Content Knowledge for Teaching in Teacher Education

Introduction

Content knowledge for teaching (CKT) is a theoretical construct developed by researchers at the University of Michigan (Ball et al. 2008) that describes the knowledge that teachers need to carry out their work as teachers of particular subject matter. They argued that there is a body of knowledge that goes beyond simply knowing subject-matter content and is unique to teaching. The theory of CKT has led to research targeted at understanding and assessing teachers’ use of such knowledge.

Over the last century, there have been changing conceptions about the nature of knowledge that teachers need to have in order to support student learning and development. Earlier in the twentieth century, policies and assessments focused on ensuring that teachers had broad general knowledge as educated professionals. Beginning in the 1980s, there was a major focus on ensuring that teachers knew the content they were to teach. This led to changes in how teachers were prepared and assessed for...