Drake, Land, & Tyminski Using Educative Curriculum Materials to Support the Development of Prospective Teachers' Knowledge

Drake, C., Land, T. J., & Tyminski, A. M. (2014). Using educative curriculum materials to support the development of prospective teachers’ knowledge. Educational Researcher, 43(3), 154-162.

Summary: The authors give design principles for courses in preservice teacher education.

The authors cite Shulman’s (1986) vision of curricular knowledge as including knowledge about and awareness of available materials but also the knowledge of how to use those materials to make informed decisions.

Design Principles (listed on pp. 159-160):

1. PSTs need opportunities to learn that curriculum materials contain educative features to support teacher learning, as well as student learning, and to orient themselves to reading these materials in ways that attend to the educative features.
2. PSTS require tools to serve as lenses through which the educative features of curriculum materials can be read, understood, evaluated, and adapted.
3. PSTs require scaffolds to prompt the development of multiple knowledge bases through the use of curriculum materials.
4. PSTs need to examine multiple lessons and units in order to identify and understand the development of content over time.
5. PSTs need experiences reading across a variety of curriculum materials in order to compare and contrast the treatment of content.

MY THOUGHTS – It would be helpful to know what practices/strategies can be used to effectively implement these design principles, especially in the clinical context.