Qualitative Studies in Education

ISSN: 0951-8398 (Print) 1366-5898 (Online) Journal homepage: www.tandfonline.com/journals/tqse20

Attempting to document teachers' professional

knowledge

John Loughran, Ian Mitchell & Judie Mitchell

To cite this article: John Loughran, Ian Mitchell & Judie Mitchell (2003) Attempting to document
teachers' professional knowledge, Qualitative Studies in Education, 16:6, 853-873, DOI:
10.1080/09518390310001632180

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/09518390310001632180

Published online: 24 Jun 2010.

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QUALITATIVE STUDIES IN EDUCATION,
NOVEMBER–DECEMBER 2003, VOL. 16, NO. 6, 853–873

Attempting to document teachers’ professional

knowledge

JOHN LOUGHRAN, IAN MITCHELL AND JUDIE MITCHELL

Monash University

This paper explores ways of uncovering and documenting teachers’ professional knowledge.
Through a research project that has worked with a number of teachers over an extensive
period of time, serious attempts have been made to make the (often) tacit nature of
teachers’ knowledge more explicit in ways that might begin to address the question of what
a knowledge base in teaching might look like. The paper examines methodological issues
that have guided this research and illustrates how the knowledge of teachers can be
articulated in ways that might help to clarify particular features of practice. An important
aspect of the research reported in this paper is the need to have a language of teaching that
is common to participants. Therefore, the research reported in this paper offers one way of
considering this issue and offers a methodology for exploration and further development
whilst simultaneously highlighting some aspects of the problematic nature of developing
such a methodology.

Introduction

Over the past decade there has been a growing interest in teacher knowledge and
a recognition that experienced teachers teach in well-reasoned and thoughtful ways
in order to best engender students’ learning for understanding, as opposed to
learning for simple recall of propositional knowledge (White, 1988). Despite the
recognition of this important link between teaching and learning, teaching itself is
still often undervalued (within both the profession and the community generally)
because much of the knowledge that teachers draw on to inform their practice is
not always obvious to others. However, this does not mean that specific knowledge
about teaching does not exist; rather it suggests that our ability to articulate and
document this knowledge is lacking or has been hindered through the tacit nature
of this knowledge and the difficulty of making it explicit.
One of the difficulties associated with describing, articulating, and document-
ing teachers’ professional knowledge is closely tied to the problematic nature of
seeing the knowledge in practice. Another difficulty is related to the fact that the
working life of most teachers does not systematically include times for connecting
with advances in the knowledge base of their own profession. A social culture that
does not overtly create (or encourage) an expectation to discuss practice in ways
that demonstrate such knowledge in practice further exacerbates the situation
(Loughran, Gunstone, Berry, Milroy, & Mulhall, 2000). Also, as Duckworth (1991)
points out, teachers do not necessarily take their own knowledge seriously, leaving
it mostly untapped and known only to she/he who holds it.
International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education ISSN 0951–8398 print/ISSN 1366–5898 online © 2003 Taylor & Francis Ltd
http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals
DOI: 10.1080/09518390310001632180
854 JOHN LOUGHRAN ET AL.

One outcome of debates about teachers’ professional knowledge is caught up in

the calls by Fenstermacher (1994, 1997a) and Richardson (1994, 2000) for
elaboration on two important issues: a clearer understanding about the definitions
of knowledge and a better understanding of how that knowledge is expressed.
These calls are partly the result of others’ speculation about the professional
knowledge of teachers (e.g., Grossman, 1990; McDiarmid, Ball, & Anderson, 1989;
Wilson, Shulman, & Richert, 1987), while more recently, Cochran-Smith and Lytle
(1999a) have considered teachers’ professional knowledge in terms of conceptions
of teacher learning – knowledge for practice; knowledge in practice; and
knowledge of practice.
Yet as a social construction (Briscoe, 1992; Richardson, 1997; von Glasersfeld,
1989), a teacher’s knowledge may well be more comprehensive than can be
articulated (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1999b). Therefore, it is little wonder that, as
Carter (1993) suggested, teachers’ knowledge is elusive, because we may simply not
yet have the language to discuss that knowledge adequately.
Despite these difficulties, the work of researchers such as Connelly and
Clandinin (1988, 1990), Jackson (1987) and van Manen (1991) demonstrates the
value in, and importance of, uncovering teachers’ pedagogical knowledge and
attempting to develop appropriate ways of documenting and portraying it for
others.
Through the PAVOT project (Perspective and voice of the Teacher) we have
also been attempting to find ways of uncovering, documenting, and portraying the
professional knowledge of a large group of teachers who have been engaged in a
long-term project to improve the quality of student learning. This paper examines
the processes we have been using to do so.
The significance of this work for us is based on the belief that (following from
the arguments in the literature outlined above) developing ways of representing
teachers’ professional knowledge can help in terms of transferability and therefore
be both useful and valuable for others – within the profession and in teacher
education generally. However, before examining these issues we first offer a brief
background on the PAVOT project and the contextual factors that led to its
development.

Background to PAVOT

PAVOT grew out of the Project for Enhancement of Effective Learning (PEEL) that
had its genesis in a recurring theme in educational writings over many years, that
of dissatisfaction with the passive learning in classrooms (e.g., Dewey, 1933; Holt,
1969, 1970). PEEL (see Baird & Mitchell, 1986; Baird & Northfield, 1992;
Loughran, 1999) was initiated in 1985 by an academic and a teacher who were
similarly concerned about passive learning by students but who were also worried
by the lack of connection between research and practice. They believed that
developing the wisdom needed to improve the way students learnt would require
research where the teachers were genuinely equal partners – owners, rather than
subjects of the research.
Interestingly, as PEEL is driven by an almost universal teacher concern for
students’ passive learning, the nature of the project has been such that it has been,
and continues to be, attractive to teachers across Victoria (a State of Australia),
ATTEMPTING TO DOCUMENT 855

