Deborah Loewenberg Ball University of Michigan Teaching well
depends on more than "knowing subject matter," understanding
learning, and being able to present material clearly. Teaching
is itself a specialized form of work that entails substantial
content-based problem solving and reasoning. This keynote will
probe examples of such work, examine what it requires of
teachers, and will engage participants in considering the
implications of this perspective for the content preparation and
ongoing education of teachers. In this opening keynote for the
third Conference on Sustainability for Local Systemic Change, I
will attempt to do three things. I will begin by redefining the
issue of content knowledge for teaching -- from a problem of
knowledge to a problem of knowledge use in practice. Second, I
will use mathematics teaching as a site to explore the notion of
knowledge use in practice, from a perspective on teaching as a
specialized form of disciplinary problem solving. We'll examine
some specific examples to u