ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes the working knowledge of teaching using systemic and holistic notions of learning, knowledge, practice and relationships. It extends the inquiry into teacher knowledge by examining the nature and characteristics of what the teachers often call ‘working knowledge,’ that is, knowledge particularly useful to get things accomplished in practical situations. Soviet activity theory and its American derivative, sociohistorical analysis hold that neither mind as such nor behaviour as such can be taken as the principal category of analysis and understanding in the social and psychological sciences. Ecological intelligence is comprised of multi-person and multi-object systems of purpose, meaning and action. It is produced and composed in relation to such systems. That cultural systems help to determine working knowledge was made evident during the 1960s and 1970s. The move to school the people of traditional, often nonliterate, societies and the apparent lack of success of efforts as well as the academic problems experienced by America’s own ethnic minority children.