interstate (South Australia, ACT, and New South Wales in particular) and
internationally (e.g., Canada, Denmark, New Zealand, and Sweden).
Although unfunded, PEEL has continued for 16 years. One reason for this is
bound up in the fact that the teachers find the process of developing (very
substantially) their teaching practice and their understandings of that practice via
collaborative action-research to be extremely rewarding. Focusing on the nature
of learning allows a fruitful and feasible interaction between theory and practice
and proves to be a very effective pathway to developing new teaching practices. A
second reason for the longevity of PEEL is that the complexity of achieving
classroom change, for example, to change students’ learning behaviours, requires
concurrent changes in their beliefs about classrooms and the roles of students
and teachers. A third reason is that the project has been successful in achieving
substantial changes in how students learn. We have set out to capture and
represent features of what these teachers have learnt about stimulating and
supporting learning that is more informed, purposeful, and intellectually
active.
PEEL has involved a process that has been very successful for its participant
teachers (and academics), but sharing its findings with a wider audience of teachers
has not been simple. Questions such as: “What knowledge and advice should be
shared?” and “How should these be represented?” have increasingly been
recognized as important. These concerns have been mirrored in the growing
literature and associated debates on teacher knowledge (Fenstermacher, 1997b;
Lytle & Cochran-Smith, 1992; Richardson, 1994) as there is increasing recognition
of its complexity.
PAVOT grew out of PEEL as experienced teachers became interested in
researching their practice in systematic and organized ways so that they could share
the developments of their understanding about teaching through research with
others. For the past 6 years, PAVOT has been funded through two Large ARC
(Australian Research Council) Grants to stimulate and support teacher research. In
so doing, PAVOT has helped teachers identify and articulate their practice – to
mirror back to teachers, for their agreement, rejection, or elaboration, general-
izable descriptions of what they have reported.
PAVOT has illustrated that identifying the hidden nature of important aspects
of teacher knowledge is not easy. Identifying key aspects of teacher knowledge is a
complex and difficult task for teachers and researchers (Mitchell, 1999).
Representing and communicating this is also fraught with problems as the
constructs and vocabulary that are developed (with shared meanings), by a group
of teacher researchers may commonly be jargon to others.
Another problem of communicating the practice of teachers who have been
constantly innovating, and for whom the process of personally developing new
procedures and variations of existing procedures has been crucially empowering, is
that the representation of this practice can be seen as prescriptive, formulaic, and
hence disempowering for readers.
In PAVOT we have also struggled with these problems as we have explored ways
of attempting to capture teacher knowledge. However, we have slowly come to
recognize some particular aspects of that knowledge that carries meaning for PEEL
teachers through the development of their shared vocabulary and common
purpose in their work (focus on metacognition in student learning). For example,
an analysis of PEEL teachers’ insights into their practice (Mitchell & Mitchell,
856 JOHN LOUGHRAN ET AL.

1. Share intellectual control with students.

2. Create occasions when students can work out part (or all) of the content
or instructions.
3. Provide opportunities for choice and independent decision making.
4. Provide a diverse range of ways of experiencing success.
5. Promote talk which is exploratory, tentative, and hypothetical.
6. Encourage students to learn from other students’ questions and
comments.
7. Build a classroom environment that supports risk-taking.
8. Use a wide variety of intellectually challenging teaching procedures.
9. Use teaching procedures that are designed to promote specific aspects of
quality learning.
10. Develop students’ awareness of the big picture: how the various activities
fit together and link to the big ideas.
11. Regularly raise students’ awareness of the nature of different components
of quality learning.
12. Assess for different aspects of quality learning, not for rote learning.

Figure 1. Principles of teaching for quality learning.

1997) revealed what we described as principles of teaching for quality learning (see
Figure 1).
As the title indicates, these principles were derived from the work of
experienced PEEL teachers whose particular concern about passive student
learning and involvement in PEEL overtly, and somewhat systematically, influenced
their approach to pedagogy. They summarize features of practice that these
teachers found successful in achieving their goals.
This list was constructed by academics, even though they were working with the
teachers, which therefore framed the way the knowledge was both derived and
portrayed. The construction of the list was almost inevitable as the ideas,
information, teaching procedures, and insights from practice that the teachers
shared led to an enormous array of data from which, as researchers, it was difficult
not to describe, analyse, and categorize so that the information could be viewed,
understood, and used in an organized manner. Hence the development of these
principles could be regarded as a natural outcome of one aspect of academics’
work, but not necessarily a strong aspect of teachers’ work. Rather it is our way of
understanding the tacit knowledge that informed these teachers’ practice.
The aforementioned comments are not meant to demean the value of the list.
We believe an important value of these principles is that they are strategic in nature
– they can be applied in all subject- and year-level contexts that we have so far
examined. Moreover, they appear to provide a framework that allows teachers to
identify and articulate important and hitherto hidden aspects of their practice. The
comments about their construction simply highlight how the different roles of
teachers and researchers impact on their collaboration and these different roles
need to be acknowledged in work of this kind.
ATTEMPTING TO DOCUMENT 857

Therefore, in order to continue the process of building understandings of

teaching, we held Unpicking PEEL days in seven subject areas (Arts, English,
Library, LOTE, Maths, Science, SOSE). During these days we used the 12 principles
as a frame. The results of these Unpicking PEEL days and the mass of data that they
generated form the basis of this paper. The main focus of this paper is our
methodology for identifying and capturing professional knowledge of PEEL
teachers in ways that are valid, reliable, accessible, and useful. However, this process
was not without its problems. Even though we report on data that have been
systematically analysed, we intend to make clear how, in so doing, our initial
intention that the knowledge developed might be meaningful and useful to others
(a significant need in the research on teachers’ professional knowledge) was partly
confounded by the manner in which we attempted to portray this analysis.
We therefore hope that by documenting the nature of the development of the
methodology we used it will begin to shed more light on the importance of
teachers’ professional knowledge and also illustrate the complexity of making the
tacit explicit in meaningful ways for others, whilst also highlighting the sometimes
problematic nature of qualitative studies in education.

