| Current thinking in the reform of teacher education often turns toward increasing the subject matter knowledge of teachers, an enterprise to be achieved through advanced study in a university-based discipline. The epistemological assumptions behind this and related notions are explored in this study, with special focus on the Shulman model of pedagogical content knowledge. I trace the year-long experience of six candidates for the M.A.T. degree at Boston University, a program which embodies the same epistemological assumptions as the Shulman model. The six candidates were chosen from six different disciplines, three from the humanities and three from the sciences. Data collection was based heavily on periodic interviews, concept maps drawn at the beginning and end of the program, field observations, and the examination of written work and teaching presentations. I found that all six participants were in possession of personalized folk or egocentric theories of teaching and learning, theories that appeared to have been derived from early learning experiences. Far more than any notions about the structure of the discipline, these unchallenged theories provided the major organizing principles in the thinking of the participants. When the participants began the student teaching practicum, it was the match or the mismatch between the milieu of the school and the folk theory that provided each participant with a subjective evaluation of the experience. A match was the source of self-congratulation whereas a mismatch was the source of self-recrimination. I found the transfer of skills from the university to the classroom to have been significantly impeded by the folk theories supported by heuristic fallacies and by the biases of both the participants and the institutions. The features of the Shulman model could not be discerned in the development of the thinking of the participants. Recommendations are made for faculty development in the discipline, for a greater focus on the improvement of student learning in the School of Education and elsewhere, and for better coordination with the field placement schools. |
