Improving Teacher Practice‐based Knowledge: What Teachers Need to Know and How They Come to Know It

This chapter explores the key ideas, drawn from the literature, that help educators understand what practice-based knowledge teachers and teacher candidates need to know as well as how this knowledge is developed. It illustrates the importance of using the same approaches to teacher candidate learning as currently called for in the research-based, job-embedded, practicing teacher professional learning literature. The chapter describes the forms of practice-based knowledge that teachers and teacher candidates need to develop and refine throughout their careers. It also describes the significance of cultivating an inquiry stance that enables educators to construct and integrate practice-based knowledge. The chapter outlines the practice-based knowledge of equity and social justice and describes how that knowledge is nurtured. It demonstrates the complexity of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) and how PCK is generated through practice-based learning. The chapter discusses the supervisory skills that are needed to support career long teacher development.