Developing a methodology

Unpicking PEEL days

The discussions that formed the basis of the Principles of Teaching for Quality
Learning (see Figure 1) covered a diverse range of contexts and highlighted these
teachers’ successes and failures with PEEL teaching procedures. Interestingly, these
successes and failures were not always entirely idiosyncratic and some discernible
subject dependent patterns appeared to emerge.
We decided to attempt to identify and explore the reasons for such differences
(and lack of differences) in the hope that it might advance our understandings of
learning, teaching, and classroom change. Such a study needed a large number of
teachers who: taught in a wide range of contexts; shared similar views about the
nature of quality learning; had access to a rich range of teaching ideas; were
experienced in using these ideas; shared a common vocabulary by which they could
describe their practice and analyse classroom events; were comfortable with the
role of teacher researcher; and had a sufficient level of trust to share their failures
and successes with others. The existence (for up to 16 years) of PEEL groups in
many schools provided such a group.
The Principles of Teaching for Quality Learning (see Figure 1), we believe,
offer a frame that provides sufficient focus, but also sufficient generality, to allow
the comparison of apparently disparate events. None of these principles refers to a
single teaching procedure or teacher behaviour, therefore these principles are one
way of exploring how (and/or whether) year-level, subject and teaching procedures
interacted differently in different contexts.
The Unpicking PEEL days were subject-specific workshops that looked for
differences and/or similarities across subjects and year levels. As a result of these
extensive sessions seven PAVOT working papers (PAVOT, 1999a–g) were devel-
oped. The data that comprised these working papers, we anticipated, would offer
insights about learning, and change and teaching advice that might be indicative of
858 JOHN LOUGHRAN ET AL.

the oft-spoken (but rarely described) teacher knowledge; also that it might be in a
form that was both accessible and useful to teachers.
The Unpicking PEEL days were constructed in the following manner:
1. Two PAVOT researchers worked with a group of subject specialist teachers
(up to 8 teachers at a time to form a focus group). One of the researchers
acted as facilitator for the group, the other as the scribe.
2. The facilitator worked through a semistructured protocol that involved
asking teachers to discuss: teaching procedures that they had found to be
successful/not successful in achieving the sorts of learning that comprise a
goal of PEEL; the reasons for the outcomes; specific examples of the
situations they were describing; the situations described by the other
teachers in the focus group; and to consider these instances in light of the
Principles of Teaching for Quality (i.e., if/how the particular principle(s)
were apparent/influenced their approach in the episodes being
described).
3. As teachers raised different situations, the facilitator consistently checked
the extent to which other teachers agreed/disagreed with the views being
expressed and encouraged discussion about the relationships between the
principles, year level, and particular aspects of the content being taught.
4. All discussions were audio-taped.
5. The researcher-scribe was responsible for working with the transcriptions of
the audio-tapes for their session to construct a working document to share
with the members of the group.
6. Group members were invited to comment on the document (add/delete
ideas and check the fidelity of the paper against the discussions of the
day).
7. The paper was then reformatted into a two-column table whereby the
discussions were in one column and the second column listed the teaching
procedures/principles of practice that were being raised through the
discussions.
8. These papers were then distributed amongst the participants for further
refinement to ensure the ideas and assignment of principles was in accord
with the views being expressed by those particular teachers.

Validating the working papers

The next step in our methodology was to seek responses from an extensive range
of PEEL teachers. We made copies of the working papers available to PEEL groups.
We had hoped that the working papers would encourage further interaction with
the ideas and help us to better understand how teachers were interpreting and
thinking about their teaching in light of the ideas being expressed through the
working papers. We had anticipated a vigorous interaction with the working papers
in ways similar to the discussions that had led to their development as we envisaged
the way they were framed would encourage teachers to view their own teaching in
new ways. However, we overlooked the sheer bulk of information that was
contained in the working papers and the fact that teacher research is an additional
extra for teachers. Hence we did not end up with the type of response we had
ATTEMPTING TO DOCUMENT 859

hoped for. In an attempt to overcome the low response rate to the working papers
and our desire to better understand what we were learning with the teachers we
convened two further meetings (Science and English) to determine how teachers
might interpret and make use of the working papers. In one sense, the teachers
responded positively in that the ideas in the papers were seen as thought provoking
and useful. However, the papers as a whole were overwhelming: the amount of
information in the papers was too much for teachers to easily make sense of and
raised too many important issues.

Re-presenting the knowledge in the working papers

As we reconsidered the format and information available in the working papers, we

came to the view that analysing, codifying, and summarizing the information into
a much briefer format was necessary if we were to be able to offer teachers
accessible and usable insights into teaching practice as a result of the Unpicking
PEEL days.
To do this, we constructed 12 grids for distilling these data in a manageable
form. The cells of each grid (see Table 1) contain three different forms of
statements: Assertions (A) about how that principle can apply in that subject,
Difficulties (D) that are specific to that subject and Teaching Procedures (TP) that
are particularly useful for enacting that principle in that subject. As Table 1
illustrates, we sought to conceptualize some elements of teaching particular
subjects and of making the knowledge associated with that teaching much more
explicit, and therefore accessible, to others. The Teaching Procedures listed in
these cells are typically drawn from the teaching procedures documented through
PEEL (Baird & Northfield, 1992) and are well understood and commonly used by
these teachers. The importance of these teaching procedures in this situation is
that they offer teachers concrete ways of exploring the 12 principles in ways that
allow them to better access the ideas, understandings, and features of these
principles in practice.
To construct the grids, the PAVOT Working Papers were used as a database
from which all examples of a given principle were examined (in each paper) by
each of the researchers in order to determine what (if any) assertions,
difficulties, and teaching procedures were apparent. Across all of the data each of
our individual conclusions about the assertions, difficulties, and teaching proce-
dures were then argued collectively until agreement was reached about the data
pertaining to the examples of that particular principle. The wording of assertions
and difficulties was time consuming as we tried to represent the teachers’ words
in a form that was considerably more general than the individual specific
episodes reported in the papers. We were also careful to restrict what went into
the grids to ideas that had been shared in the Unpicking PEEL days. However,
one important factor which influenced our interpretation of these data and the
synthesis into assertions, difficulties, and teaching procedures was the knowledge
drawn from 15 years of work with PEEL teachers and the recent compilation of
their extensive experiences through the amalgamation of their articles on
teaching from issues of PEEL SEEDS (PEEL teachers’ newsletter) into a more
accessible form through a CD (Mitchell, Mitchell, & McKinnon, 2000). Hence,
our analysis was informed through a type of triangulation against the experiences

