Natural cognitive foundations of teacher knowledge

Just published ”Natural cognitive foundations of teacher knowledge“, co-authored with Franck Tanguy and André Tricot, has just been published by a Sense Publishers book edited by Michel Grangeat.

The aim of this paper is to explore a cognitive way to define teachers’ professional knowledge (TPK), arguing that some ‘natural’ knowledge, stemming from several human social abilities – and, for many of them, animal – is thus engaged in teaching as well. The actions grounded on such knowledge are undertaken automatically or at a low cognitive load due to the nature of the latter.
Some theoretical views on teaching include such an assumption (Csibra, 2007; Csibra & Gergely, 2011; Strauss, 2005; Strauss & Ziv, 2012), but so far, little research has investigated teachers’ cognitive processes in relation to both natural cognition and Cognitive Load Theory (CLT) (see however Feldon, 2007; Moos & Pitton, 2013).
This paper seeks firstly to consider teachers’ actions through the lens of natural cognition and pedagogy, then to set up a framework for teacher cognition and knowledge, showing that several social abilities and knowledge can be used for teaching purposes, and with a low cognitive load. Then, we describe the abilities for teaching as primary vs. secondary knowledge. Eventually, we use this framework to assess or predict which cognitive load is in relation with teachers’ performances according to the CLASS, a renowned classroom observation system.
[link to the whole book]