THE KNOWLEDGE-BASE FOR BEGINNING TEACHERS - EDUCATION PROFESSIONALS EXPECTATIONS VERSUS RESEARCH FINDINGS ON LEARNING TO TEACH

What should a newly licensed teacher know and be able to do? In this a rticle, I discuss findings from 5 studies undertaken by Educational Te sting Service to elicit judgments from education professionals (teache rs, teacher educators, state department officials) regarding this ques tion. The studies detail teaching tasks and knowledge/skills in 4 doma ins (general principles of teaching and learning, content, content-spe cific pedagogy, and enabling skills [e.g., reading and computational s kills]). Results indicate that respondents considered most of the iden tified teaching tasks and knowledge/skills to be important. I then pre sent findings from a review of the learning-to-teach literature; these findings suggest that beginners may not have all of the understanding s and skills expected by education professionals. In the final section of the article, practitioners' expectations are contrasted with the r esearch findings on beginning teaching, and the implications of this q uandary for teacher education, induction, and assessment for Licensure are discussed.