ABSTRACT
A decade and a half of research highlights the critical influence of teachers’ subject-matter understandings on their pedagogical orientations and decisions (Ball and McDiarmid, 1990; Feiman-Nemser and Parker, 1990; GessNewsome and Lederman, 1999). Much of this work arises from Shulman’s (1986, 1987) insights about the importance of teachers’ content knowledge. In highlighting the importance of content knowledge in teaching, Shulman posits that teachers’ understandings need to extend beyond specific topics of the curriculum. Teachers’ capacity to pose questions, select tasks, evaluate student understandings and make curriculum choices all depend on how they understand the subject matter.
