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 article, I discuss findings from 5 studies undertaken by Educational Testing Service to elicit judgments from education professionals (teachers, teacher educators, state department officials) regarding this question. The studies detail teaching tasks and knowledge/skills in 4 domains (general principles of teaching and learning, content, content-specific pedagogy, and enabling skills [e. g., reading and computational skills]). Results indicate that respondents considered most of the identified teaching tasks and knowledge/skills to be important. I then present findings from a review of the learning-to-teach literature; these findings suggest that beginners may not have all of the understandings and skills expected by education professionals. In the final section of the article, practitioners' expectations are contrasted with the research findings on beginning teaching, and the implications of this quandary for teacher education, induction, and assessment for licensure are discussed.