Teachers can make a difference in several key ways: 1) Positive teacher-student relationships in kindergarten can help students do better throughout elementary school. 2) Highly prepared and effective teachers help improve student achievement. 3) Students who have multiple ineffective teachers in a row will have lower achievement levels. Good teaching requires expertise in content knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge, general pedagogical strategies, and knowledge of how students learn and develop.

1. What difference can a teacher make?
How did teachers make a difference in your life?

2. How Teaching Makes a Difference
 Teacher/student relationships: students who
have good relationships with their teachers in
kindergarten do better all across their
elementary experience.
 Teacher preparation and quality: research
demonstrates that high quality teachers help
students to achieve.
 Students who have a series of ineffective
teachers will have poor achievement.

3. What is good teaching?
If an interviewer were to ask you, what would you say?

4. Teacher expertise
 Content knowledge—knowledge of the subject.
 General pedagogical knowledge (good teaching
strategies that apply to all subjects, classroom
management, knowledge of settings such as
grouping students).
 Pedagogical content knowledge (curriculum,
appropriate materials, special ways to teach the
subject and its concepts)
 Knowledge of learners and learning (characteristics
and culture of learners, knowledge of development
Educational psychology: the discipline concerned with teaching and learning
processes; applies the methods and theories of psychology and has its own, as well.

5. Knowledge of Content
Your knowledge of the subject matter(s) you
teach: social studies, English literature,
French, art, chemistry, mathematics, music,
etc.

6. Pedagogical Content Knowledge
Content knowledge: your knowledge of the
subject matter.
This demonstration of a Pedagogical: knowledge about teaching.
real world problem Therefore Pedagogical Content Knowledge
followed by work with is knowledge about how to teach concepts
manipulatives will help within a subject matter.
my students understand
fractions.
An understanding of how to
make a specific subject
comprehensible to others.

7. General Pedagogical Knowledge
Instructional
Let’s see… For this next history strategy
lesson, how can I get them to
understand the context of the
Revolutionary War? I think I’ll use
constructivist techniques and have
students create a newspaper from that Classroom
time. Hmmm…which students will management
work best together in a group?
An understanding of general principles of instruction
and classroom management that transcends
individual topics or subject matter areas.
Certain instructional strategies and classroom
management techniques can be used no matter what
subject matter is being taught. This is GENERAL
teaching or pedagogical knowledge.

8. Knowledge of Learners and Learning
Developmentally, my students
need social contact because
they are adolescents. I also
know they need to construct
knowledge; they don’t learn if
I just tell them something.
You need to know what is going on with
your students in relation to several types
of development (cognitive, psychosocial,
linguistic, moral) and you need to know
how the brain works in learning.

9. Can you differentiate between the four
types of knowledge teachers use?
 Knowledge of content—subject matter
knowledge
 Pedagogical content knowledge—how to
teach that particular subject matter
 General pedagogical knowledge—general
knowledge about classroom management
and instructional strategies
 Knowledge of learners and learning—
knowledge about students and how their
brains work.