Stanford Teacher Education Program Curriculum Units

The Teaching of Subject Matter
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Subject matter
Pedagogical content knowledge
Curriculum resources and technologies

First of all, teachers need to understand subject matter in ways that allow them to organize it so that students can create useful cognitive maps of the terrain. They need to understand the core ideas in a discipline and how these help to structure knowledge, how they relate to one another, and how they can be tested, evaluated, and extended. Teachers also need to be able to use their knowledge of subject matter flexibly to address ideas as they come up in the course of learning. They need to understand how inquiry in a field is conducted and what reasoning entails -- such as what counts as "proving" something in mathematics as compared with proving something in history (Ball & Cohen, 1999). And they need to see ways that ideas connect across fields, and to everyday life, so that they can select and use examples, problems, and applications well.

A deep and flexible understanding of subject matter provides a foundation for pedagogical content knowledge (Shulman, 1987), which enables educators to represent ideas so that they are accessible to others. Knowledge of the content is critical: teachers need to understand what ideas can provide important foundations for other ideas and how they can be usefully linked and assembled. The audience is also key: people will understand ideas differently depending on their prior experiences and context. A skillful pedagogue figures out what a particular audience is likely to know and believe about the topic under study, and how learners are likely to "hook into" new ideas, so as to create productive learning experiences.

Teachers also need to know about curriculum resources and technologies in order to connect their students with sources of information and knowledge that extend beyond textbooks and that allow for the exploration of ideas, the acquisition and synthesis of information, and the development of models, writings, designs, and other work products. The role of the 21st century teacher is to help students learn to find and use a wide array of resources for framing and solving problems, rather than to remember only the information contained in one source. Using these resources well requires a command of teaching strategies that address a variety of ways to learn and a variety of purposefully selected goals for learning. Strategies that regularly use multiple pathways to content are a major part of a teacher's repertoire.

STEP students build these abilities on the foundation of a strong content background. Most STEP students enter the post-baccalaureate teacher education program having completed a bachelor's degree from an accredited college or university with a cumulative grade average of at least 3.0 and a major or concentration in the discipline to be taught (English, Foreign Languages, Mathematics, Social Studies, or Science). Where there are needs for additional content study, advisors develop individual plans for access to subject matter courses and other content inquiry. STEP students then develop a deep grounding in content pedagogy through a 3-quarter (9 month) sequence of "Curriculum and Instruction" (C&I) courses within their content area. This work helps them develop strategies for organizing curriculum and for teaching core concepts and modes of inquiry in the disciplines. The C&I sequence is, in many ways, the centerpiece of the learning process for STEP students. They consider questions of purpose (e.g. "Why teach science?") and become familiar with the content standards formulated by professional organizations in their field. They study learning and teaching strategies, and they develop lessons, assessments, and curriculum units that they try out, reflect upon, and revise. The analysis of curriculum materials and the use of technology are infused in these courses as well as in assignments and activities throughout the program.