Table 1. PRINCIPLE 10: Develop students’ awareness of the big picture: how the various activities fit together and link to the big
Arts
A*: Students need to see
elements of design in an
artwork
D*: The big ideas in Art
are masked by the
practical activities
Students don’t see that
Art has or needs a
theory
D: Students don’t
understand how and why
an artwork works
TP*: Discovery learning
– play around with
elements and explore
effects
TP: Find the trick used
by artists in unusual
works
A: Students need to
understand that they will
keep reusing skills/
techniques learned
D: Kids don’t recognize
the developmental and
transferable nature of
skills
Notes: * SOSE: Studies of Society and Environment; * LOTE: Languages Other Than English; * D = Difficulty; * A = Assertion; * TP = Teaching Procedure.
SOSE*
A: Teachers need to
decide what their big
ideas will be to create/
frame a big picture
D: In any particular
topic (e.g. Chinese
history) there is no
consensus in the domain
about what should be
the big ideas
TP: Concept Maps
A: Students need to see
the value in reusing
artefacts and images
from prior lessons to
build up a big picture –
linking lessons
TP: Promoting and using
student questions
TP: Wall Posters showing
prior learning
D: Teachers don’t have
their own rooms
ideas.
Maths
A: Students need to see
beyond the algorithms
D: The maths is masked
by the algorithms, so
student conception of
Maths is often as a set of
algorithms
TP: Finding patterns/
What’s my rule?
TP: Translation tasks
(e.g. turn an equation
into words)
TP: Maps of advance
organizers
A: Teachers need to help
students make links to
prior learning
D: Students don’t
conceive that knowledge
will be reused
TP: Brainstorm all you
know about a topic
TP: Students develop a
hierarchy or sequence of
topics and subtopics
LOTE*
A: Students need to
understand that there
are major structural
differences between
languages
TP: Discussion about
frustrations of learning a
new language
A: Students need to see
that language is not
divided up into neat
packages but is
cumulative
All previous learning is
constantly reused
D: Students not used to
linking (e.g. a lesson on
numbers is relevant to a
later task on dates)
English
A: Students need to
appreciate that most
forms of text have an
organizational structure
D: Students don’t look
for a structure when
reading or constructing
a text
TP: Essay structure
strategies – e.g. Points to
Paragraphs
D: Writing involves using
so many multiple
understandings of
language simultaneously
that students cannot
access many skills they
have learned in isolation
A: There is a value in
reusing artefacts from
prior lessons to build up
a big picture
860
Science
D: The big ideas behind
Science practical work
are masked by the
demands of doing the
task
A: Teachers need to help
students see the big
picture behind practical
work
D: It does not occur to
students that theory and
practical lessons could
be linked
A: Teachers need to
build linking into
practical work
TP: Preliminary thinking
tasks
TP: Students work out
some/all of the design
JOHN LOUGHRAN ET AL.
ATTEMPTING TO DOCUMENT 861

documented on the CD that in many ways typifies the way PEEL teachers teach
to develop their students’ metacognition.
The grids are not meant to represent the only or the right knowledge about
teaching particular subject matter. They are meant to be illustrative of the type of rich
knowledge that influences the practice of experienced PEEL teachers. We also
contend that the (often) tacit knowledge of teaching is more readily articulable when
a meaningful frame (in this case the Principles of Teaching for Quality Learning) is
used as a focus for unpacking teaching in order to distill the knowledge of practice
that is so often inaccessible. It offers an opportunity to make explicit the influences,
information, and ideas that shape teachers’ pedagogical reasoning.
As the construction of the grids is drawn from the data developed through
teachers’ discussions about their own teaching, it seems reasonable to suggest that
these grids offer one way of considering some of the features that influence a
teacher’s pedagogical reasoning when teaching particular content. To illustrate this
point, we offer the following example from the English grid that is intended to
illustrate the way these three forms (Assertion, Difficulty, Teaching Procedure) play
out in practice. Many English (PEEL) teachers have noted that their students do
not seem to internalize the structures of texts – they know that they teach and
reteach text structures from sentences to paragraphs to whole texts such as short
stories, essays, and instructions, only to find that students “forget” what they
supposedly learnt very quickly – especially from one year to the next. These English
teachers have also recognized that students struggle to transfer knowledge about
structures from one subject to another; for example, applying their knowledge
from English about essay structure to similar writing in History. In such cases,
English teachers typically become frustrated and tend to blame themselves as they,
“fall easily into the habit of thinking they are both the cause of, and the solution to,
all the problems that arise in their classroom” (Brookfield, 1995, p. 202). However,
what they do not seem to do is address the issue by using teaching procedures that
help students internalize, and therefore remember, these structures. Interestingly,
the English teachers who participated in the English Unpicking PEEL meeting
discussed this issue at length.
Drawing on the discussion which developed when considering Principle 10
(Develop students’ awareness of the big picture: how the various activities fit
together and link to the big ideas) the following Assertion was apparent: there is a
need for students to appreciate that most forms of text have an organizational
structure. For many English teachers this statement will seem, on the surface,
obvious – as teachers they know that most texts have predictable organizational
structures. However, they may not appreciate the extent to which students do not
understand this “big idea.” Hence there was recognition of a Difficulty associated
with this assertion: students do not tend to look for a structure when reading or
constructing a text.
Therefore, the big idea that is important for students to see and respond to is
that most texts (with some notable exceptions) have a predictable structure, and
that if they understand the structure for each type of text (such as the standard five-
paragraph essay, or a set of instructions) they can readily reproduce the structure
themselves. Sadly, for many students, the act of writing a text is a hit-and-miss affair
as if each time is a new beginning with little idea of how to start or how to proceed.
Hence English teachers are consistently confronted by students’ reluctance to plan
their writing, as they do not have a structure on which to hang their ideas.
862 JOHN LOUGHRAN ET AL.

