the first task is to clarify the meaning of alternative certification. In this article, this task is handled in the form of a dialogue in hopes that this format will make the usually tedious process of extended definition more interesting for the reader. The format then switches to expository prose for an analysis of the concept of alternative certification. A central purpose of this analysis is to appraise the worth or value of alternative certification relative to other forms of teacher preparation. Following this second part, the dialogue resumes in an effort to clarify the apparent tension between current initiatives to professionalize teaching and those initiatives aimed at more firmly establishing alternative certification programs. This tension arises from the fact that professionalization initiatives typically call for sustained and rigorous study for entry into the profession, while alternative certification programs are often viewed as quick and rather elementary ways to enter teaching. A better understanding of this tension illuminates some of the more critical issues surrounding the broader notion of how teachers are prepared.

A Commentary on Research that Serves Teacher Education

What kind of research best serves teacher education? The question seems sensible enough, one we ought to be able to answer without too much gnashing of teeth. Unfortunately, this presumptive straightforwardness of task is not within our grasp, for there are numerous impediments to progress. Among these are finding a widely shared conception of what counts as research, agreeing on criteria that adequately distinguish one kind of research from another, and determining Who should be served by research. In addition to these challenges, there is also a powerful normative issue: What are the purposes of teacher education and what kind of research best serves the attainment of these purposes? As the two lead articles in this issue of the Journal of Teacher Education are set side-by-side, the questions just posed are given a clear context. Wilson, Floden, and Ferrini-Mundy (2002 [this issue]) attempt to determine whether there is research available to answer five questions of interest to educational policy makers. Among these are questions about the nature of pedagogical and subject matter preparation needed by prospective teachers and about the approaches most likely to yield high-quality results in both collegiate and alternative teacher preparation sites. Florio-Ruane (2002 [this issue]) has a quite different purpose. She offers an argument to safeguard research on teaching and teacher education from being constrained by too narrow a conception of scholarly inquiry or too simple a view of the nature of teaching. Florio-Ruane urges an appreciation of research that reveals the complexity and subtlety of educational practice and illuminates this practice for those who seek a deeper understanding of it. One finds different conceptions of research in these two articles, as well as different views of who is to be served and how that service is to be rendered. For example, Wilson et al. developed a set of criteria for adequate research on teacher education that led them to reject 80% of the studies they initially perceived as relevant to the questions they addressed. One readily infers that most of the studies that would count as research for Florio-Ruane may not make the first cut in the Wilson et al. analysis. There is a decided tension between these two pieces, a tension that is, perhaps, more obvious in the cautionary concerns expressed by Florio-Ruane than in the tough-minded approach to research taken by Wilson et al. I believe this tension, however, can be markedly reduced, perhaps even converted to a compatibility of sorts. In this article, I try to resolve this tension by developing two separate lines of argument. First is to show how a formal conception of large-scale social science research (here abbreviated SSR) might be compatibly situated within a larger frame of research that also recognizes certain varieties of interpretive and narrative research (here abbreviated INR). If successful in this endeavor, then the research programs advocated by Florio-Ruane could comfortably coexist with those that are valued in the work of Wilson et al. The second goal is to advance an argument that the policy-making enterprise may justifiably delimit, often to a narrow range, the kinds of research that are appropriate to its interests. In narrowing the range of acceptable research, policy making may indeed privilege some forms of research over others. That such privileging may occur is an inevitable consequence of some kinds of research being better suited to generating knowledge applicable to large populations or multiple settings. ON THE COMPATIBILITY OF RESEARCH PROGRAMS Formally conceived, large-scale SSR is subject to the criticism that it lacks sensitivity to context, is inattentive to the intentionality of the participants, and employs wrenching reconstructions of natural settings. These are among the reasons that some researchers prefer to do research that is dialogical, intertextual, interpretive, multiply voiced, or narrative in form (INR). …

Three Reaction Papers

trivial. An opposite distortion overemphasizes the dependability of pedagogical research. It measures present research against the armchair methods of the past and inflates the gains. If we are to retain even a semblance of sanity, we must remember that pedagogical research is still young and only now is coming of age. It is almost a century since the beginning of the scientific study of education, if Rices (1897) report of his investigations of the effectiveness of instruction in spelling, arithmetic, and language is taken as the beginning point. Since that time, thousands of investigations covering almost every aspect of the educational system have been reported. In 1939, Brownell estimated that a total of 3,500 investigations in reading and arithmetic had been reported since the beginning of the scientific study of these subjects. Monroe (1937, 1938) described the growth of educational research as even more extensive. He estimated that the number of in-

The Preservice Improvement Project in Retrospect.

the research on teaching and schooling had found its way into preservice teacher preparation programs. The research was not reflected in either courses of instruction (with the occasional exception of educational psychology courses) or in program characteristics (e.g., program objectives, competency statements, clearance examinations, and student teaching assessment forms). This finding came as no great surprise. The research is of