I started jotting down notes for this post a couple of weeks ago, and since then have read some interesting thoughts from, amongst others, Dylan Williams and @curricteamlead. In summary, I don’t think subject knowledge is king in the sense of it being far more significant than anything else, or that it is the sole determining factor over whether a teacher is successful or not. I think an understanding (theoretical and practical) of effective (versus ineffective) pedagogy is central, as is good behaviour management. I’d look to those two, along with subject knowledge, as the three wise men of the effective classroom. A school’s ethos can also make or break what happens inside a classroom. If you don’t understand how best to teach and you don’t have an environment where pupils can learn you can have outstanding subject knowledge and it won’t matter.
Q: ‘What do you teach?’ A: ‘Children!’ (and your subject…?)
However, I do think subject knowledge is essential and has been widely undervalued and underrated over the last 60 years or so, even if there is a recent trend to push it for teacher CPD above all else. Decades of downplaying the importance of knowledge in education (influenced by Rousseau, Dewey, etc) is probably the cause of this: if you don’t think education is about knowing things but rather about developing skills, and the teacher is not an expert but a facilitator to the child who is leading the self-learning, then teacher’s don’t need to know very much. A greater emphasis on teacher subject knowledge is probably a good redressing of the balance.
I also wonder whether a deprivation of subject knowledge takes longer to address than a weak pedagogy. I’ve seen teachers have ‘lightbulb moments’ after reading a blog or attending some CPD where they realise, perhaps for the first time, one of the esentials of how to teach. Does subject knowledge take longer to build, even if you know its importance?
What kind of subject knowledge am I talking about?
Harris and Sass, in their ‘What makes for a good teacher and who can tell?’ paper (2009) found that a teacher’s attainment of advanced degrees in the subject they were teaching ‘at best weakly correlated’ with contributions to student achievment or “value added”. However, they also concluded that ‘“good” teachers likely need to have adequate training in subject matter content and essential teaching techniques.’
I think that’s significant. The most important subject knowledge is knowledge of the curriculum you are teaching. Having a PhD in your ‘field’ may not have a huge impact if your ‘field’ is huge and the focus on your PhD was (understandbly) narrow. As an RE teacher I studied systematic theology, biblical studies, church history, philosophy and ethics in reasonable depth at university, with a masters in ecclesiastical history developing my knowledge and understanding even further, but in a narrower period of history. But I encountered very little study of world religions, so as an RE teacher I’ve had to develop that myself. Advanced study may, of course, develop your ability to reason, write persuasively, analyse texts, etc, but in terms of basic knowledge if I’m teaching Hinduism I need to build up my subject knowledge of Hinduism.
It’s also worth noting that some of the studies into the impact of subject knowledge have focused on Maths, Science and reading. I think RE and Humanities subjects may be different, but I need to do more thinking on that.
See @curricteamlead ‘s excellent blog here for more on some of the other research.
12 reasons subject knowledge matters
So, below are 12 reasons (in no particular order) why teacher subject knowledge is so important, with the focus on subject knowledge related to the curriculum you are teaching. They’re also aimed at secondary teaching, although many will apply to primary too.
1. Planning effective lessons and curriculum. What order do you put content in? What builds on what? What else could be put in here? Is this the best use of these lessons? What scholars could we refer to here, and what are the most important ideas? Are there some overarching concepts we’re missing? If you are trying to survive on lesson to lesson subject knowledge where you only know what you need for the next lesson, you won’t have a hope of doing this well. Of course, you can use ‘off the shelf’ curriculum from other places, but they are your pupils and are you sure that programme of study is the most effective and well put together and that it covers what it should? Without strong subject knowledge I can’t see how you can know.
2. Understanding what’s the essential and foundational content. In our school we’ve recently asked HoDs to produce a basic version of their programmes of study, where the absolute essentials are laid out. This is definitely not everything that should be taught in a lesson. I gave feedback to the RE HoD on what she’d done and the process was both helpful and quite hard! It takes quite a bit of knowledge and understanding to know what the central points are. Which 3 things are essential? Which things aren’t quite as essential? Somewhat counter-intuitively, simplifying often takes a lot of subject knowledge.
3. Making connections and providing concrete examples. If you adopt an approach of knowing the content lesson by lesson, you may be able to make connections back (to previous lessons) but won’t have much of an idea of what is coming up. Connections with things outside of the specification also add a depth to your teaching that is invaluable. Your ability to provide concrete examples for abstract concepts is also increased with greater subject knowledge.
4. Teaching nuance in topics. Without strong subject knowledge everything reverts back to black and white. In RE the different views that different branches of a religion have can be quite subtle, and the Comission on RE rightly highlighted this as a weakness in some RE teaching. You need a strong subject knowledge to have real clarity on these differences.
5. Spotting subtle errors. You won’t be able to spot subtle errors in knowledge, understanding and reasoning without good subject knowledge. If you have an adequate subject knowledge you will spot the big mistakes but not the little ones. The same goes for reasoning in debates or essays. Something may sound perfectly sensible until you understand more, and the whole thing falls apart. The Trinity is always a prime example of this – I’ve observed teachers teaching interview lessons on the Trinity that have ended up teaching about modalism instead of the orthodox doctrine.
6. Effective marking. You may, of course, have a markscheme, which is helpful, but sometimes they are hard to decipher without good subject knowledge. If your exams are positively marked you also need to be open to answers outside of the markscheme. Good subject knowledge also speeds up the marking process considerably – with a topic I know well I can mark an essay pretty quickly – it takes seconds to know where a pupil is going and whether they are making valid points with evidence. With a topic I don’t really know it’s a longer, more painful process to get it right.
