Constructing New Forms of Teaching: Subject Matter Knowledge in Inservice Teacher Education

The authors analyze how the staff of Summer Math for Teachers and the Writing Project, two inservice programs designed to help elementary school teachers develop constructivist teaching practices, construed the programs' subject matter and the role that subject matter knowledge was assigned relative to other kinds of knowledge and skill in helping participating teachers learn to teach mathematics or writing in radically different ways. The analysis showed that the programs' reformist pedagogy is based on a principled conception of the subject matter but developing teachers' subject matter knowledge was not an explicit objective. The authors conclude that research is needed to determine whether effective constructivist teaching, as characterized by the inservice programs, depends on the depth of teachers' subject matter knowledge.