From this Assertion of the big idea of text structure, and the related Difficulty,
we moved to Teaching Procedures that might help both elaborate and address the
situation. The Teaching Procedures then show how the big idea can be played out
in practice. Students need to be taught generic procedures for understanding
different text structures that can be applied in any situation in which they are
required to write or read a certain type of text. For example, the Teaching
Procedures of Points to Paragraphs (whereby the main points of an essay become
the individual paragraphs for that essay) can be used to structure a typical five-
paragraph essay. Short Story structure, and other genre structures (such as for
Instructions, a Report, a Speech etc.) can be taught to students so that they build
up a repertoire of these structures for their own use. In terms of reading texts, a
teaching procedure such as Structured Thinking helps students see structures in
poetry, and Reading Logs (for full explanations of these teaching procedures see
CD – Mitchell et al., 2000) can help students see the structure of a novel or play.
It is important that teachers use these teaching procedures many times with
many texts, and link them back to the big idea that, generally speaking, texts do
conform to predictable structures. Another Difficulty that was raised in this
discussion was that the teaching procedures may seem to be very formulaic and
restrictive. However, different students need different levels of scaffolding and
teachers teaching students with poor to average literacy skills would agree that not
to teach these structures is to disadvantage their students. For many students, the
only access they will have to learning about the way culturally valued texts work is
in the classroom and this knowledge is widely regarded as important “cultural
capital” in a literate society. In the end, access to prestigious further education
depends on understanding and mastery of the kind of “essay-text” (Gee, 1992)
literacy valued in our society.
It is important to note that these teaching procedures, like most PEEL
procedures, are a means to an end. The aim is for students to internalize the
learning, and once having mastered the structures of various text types, and having
internalized the big idea that texts do have structures, they can move beyond the
somewhat formulaic nature of the procedures to create imaginative and original
texts by moving beyond the genre boundaries and blurring or blending genres.
Some students may move to this stage quickly, whereas others may never move
beyond the procedure itself. However, this is the type of dilemma that teachers
continually manage in their practice and it is the linking of this often tacit
knowledge of practice to the articulation of a professional knowledge base of
teaching that is a catalyst for the research approach developed in this study.
The creation of the grids, then, is one way of illustrating this knowledge to
others and our task now is to examine whether or not this form of presentation is
accessible, meaningful, and useful to others.

Responding to the grids

Table 2 is one example of one group of PAVOT English teachers’ knowledge about
their own practice. As noted earlier, the notion of expressing this knowledge in
terms of assertions, teaching procedures, and difficulties is one that emerged for us
as we attempted to analyse the mass of data with which we were working. We were
very conscious that, in constructing the grids, we were active players in the
ATTEMPTING TO DOCUMENT 863

processes of generating knowledge. The next step of our process was to re-present
our representations to PEEL teachers as a validity check.
In order to begin to investigate the usefulness of the grids for teachers we
invited five English teachers (four females, one male), all of whom were
experienced in PEEL, to meet for a day. After explaining the origins of the grid
shown in Table 2 we asked them to engage in a “Write on the Reading.”1 There was
considerable writing, but the body language was quite negative as it appeared as
though the teachers did not find the documents all that inviting. One teacher’s
response to the document was, “Oh God, I have been out of a PEEL group for two
years and I am not used to thinking in these sorts of terms.” The one teacher
(Rachael) who did find the document friendly had actually been at the Unpicking
English day from which the working paper and the eventual grid had been
created.
After they had completed the writing on the reading, we asked whether they
agreed or disagreed with the assertions; they did not seem to care – the assertions
did not appear to spark a great intellectual response. We began to discuss some of
the assertions under the first three principles. It soon became clear that, in the
process of constructing the grid, the tensions and dilemmas that underpinned the
classroom events which had led to the assertions had been stripped away.
Therefore, in the grid, the assertions alone had lost their context and in so doing
had lost their ability to convey real meaning to the participants. It was when one
teacher started talking, with much more interest, about how some of the principles
could affect her practice that we realized how the layout of Table 2 had
inadvertently obscured the importance of the 12 principles as organizing ideas.
We then asked the participants to focus on the difficulties under Principle 2 and
to consider whether they resonated with their practice and, if so, how they would
respond to each. The shift in engagement was palpable, as these statements
appeared to capture important issues in their own practice. Unlike the assertions,
the difficulties made explicit some hitherto tacit aspects of teachers’ professional
knowledge in ways that encouraged them to invest the intellectual energy needed
for Table 2 to be useful.
Encouraged, we moved to the first difficulty under Principle 3 about
constructing text in groups (this was linked to the first “D” and “A” under Principle
4). This sparked none of the interest and engagement we had just witnessed and
the discussion immediately fell flat. The reason for this shift was that on the
Unpicking PEEL day all of the (rich) discussion in this area had been sparked by
the report of one teacher (Kerry) about a series of dramatic events where she had
allowed her students to construct text in groups in a way very different from any of
her previous practice.
As the teachers on the original day heard Kerry’s story (Fernandez & Mitchell,
2002), they were able to identify with the issues. However, Kerry’s actions were
unusual and outside the experiences of the teachers on this second day. Without
her story, the difficulty did not resonate with practice and so was uninteresting.
However, the exception again was Rachael – she recalled Kerry’s story clearly and
was interested in the statements just discussed.
The discussion drifted into the hotseat procedure (the next entry in column 4)
and suddenly took off again. Hotseat is a procedure for text analysis where one
student sits in front of the class and takes on the role of character (e.g., Lady
Macbeth) in the text. The other students interrogate her about her actions or
 864
Table 2. English grid of interpretations of practice viewed through the lens of the principles of teaching for quality learning

