Md. Osborne, TEACHER AS KNOWER AND LEARNER - REFLECTIONS ON SITUATED KNOWLEDGE IN SCIENCE TEACHING, Journal of research in science teaching, 35(4), 1998, pp. 427-439
I argue from an understanding of current feminist philosophy that a te
acher's practice reflects changing experiences, knowledge, values, and
identities, and a such can be productively thought of as a site for l
earning as much as a site for expounding upon what is known. This sugg
ests a vision for what constitutes effective practice different from t
hat commonly held in science. I argue that praxis proceeds from the pe
rsonal epistemological standpoints of the teacher (defined as standpoi
nt theory). This knowledge is only partially applicable to particular
situations in the classroom. The hallmark of feminist pedagogy, if con
ceptualized as derivative from standpoint theory, is to ''take everyda
y life as problematic'' (Smith, 1991, p. 88). Implicit in such a conce
ptualization is that pedagogy starts from an explicit recognition of e
veryday life and both builds from and questions that beginning. This i
s true for students and also for the teacher, and is the root of my cl
aim that through teaching, the teacher becomes a learner. The immediat
e circumstances in which teaching occurs present different and unique
qualities from those in which the teacher's knowledge and value were c
reated. As a teacher, I am therefore continuously confronted with the
inadequacy of my knowledge. The circumstances and children's activitie
s tell me that I need to do things differently. In this situation, the
act of teaching as an assertion of knowing becomes a recognition of n
ot-knowing. Teaching becomes an occasion for learning about subject ma
tter, children, and self. I recount an example of teaching in a first-
grade classroom to give this argument substance. This story is an exam
ple from my own teaching in which parallels between scientific theoriz
ing and storytelling are drawn and capitalized upon as a vehicle for c
ritical thinking in science. This became an occasion for reflecting up
on the appropriateness of those values because of the multicultural qu
alities of the classroom.