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.
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