1. Share intellectual 2. Look for occasions 3. Provide opportunities 4). Provide diverse range 5. Promote talk which is 6. Encourage students to
control with students when students can work for independent of ways of experiencing exploratory, tentative, listen seriously to other
over both teaching and out part or all of the decision making success and hypothetical (5-talk) students’ questions and
assessment content comments (6-talk)
A: Students need to be A1: Content does not TP: Constructing a text D: Most school writing is A: Text interpretation is D: Most school writing
taught a range of have the same “agreed” in groups done in silence and now recognized as a tasks assume that writing
language devices and meaning as in for A: There are a number alone and this alienates divergent process where is an individual activity,
how they work to make example, Science of choices English some students students bring their own which is boring and
informed decisions in It is about constructing teachers provide about A: Allowing group ideas and experiences to difficult for many
making their own texts – and justifying personal writing (topic, genre) construction of texts has the text students
or in interpreting the meaning for both but it is uncommon for benefits e.g. better TP: Role plays, Hotseat, A: Students respond
texts of others interpreting and creating students to have product, students valuing Question asking, Future differently to
texts independence in terms work and rewarding wheel, Rewrite in collaborative writing
D1: Students and of how they will construct students who have Author’s Style tasks For these to be
teachers may see the a text (groups or alone) interpersonal and oral successful, there is a
teacher’s meaning is the D: Constructing text in strengths need for 6-talk
content they have to groups does raise A: The nature of text TP: Hotseat,
learn classroom management response/interpretation Collaborative writing
A: The process of and assessment issues is enhanced by oral task, Role Play
meaning-making is A: There is a constant activities thus giving
almost more important dilemma to be managed success to more students
than the final product between providing TP: Role Play, Hotseat
D: It is a big step for students with scaffolds
most students to for both writing and
understand the value of interpreting texts and
the processes of imposing a structure that
planning and editing denies choice and
TP: Question-asking, creativity
Mind Maps, Venn TP: Points to Paragraphs

JOHN LOUGHRAN ET AL.

diagrams, Fortune Lines D: The teacher needs to
recognize that what for
one student is a
necessary scaffold may
stifle creativity for
another
TP: Students selecting
own assessment criteria
for a piece of their text
 ATTEMPTING TO DOCUMENT
Table 2. Continued

*Other: Other: Other: Other: Other:

At younger year levels it English A1 and D1 also If more than one Teacher needs to delay A: To build 6-talk
is hard to carry apply in History student contributes to a judgement and build requires a sustained
discussion over a series product teachers trusts effort and training
of lessons struggle with the Teachers cannot A: 5-talk precedes 6-talk
Sharing intellectual assessment demands mandate this kind of talk **F: Features of
control over lessons is Need to teach students procedures that
much more effective is how to do it encourage 6-talk:
but hard to achieve Assessment issues: • Task can’t be broken
Small-group tasks where into things individuals
students have genuine can do – e.g. role play
choice encourages 5-talk • Hotseat – student is at
Promoting genuine the centre of the
5-talk requires some discussion
constraints and limits as D: Age dependent
well as choice problems can occur –
e.g. peer group agendas
and roles
Principle six requires
constructive
disagreement – i.e. it
involves arguments and
justifications based on
the constraints of the
task (include example
here)

865

7. Build a classroom
environment that
supports risk-taking
TP: Hotseat
F: Tasks that require
students to construct
responses to questions
and challenges without
notice carry a high risk
type 3 (see below)
D: To build an
understanding that the
task is not a
performance but an
examination of the
content in context
A: Building the
environment for risk-
taking requires building
trusts
A: Building the
environment requires
modelling of ‘hotseat’
behaviours by initial risk-
takers
Table 2. Continued
8. Use a wide variety of 9. Specifically target 10. Develop students’
intellectually challenging different components of awareness of the big
teaching procedures passive learning and the picture; how the various
corresponding aspects of activities fit together and
quality learning link to the big ideas
A: Responding to a A: Need for students to
writing task by telling appreciate that most
everything they know/ forms of text have an
remember about a topic organizational structure
(knowledge-telling, Non- D: Students don’t look
reflective retrieval) is for a structure when
common reading or constructing
TP: Points to paragraphs a text
TP: Essay structure –
Points to paragraphs
START
A: There is a value in
reusing artefacts and
images from prior
lessons to build up a big
picture – linking lessons
and with previous years’
work
TP: Student Questions,
Posters
D: Teachers don’t have
their own rooms
A big big picture – how and
why language works
866
11. Regularly raise 12. Assess for different
students’ awareness of aspects of quality
the nature of learning, not for rote
components of quality learning
learning
TP: Response questions A: Assessment of student
(writer to reader) writing is commonly
TP: Writing with a right- continuous and is more
hand column interwoven into
TP: Structured Thinking classroom activities in
TP: Reading Log English than in most
A: Teachers constantly other subjects
battle students’ lack of A: Teaching students to
being metacognitive plan, revise, edit and
while drafting and proofread all involve
redrafting higher order self-
D: Because English assessment
language is not new and
strange it is harder to
identify new knowledge
JOHN LOUGHRAN ET AL.
D: Debriefing about the
learning involved in
writing experiences is
not easy
We never see the
thinking that happens
when people write
 ATTEMPTING TO DOCUMENT
Table 2. Continued

