WHY STAYING ONE CHAPTER AHEAD DOESN'T REALLY WORK: SUBJECT-SPECIFIC PEDAGOGY

Abstract

SUBJECT-SPECIFIC PEDAGOGY G. Williamson McDiarmid, Deborah Loewenberg Ball, and Charles W. Anderson When most prospective teachers enter formal teacher education, they view the teacher's role as telling pupils what they need to know and giving them practice in it. They tend to assume that learning means accruing information and that the teacher's main task is to motivate pupils and to get them to pay attention. Toward that end, prospective teachers tend to focus on making learning fun (Ball, 1988a). Prospective teachers also tend to assume that, to find out if pupils have learned, teachers need only ask them to restate or perform what they have been taught (Feiman-Nemser, McDiarmid, Melnick, and Parker, 1987). That prospective teachers hold these images of teaching, learning, and the teacher's role is not surprising. While other views have been around for some time and while a few teachers have held and acted on these alternative views, telling and accruing information have dominated U.S. classrooms from the inception of the common school (Cohen, in press; Cuban,