Pedagogical Equilibrium as a Lens for Understanding Teaching about Teaching

ABSTRACT

Articulating the complexity of teachers’ professional knowledge development is complicated but highly desirable. Exploration of dilemmas, which interrupt teaching practice, offers the opportunity to view teachers’ professional knowledge in action as interruptions signal the limits of knowledge. Transitioning from science teacher to science teacher educator was complicated for me, mostly because these contexts are quite different and the knowledge base for teaching science is different from the knowledge required for teaching about teaching. Pedagogical equilibrium offers a new way of framing and articulating teachers’ knowledge development and was a valuable means of capturing, framing, and understanding my knowledge development as a beginning teacher educator. Drawing on interruptions in practice that challenged my sense of pedagogical equilibrium offered the opportunity to frame and document learning productively. Doing so played out in three distinct ways. Recognizing challenges to pedagogical equilibrium by feelings of uncertainty led to problem setting as a way of moving forward. This enabled testing modes of action. Framing knowledge development in this way values moments that create unrest as highly personalized opportunities for professional learning.

KEYWORDS:

• Teacher professional knowledge
• uncertainty
• pedagogical equilibrium
• dilemma
• pedagogy of teacher education

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.