Other: Other:
Examine different ways A: Students have scripts
NEXT TIME (next created by teachers for
Unpicking day) by every subject
exploring the social Teachers need to
nature of teaching and recognize and challenge
learning, how teachers scripts where they limit
set up the environment, quality learning
how they introduce new D: Hard to recognize
procedures, how they scripts as an insider
“train” students to be (student or teacher)
ready to accept/see the A: Recognizing the
value in new approaches learning that occurs as a
What teacher behaviours result of a script helps a
do they display? teacher decide whether,
Four types of Risk: when and how to
1. Assessment-influenced challenge a script
risks – if I take the
risk how might it
affect my grade?
2. Peer-group-influenced
risks – if I take the
risk, what will my
friends say/do?
3. Personal risk – will I
risk doing what I feel
I can’t do yet?
4. Teacher risk – if I
take a risk, how will
my teacher react? Will
I be ridiculed/put
down?
• In future look for tasks
that build 1 and 3, 2 is
likely to not be subject
dependent in the way
that 2 and 3 might be

867
Notes: * Other – refers to issues of the principle that apply to other content areas/contexts; ** F – refers to features of the principle/procedures that need to be apprehended.
868 JOHN LOUGHRAN ET AL.

motivations and the student in the hotseat must respond “in character.” All of the
teachers present had used this and there was a rich discussion of how different
variations could serve different purposes – the phrase “hotseat procedure”
connected with the practice of these PEEL teachers, who were used to discussing
generic procedures.
Learning from these events, we asked the teachers to revisit the grid and grade
each of the assertions and difficulties on a three-point scale of importance in
relation to their own practice. This worked much better than the writing on the
reading as the teachers made an effort to try and locate each statement in their own
practice. The ensuing discussions were prolonged, vigorous, and stimulating. An
interesting outcome of this process was that teachers were actually building
meaning for the assertions by linking them to their own practice.
When asked about the value of the day for their future practice, four of the five
teachers made positive and emphatic statements; the fifth said she was unsure. This
valuing, however, was clearly linked to the way we had constructed and altered the
running of the day. It was clear that the grid in Table 2 did not fully capture or
represent that which might be termed teachers’ professional knowledge.
We had tried to produce a document that would allow (teacher) readers to scan
the range of issues in the unpicking PEEL papers and select one or two at a time
to focus on. To do this on one page meant eliminating examples, stories, and cases
(whose importance was well known to us) and this diminished the value of the text.
The assertions and difficulties were of very little interest to these teachers unless
they could connect them to aspects of practice that were perceived as both
important and problematic (either their own practice or authentic accounts from
others). Further, these teachers were unused to seeing professional knowledge
represented in the more general ways (as per Table 2) so it took considerable
energy and effort for the teachers to engage with these sorts of statements.
However, once the links were made, the ideas in Table 2 were useful and
stimulating. It appeared to us that the more the statements embodied possibilities
for action that teachers could take to improve their practice, the more the reader
was likely to invest the effort needed to use them.

Understanding teachers’ professional knowledge

In the literature on teachers’ professional knowledge there is little argument about

whether or not it exists – there is a common acceptance of it as a construct.
However, it is difficult to find concrete examples of what it might look like and how
it might be readily portrayed for others, by either teachers or academics.
In the teaching profession itself it seems rare for teachers to generally consider
what they know about their teaching in ways that might be documented and
portrayed through text. Rather, their understanding – and hence their professional
knowledge base – continues to be dominated by the sharing of teaching
experiences, critical incidents, and specific incidents, within which knowledge of
practice is implicitly embedded. Therefore, it seems reasonable to assert that more
often than not it is up to the individual teachers to draw their own conclusions
about a particular instance from another’s telling of that incident, rather than to
have supplied some form of knowledge claim that is supported by generalizable
statements based on reproducible events and experiences.
ATTEMPTING TO DOCUMENT 869

The influences that shape teacher’s lives and that move teachers’ actions
are . . . more likely to be found in a complex web of formative memories
and experiences . . . the most significant and most deeply embedded
influences that operate on us are the images, models, and conceptions of
teaching derived from our own experiences as learners. (Brookfield, 1995,
p. 49)
In our situation, then, these teachers’ lack of familiarity with what the grids
contained and the inherent purpose of setting out information in this way
needed to be clearly addressed before a genuine exploration of the knowledge
within the grids could be examined.
It appears to us at this stage that in sessions where the grids are examined
there is a progression through phases of understanding whereby initial teacher
discomfort with information presented as text and in a prescribed form (grid)
slowly gives way to a recognition of the purpose of such text, eventually leading
to engagement in the information in ways that begin to illustrate its validity (or
otherwise) for participants within that subject area.
One example of how the information in the grids might be informative for
teachers is illustrated through the following episode.
At a recent meeting, discussions and results from Unpicking PEEL days
were being reported to teachers. One of the issues highlighted through the
results was the difference in the importance and use of students’ questions.
Both science and SOSE (studies of society and environment) teachers said
that they regularly made extensive use of student questions, as these
questions commonly raised issues that the teacher wanted to deal with
anyway. Importantly, in approaching questions in this way it provided ways
into these issues that were more interesting and engaging for the students.
The mathematics teachers said that, while they also promoted student
questioning, it was much less common for such questions to determine the
direction of a unit and to engage the rest of the class. The reason was that,
while good questions in Science and SOSE often took the work sideways –
opening up a new area to be explored – good questions in Mathematics
often led to increasing the difficulty in the content and were therefore less
likely to be interesting to other students. This insight was offered to see if
it was of any interest to other teachers in the session. An experienced
elementary teacher researcher immediately responded that, as a teacher
who had to teach all three of these subjects, she found this insight
extremely interesting; she said it helped her understand in a new and
useful way why she often found difficulty in generating in mathematics the
same good learning that she did in other subjects. Now that she was aware
of this aspect of the problem she felt better placed to try and do
something about it.
If the grids are one way of conceptualizing teachers’ professional knowledge (in
this case in specific subjects), then insights within the areas may not only be
helpful for teachers of that content, but, as in the case of the episode above, be
helpful to others. The grids, then, may well represent one way of distilling,
articulating, documenting, and sharing teachers’ professional knowledge in a
usable form, but users of such knowledge need to be familiar with its form and
870 JOHN LOUGHRAN ET AL.

