What constitutes important teacher knowledge?

A study of legitimizing knowledge within a Swedish teacher education program

Abstract

The article presents the results from a study whose purpose is to contribute knowledge about regulatory discourses about teacher knowledge. The study seeks an answer to the question of what kind of knowledge is legitimized and omitted in a Swedish teacher education program? A Swedish teacher education program has been selected, where the analysis included all intended learning outcomes in syllabuses within the chosen teacher education program. The study is partly based on a critical discourse analytical framework that focuses on how teacher knowledge is legitimized discursively, and partly on Anderson and Krathwohl's extended taxonomy of the different types of knowledge in academic and professional education. Applying a discourse analytical approach, the study examines course objectives in curricula through the lens of considering them as communicative events shaped by discourses of teacher knowledge. In total, there are 262 course objectives within the teacher program that are included in the analysis. Based on the taxonomy's two-dimensional category descriptions, each course objective was analyzed through its use of verbs and nouns, to give meanings to what is legitimized as teacher knowledge. This analysis discerned the legitimization of teacher knowledge, as well as the potential omissions. The results show that it is primarily course objectives that relate to discursive representations of cognitive processes such as understanding, applying and evaluating procedural knowledge that are legitimized as teacher knowledge. Factual knowledge, conceptual knowledge or metacognitive knowledge are not legitimized in the same extent. The cognitive processes that are notably omitted in the course objectives are analyzing and creation, particularly in relation to factual and metacognitive knowledge. Few course objectives legitimized the cognitive process to be able to create, but when they were legitimatized it was connected primarily to procedural knowledge in teaching practice courses. The findings raise the question of what implications it gets when teacher knowledge as social practice discursively omits higher complex cognitive processes in the intended learning outcomes? Another dimension of knowledge that is not legitimized in the course objectives is metacognitive knowledge. The study raises questions about the need for teacher education to pay attention to the importance of higher cognitive processes for teachers' knowledge. The omission of the metacognitive knowledge dimension implies not only the absence of goals for self-knowledge regarding one's own cognition and motivation, but also the absence of goals for knowledge of strategies for learning and thinking, as well as knowledge of when and why different cognitive strategies can be used. This meta-cognitive knowledge holds considerable significance for several reasons. It is crucial for university teachers to facilitate the cognitive development of their students, as well as enabling reflection upon professionally relevant experiences within the school organization. Teacher students need the possibility, based on a scientific basis, to think critically about their own teaching practice and develop a reflective approach, in order to be able to behave professionally in a politically changing and complex school context in their future profession.