Collaborative Development Programmes on Learning, Teaching and Assessment Strategies

A Perspective on Teacher Knowledge

Before describing the process of development, it is essential to have a conceptual framework on the required knowledge of teachers. Teacher knowledge can be broadly divided into two perpendicular dimensions, Content Knowledge in teaching and Forms of Teacher Knowledge.

Content Knowledge in teaching is the amount and organization of knowledge per se in the mind of the teacher; it contains the following 3 categories:

• Subject matter content knowledge: it is beyond knowledge of facts or concepts of a domain; it is about the structures of the subject matter, which include both the substantive and syntactic structures.
  
  
  • Substantive structures are the variety of ways in which the basic concepts and principles of the discipline are organized to incorporate its facts.
  • Syntactic structure is the set of ways in which truth or falsehood, validity or invalidity are established.
  
  
• Pedagogical content knowledge: which goes beyond knowledge of subject matter per se to the dimension of subject matter for teaching – the ways of representing and formulating the subject that make it comprehensible to others; it also includes an understanding of what makes the learning of a specific topic easy or difficult: the conception and preconceptions that students of different ages and backgrounds bring to the learning.


• Curriculum knowledge: the full range of programme designed for the teaching of particular subjects and topics at a given level, the variety of instructional materials available in relation to those programmes, and the set of characteristics that serve as both the indications and contraindications for the use of particular curriculum materials in particular circumstances:
  
  
  • Lateral curriculum knowledge: curriculum materials under study by students in other subjects they are studying at the same time. With such knowledge, the teachers would be able to relate the content of a given course to topics or issues being discussed simultaneously in other classes.
  • Vertical curriculum knowledge: topics and issues they have been and will be taught in the same subject area

The followings are some suggested groups for collaborative development and teacher networks:

Piloting of the above themes will be conducted progressively, i.e. on one of the theme to test the process. More themes will then be conducted upon the refined process.

Collaborative Development Programmes Downloads