Academic and teaching subject knowledge and the KS2

At one level the discussion of the relationship between academic and subject knowledge is relatively simplistic. It is clear that there is a correlation between what the teacher knows, i.e. academic subject knowledge and what is taught and learned, i.e. teaching subject knowledge. If you don’t know it you can’t teach it. The nature, form and provenance of that knowledge is much more problematic and is the focus of intense research activity and discussion with specific reference to teaching strategies, processes and resolving (McNamara: 1990, Rogers: 1979, Schwab: 1978, Shulman: 1986) We can sub-divide academic knowledge into categories such as syntactic (processes) and substantive (statements of fact, propositions and concepts) and analyse the meaning of these terms in specific instances. Here we can identify different patterns of teaching, for example, transmission (teach them the facts), transformation (treat them as investigators, i.e. skills and processes) and conceptual (engage them with developing conceptual understanding), and correlate these to the kinds of knowledge children acquire through the teaching and learning involved (Kennedy: 1991).