Becoming a Teacher: A cognitively complex task
Shulman believed that teaching was no less cognitively complex than medicine, and that teachers, like doctors, engaged in acts of decision- making and professional judgment that informed their practice.
I’m quite happy to see that I’m not the only one who thinks that there are certain analogies between becoming a medical doctor and becoming a professional of learning & teaching, i.e. a teacher…
Both “jobs” imply that you rely upon “state-of-the-art” scientific knowledge to make appropriate decisions and formulate sound “diagnostic” judgments, if you want to be a real professional! Simply relying on “gut-feelings” or “hear-say” will eventually lead you to “successful” actions and reactions, but it will be impossible to know why… and it will be a matter of chance. We should better make “educated guesses” rather than just “maybe-right” guesses.
And simply invoking the “authority-argument”, i.e. “I do this, because I was told that this is the good and right way”, will not save you from justifying your interventions.
Posted via web from the material mind



Lee Shulman has also developed another interesting concept about “becoming a teacher”, the pedagogical content knowledge concept:
http://www.leeshulman.net/domains-pedagogical-content-knowledge.html