Teacher Knowledge and Enquiry
Three levels of teacher knowledge (Cochran-Smith and Lytle, 1999)
| Level | What it is |
|---|---|
| Knowledge for practice | What is known by experts and given to teachers to use |
| Knowledge in practice | What teachers know from doing the work; tacit, situational |
| Knowledge of practice | What teachers create through systematic enquiry into their own work |
Two key components of reflective practice in this model
- Systematic enquiry into the profession
- Metacognition: thinking about the process of professionalisation and participation
Teacher growth model
Teaching is multi-faceted. A repertoire of strategies and content mastery alone is not enough. Twenty-first-century teachers need professional development through multiple modes: reflective practice, research-based practice, conferencing, monitoring.
A teacher reading a textbook on pedagogy is engaging with one kind of knowledge. The same teacher running a difficult class on a Wednesday afternoon is using a different kind. A third kind appears when the teacher writes up what they have learned and shares it with colleagues. Cochran-Smith and Lytle, in 1999, named these three kinds of knowledge and pointed out that most discussions of teacher development only handle one of them.
The full picture matters because the development of a real reflective practitioner depends on all three.
Three levels of teacher knowledge
The three levels move from external authority to teacher-as-creator.
Knowledge for practice
This is what experts know and pass on to teachers to use. Textbooks, academic articles, training programmes, methods workshops. The knowledge is generated outside the classroom and brought into it by teachers who learn it.
Knowledge for practice is necessary. A teacher who refuses to engage with it loses access to the cumulative work of the field. They reinvent solutions to problems that have already been solved.
The limit of knowledge for practice is that it is general. It does not know about the particular class, the particular topic, or the particular day. A teacher who only relies on knowledge for practice is applying general rules to specific situations and often missing what makes the specific situation specific.
Knowledge in practice
This is what teachers know from doing the work. Tacit knowledge, in the sense covered by the SECI cycle. The teacher knows things they cannot easily say. The knowledge is built from years of experience in particular contexts.
Knowledge in practice is also necessary. It is what makes an experienced teacher different from a new one in the same situation, and the difference is real and large.
The limit of knowledge in practice is that it can stay with the teacher. It does not become available to the field unless someone externalises it, which is hard work that often gets skipped.
Knowledge of practice
This is the most distinctive level. It is what teachers create through systematic enquiry into their own work, often in collaboration with others.
Knowledge of practice is generated by the teacher acting as a researcher into their own teaching. The teacher gathers data, examines it, draws conclusions, tests them, shares them. Over time, this produces knowledge that is specific to teaching contexts in a way that knowledge for practice usually is not, but that is also generalisable in a way that pure knowledge in practice usually is not.
A reflective practitioner aims to operate at all three levels: drawing on knowledge for practice from the field, developing knowledge in practice through experience, and producing knowledge of practice through systematic enquiry.
The school as ecosystem
A teacher does not work in a vacuum. They work in a school, which is a kind of ecosystem of knowledge.
Several routes through the ecosystem support a teacher’s growth.
Research and direction
Research defines the direction of professional growth. A teacher engaging with research, however informally, knows where the field is moving and where the open questions are.
Training and capacity building
This is a common approach in schools. Workshops, training sessions, and short courses build specific capacities. They are part of the ecosystem, not the whole of it.
Tools and infrastructure
Schools provide tools and infrastructure that teachers use. Lesson plan templates, mentoring programmes, peer observation, library access, software. These are part of how knowledge moves through the school.
Idea incubation
A school as an ecosystem allows ideas to be defined and tested. Conversations in the staff room, working groups on particular problems, formal communities of practice. The school is where ideas move from one teacher to another, get tested, and either stick or fade.
Knowledge sharing
The ecosystem also includes ways of sharing knowledge: school magazines, internal presentations, contribution to conferences. The teacher who participates in these is part of the school’s knowledge ecosystem. The teacher who does not is teaching in isolation.
Where reflective practice fits
Reflective practice has a particular place in this ecosystem. It is the engine that produces knowledge of practice.
Two key components of reflective practice show up.
Systematic enquiry
Reflective practice involves systematic enquiry into professionalism in terms of teaching. This includes enquiry into how an individual teacher participates in and contributes to the educational profession and to the wider community.
This is more than personal reflection. The enquiry is structured, follows methods, and produces results that can be tested. The reflective practitioner is doing real research, even when the scope is small.
Metacognition
Reflective practice involves metacognition: thinking about the process of professionalisation and participation. The teacher is not just doing the work. They are thinking about how they do the work, why they do it that way, and how it could be done differently.
When systematic enquiry and metacognition come together inside the profession, they enhance student learning and promote teacher growth. This is the working claim of the reflective practice tradition. The student benefits from the teacher’s reflection, and the teacher’s professional development is real and visible.
The teacher growth model
The teacher growth model reflects the multi-faceted nature of a teacher’s work. A repertoire of strategies and content mastery alone is not sufficient for a teacher to be a competent professional in the twenty-first century.
A competent professional in this period needs to pursue professional development through multiple modes of learning. The list includes:
- Reflective practice. The internal, systematic enquiry into one’s own work.
- Research-based practice. Engagement with the wider research literature, both as consumer and contributor.
- Conferencing. Participation in conversations beyond one’s own school.
- Monitoring. Tracking one’s own development over time and adjusting based on what is observed.
A teacher who runs all four modes develops faster and more soundly than one who runs only one or two.
Knowledge for practice, in practice, and of practice
Knowledge for practice is what experts know and pass to teachers. Knowledge in practice is the tacit knowledge teachers build from experience. Knowledge of practice is what teachers create through systematic enquiry into their own work, often with colleagues. A reflective practitioner operates at all three.
A practical view of all three levels
A teacher who balances all three levels in their practice looks like this in a given week.
Knowledge for practice. They read an article on retrieval practice and try one of the techniques in their classroom.
Knowledge in practice. They use their tacit sense of the room to know which student needs more time before being called on, and they trust that sense.
Knowledge of practice. They keep notes on a small experiment they are running on opening lessons with questions, with the intention of writing up the results for colleagues at the end of the term.
The same teacher, running the same class, is operating at all three levels. None of them displaces the others. Together they make a richer practice than any one alone could produce.
Why the three-level model matters
The three-level model matters because it pushes back against two common mistakes.
The first mistake is to treat teacher development as the delivery of knowledge for practice. Workshops, mandates, top-down curricula. This treats teachers as recipients, not as creators. The model says they are also creators.
The second mistake is to treat teacher development as purely personal. The teacher reflects in private, journal in hand, and develops on their own schedule. This misses knowledge for practice, which is the cumulative work of the field, and it misses knowledge of practice, which is by nature shareable.
A real reflective practitioner avoids both mistakes by operating at all three levels with intention.