Teaching Knowledge: the lights that teachers live by

Abstract Although schoolteachers are appointed to a particular office, it is unclear whether much of what they know is special: restricted to role incumbents and exceptional, or marked off by character or degree from ordinary knowledge and common sense. This paper introduces four categories of teaching knowledge: the ‘folkways of teaching’, local mores’, ‘private views’, and ‘teaching expertise’. The folkways of teaching describe ‘teaching as usual’, learned and practised in the half‐conscious way in which people go about their everyday lives. Local mores constitute teaching knowledge held like the folkways and mostly based on them, yet local mores are more variable and often articulated as maxims or missions. Teachers’ private views are personally compelling, arising from the peculiar experiences and characteristics of individuals. What marks off teaching expertise from the other categories is less what associated knowledge is about than how it is held and used. Although it can build on the folkways, teaching expertise goes beyond their mastery or skilled performance by including judgments of appropriateness and testing of consequences and less typical modes of practice, such as discussion and the deliberate management of dilemmas. This paper analyses the folkways of teaching’, arguing that they are known by acquaintance, through participation, and as common sense.