7. High ability pupils. Some really effective stretch tasks for high ability pupils can be planned in advance, but I find some of the best ‘stretch’ happens off-the-cuff in lessons when you ask a pupil something or throw in a story or reference a scholar or refer to some other part of the text. Sometimes it’s a question a student asks that leads you down a productive tangent for a few minutes. If you don’t have the subject knowledge to make all those connections or know where to go you’re like a motorist who has to stay on the motorway because that’s all they’re confident about, even though there are some side roads that would be much quicker as well as more beautiful.
8. High expectations. I want my pupils to know and understand lots by the time they finish what I’m teaching them. I want their heads to be bursting. I think it’s hypocritical to demand that of them if I’m surviving on a limited amount of knowledge myself. If I want them to have the subject knowledge I need to have it too.
9. Passion for the subject. We are passionate about what we really know. I am passionate about Welsh rugby but have no particularly strong feelings about Welsh athletics. I could try to wing it a bit and pretend to be passionate, but pretty soon I’d be found out as not genuine, partly because I don’t know anything about the thing I’m supposed to be passionate about. I’m a passionate watcher of the West Wing, which means anyone who gets onto the topic of TV dramas is likely to get me giving them 27 reasons why it’s the best show ever. And do you know what, you might disagree with me (I’m often wrong) but you would have to recognise that I know my stuff. Pupils will spot the breakdown of logic if we try to be passionate or excited about something but don’t really know anything about it. And we just won’t care about inspiring pupils if we’re not interested in a subject ourselves.
10. Pupil respect. The young, cool teacher who can be funny, engaging and designs exciting activities will quickly lose respect of pupils when they realise he or she doesn’t know what they’re talking about. Pupils know they are there to learn about RE, and ultimately won’t respect a teacher that doesn’t know their stuff. This is particularly true of high ability pupils. The flip side is that they have confidence in you if you do know your stuff. As they head towards exams they feel like the person teaching and guiding them is an expert who knows where they’re going, like a guide on a long mountain trek.
11. Confidence. Some of the worst, most uncomfortable lessons I’ve taught are when I’ve walked into a classroom not knowing the subject content. Behaviour was good, the lesson structure was good, I had all the expectations, ways to assess, etc, but I just didn’t know the content as well as I should have. Knowing it thoroughly gives me confidence which then gives my pupils condience. (As @curricteamlead notes, there’s a danger in over-confidence as subject knowledge grows, but a healthy level of confidence is a good thing.)
12. Enjoyment. Finally, having a stronger subject knowledge should make teaching more enjoyable. Knowing things that you can teach to others is at the heart of what we do.
If you’re a secondary teacher, why did you choose to teach your subject? If you’re an RE teacher why did you choose to teach RE? I love teaching RE because I love RE. I chose to be a teacher for a variety of reasons. I’m glad I’m an RE teacher because I love my subject, which is why I chose to do Theology at university. If I really care about it then increasing my subject knowledge should be both a discipline and a joy.
There is an endless amount of subject knowledge we could get clued up on. This post definitely isn’t suggesting that’s the only priority for teachers. But if you’re a teacher who is in a habit of surviving on ‘knowing the basics’ and ‘being an hour ahead of them in reading the textbook’ (as someone gave me as advice before I began teaching) that’s not a great position to be in.
Implications for schools
Two areas I’m particularly concious of are a) teachers teaching second subjects, and b) cover lessons. In brief, for a) I think as a teacher you need to have the same high expectations and ask your new HoD what the priorities are for building your subject knowledge fast. Use the summer term before to do that if possible. Ideally we wouldn’t be in this situation as much as we are, particularly in RE (apparantly 3 times as many RE lessonas as History lesssons at secondary are taught by non-specialists). And b) avoid cover lessons as much as possible. I think they are often a profoundly ineffective thing and you need subject specialist teachers in the room whenever you can.
Building up my subject knowledge
For this academic year I know that I am strong in my subject knowledge in a range of areas, but two areas I need to do more on are Islam – I’m teaching it in Y7 and haven’t taught it for 3 years – and the Christianity topics for Y13.
Buidling up your subject knowledge
– read – reading textbooks is a good place to start, but you need more than this. Reading other books, reading blogs. I get lost down the wikipedia rabbit-warren reading series of articles.
– listen – podcasts can be really useful. If you find a good series keep listening to them rather than jumping around. Listen to them while running, commuting, etc – i.e. dead time.
– watch – documentaries, youtube, anything that works.
– discuss – I love discussing things with my department. We talk about our subject a lot, over coffee at break time, when we walk into each others classrooms during lessons (in a slightly disruptive way!), even over WhatsApp. We discuss, we argue, we share ideas. We talk about the actual subject not just ideas for how to teach it.
– keep going – quiring subject knowledge is a journey. If you think you’ve cracked all there is to know about your subject then well done, but I know I could spend a lifetime and only brush the surface of mine.
– make it achievable – do it in chunks – you don’t need to read ‘A history of Philosophy’ by the start of next week. But you could read a chapter. That also gives you time to chew over it without overloading yourself.
– love – love your subject! Enjoy getting a new book and settling down to read it. If you’re a HoD be careful about mandating what books your dept should be reading – suggest some but if I choose a book I’m excited about I’m far more likely to read it.
What would your tips be? How have you developed yur subject knowledge since becoming a teacher? What areas of your subject do you find the hardest?
Mostly Clear Thinking 
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