A Knowledge Base for the Teaching Profession : What Would It Look Like and How Can We Get One ?

ine their students’ learning of the curriculum, for example, they rarely search the research archives to help them interpret their students’ conceptions and misconceptions, plot their students’ learning trajectories, or devise alternative teaching practices that are more effective in helping their students master the curriculum. Although special programs have demonstrated that, with carefully designed support, teachers can use specific research information for improving their practice (Carpenter, Fennema, Franke, Levi, & Empson, 1999), there is a persistent concern that educational research has too little influence on improving classroom teaching and learning (National Educational Research Policies and Priorities Board, 1999). Efforts to broaden the impact of research for teachers have taken a variety of forms, including government produced summaries of “what works” in the classroom, interpretations of research for schools and districts wishing to improve, and prescriptions for effective teaching (Berliner & Casanova, 1993; Joyce et al., 1993; Rosenshine, 1986; U.S. Department of Education, 1987). Helpful as some of these efforts have been, educators recognize that translating research into forms useful for teachers is a continuing, stubborn problem (Huberman, 1985; Lagemann, 1996; Kennedy, 1999; Raths & McAninch, 1999; Shavelson, 1988). A variety of proposals have been advanced to solve the translation problem. Some exhort researchers to find new and more innovative ways to represent their knowledge; others focus on better ways to engage teachers in the adaptation of research knowledge for their classrooms (Anderson & Biddle, 1991; National Research Council, 1999). Variations on this approach include Willinsky’s (2001) suggestion to provide the public, including teachers, with easier direct access to research, for example, through Internet technologies. Most approaches for bringing research to teachers assume that researchers’ knowledge is the best foundation upon which to build a professional knowledge base because of its generalizable and trustworthy (scientific) character. A significant alternative view claims that the knowledge teachers use is of a very different kind than usually produced by educational researchers (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1990, 1993; Doyle, 1997; Eisner, 1995; Huberman, 1985; Kennedy, 1999; Leinhardt, 1990). Called “craft” knowledge by some, it is characterized more by its concreteness and contextual richness than its generalizability and context independence. From this point of view, bridging the gap between traditional research knowledge and teachers’ practice is an inherently difficult, perhaps intractable, problem. In this article, we recognize the inherent difficulties of translating traditional research knowledge into forms teachers can use to improve their practice, and we recognize the value of teachers’ To improve classroom teaching in a steady, lasting way, the teaching