By Professor Debra Myhill, Director of the Centre for Research in Writing, Pro-Vice Chancellor and Executive Dean, The University of Exeter
Both the professional standards for teachers and research on teacher effectiveness emphasise the importance of teacher subject knowledge. Lee Shulman, perhaps the seminal contributor to thinking about subject knowledge, distinguished between subject knowledge (the academic content knowledge), pedagogical knowledge (the general knowledge of how to teach) and pedagogical content knowledge (the specific knowledge of how to teach your subject). Curriculum subjects such as History, Maths and Science have very evident subject knowledge, but English or Literacy is less clear-cut. In secondary schools, knowledge of literature is a very clear body of subject knowledge and one which has its own metalanguage – simile, metaphor, stanza, personification etc. In primary schools, teachers need to know about good books written for children and in recent years, primary teachers are also expected to have strong pedagogical subject knowledge for teaching reading based on government mandates about phonics.
But what is subject knowledge for writing? Continue reading “What is ‘subject knowledge for writing’?”