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Teachers generally first learn about students during their preservice training. The secondhand or thirdhand knowledge they acquire at that time consists largely of psychological analyses of the learning characteristics of various populations of students, differentiated by race, gender, and class. This body of knowledge is the legacy of educational research, which until recently has been heavily influenced by behavioral psychology and positivism. Teachers may leave the university under the assumption that they know all they need to know about the students they will be teaching.
Cathy Amanti (Sat,) studied this question.