The Concept and Development Strategies of the Primary Teachers’ Practical Knowledge

Abstract

Teachers’ practical knowledge (TPK) has become a research field of teacher education, but it has not been paid enough attention in the early stage of its formation, which is not conducive to the comprehensive and in-depth study of the development of TPK. The purpose of this study is to arouse enough attention of normal university students to acquire TPK, and to have a tool for in-depth analysis of the quality of TPK. This study mainly uses documentary method. By combing existing studies, this paper points out the disadvantages of naming TPK as the same as the stage of teachers’ professional development, and demonstrates the necessity of putting forward the concept of Primary Teacher’s Practical Knowledge (PTPK). It believes that PTPK has its own value and may be owned by all teachers, rather than the exclusive label of ordinary students and novice teachers. This paper describes and demonstrates the connotation, characteristics and value of PTPK based on a three-dimension framework which composed of representation, structure and level. PTPK truly needs to be optimized but neither in a linear way nor static superposition of experience, instead of diversified in representation form. From the dynamic perspective of the generation mechanism of TPK, this paper puts forward two development strategies of PTPK with the nature of “deliberation”: one is to criticize the PTPK temporarily away from the situation via explicit the PTPK in three representation, guide interns in a systemic structure and teach the theoretical courses focus on cultivating higher thinking; the other is to put it back in the context for testing by creating both virtual and real situations.