to see value in representing knowledge in such a way. This valuing is an issue

that needs to be to the fore in thinking about teachers’ knowledge and how it
might be represented.
Shulman (1986, 1987) confronted the need to better understand and value
teachers’ knowledge and also pointed out that a serious problem in education
was the “collective amnesia” of the profession – skilled teachers do not
document and share the important wisdom they build up over their professional
lifetime. Barnes (1992) highlighted the manner in which teachers react to events
using very complex analytic frames, but current descriptions of teacher knowl-
edge written by academics do not always reflect this complexity.

Conclusion

In the present literature, there are increasing acknowledgments of the importance

of teacher knowledge, but these descriptions tend to list (worthy) goals – e.g.,
stimulate a love of learning, build a democratic classroom – but do not explore the
teaching skills or the understanding that informs these skills. These skills seem to
be in what Schön (1987) called a “junk” category – too elusive to document, hence
outside what is researchable. Grimmett and Mackinnon (1992) described a need
for ways by which “crafty” teachers could share their experience. In terms of what
teacher knowledge might look like in theory and practice though, we believe it is
something that is still quite elusive.
Our experiences through PAVOT have emphasized how much of teacher
wisdom is tacit and that practitioners therefore know a great deal that they have
never even tried to articulate (Shulman, 1987). However, it has also illustrated that
when tacit knowledge is made explicit there is a rich array of information, ideas,
and understandings that inform teachers’ practice. How that knowledge might be
made more explicit for the profession is an area of research that requires
considerable work. Illustrating the scholarship of teaching requires documenting
and sharing this knowledge in ways that move beyond the normal discourse
associated with the telling and retelling of classroom episodes and critical events.
Both teachers and academics need to see this professional knowledge so that
teaching can be better understood. In so doing this might lead to a situation
whereby that which informs practice might be better recognized, valued, and used
by teachers.
Clearly, then, an important frame for the research effort we have reported in
this paper is the need to retain and effectively circulate the insights gained through
successful collaborative teacher research (in this case, PEEL groups). One
important aspect of such work is in the value of minimizing the “reinventing of the
wheel” that so often appears to be one result of the paucity of articulable forms of
teachers’ professional knowledge. PAVOT has been attempting to extrapolate
useful and transferable knowledge in ways that might be accessible to teachers and,
although in this paper we report only on the English grid, we have constructed
similar grids from the other Unpicking PEEL Working Papers.
Interestingly, although our intentions were specifically linked to the notion of
capturing and portraying teachers’ professional knowledge, and the grid system did
this for us as academics, for the teachers, the relatively decontextualized explication
of their professional knowledge through the grids initially distanced them from the
ATTEMPTING TO DOCUMENT 871

knowledge. Therefore, although the grids could offer a generalized overview of

some aspects of teachers’ professional knowledge, the real meaning was not carried
until the knowledge was recontextualized through appropriate linking of the
assertions, difficulties, and teaching procedures to the individual’s own practice.
For us, this is a most important outcome of the development of this
methodology. If teachers’ professional knowledge is to be documented and
portrayed, although this methodology might be applicable, it can clearly not be
viewed as something that can simply “stand alone.” This then has important
implications for areas that have a need to access teachers’ professional knowledge
in documentable forms. For example, in teacher preparation programs, it can be
very tempting for some to lay out that which is considered “necessary” for
beginning teachers to come to understand teaching, yet, in some respects, the grid
methodology gives access to some aspects of this knowledge. However, in so doing,
the loss of context and the need to tie the knowledge to individual practice is
crucial in making the knowledge useful and usable.
For teacher educators, then, the grid methodology might offer ways of
examining some of the big ideas of professional knowledge in a particular subject
area (in the example outlined in this paper, English). In so doing, student teachers
might come to understand (and begin to learn through its application) one frame
for considering the construction of their own practice and perhaps offer powerful
ways of interpreting that knowledge in action through their school supervising
teachers’ practice.
For the profession generally, the grid methodology is an opportunity to consider
concrete examples of teachers’ professional knowledge in ways that could make
access to specific examples of practice more meaningful and more informing. If this
were the case, the development of knowledge might be conceptualized within a
framework that carries significance and more specific direction for the individual
and begin to minimize the feeling that one is continually “reinventing the wheel.”
However, the methodology outlined in this paper also highlights the difficulty of
attempting to capture, categorize, and portray, through qualitative studies, the very
complex interactions of teaching and learning. There is a need to continually reflect
on the ways that, as researchers, we attempt to examine our knowledge building so
that we do not allow analysis to inadvertently dictate the forms of the resultant
outcomes and decontextualize that which is important in carrying meaning for the
end users of the knowledge itself.

Editor’s acknowledgement

This manuscript was accepted by the Australia and New Zealand Regional Editor,
Bronwyn Davies, School of Education, James Cook University of North Queens-
land, Townsville, Queensland 4811, Australia. Email: Bronwyn.Davies@uws.edu.au

Note

1. The procedure requires participants to respond to a piece of writing by “talking back” to the writer.
It helps the reader pay particular attention to passages of text that they may find difficult/intriguing/
curious etc. It also enhances one’s ability to contribute to discussion. On a copy of the text, preferably
with a wide blank border around it, participants read and write their responses in the same way as they
872 JOHN LOUGHRAN ET AL.

might respond to a speaker who could answer them. They write these responses in the blank margins.
Examples of types of responses are questions, requests for clarification or further information,
disagreement or agreement, and links to other work and their own lives.

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