The crafts of the classroom: teachers' and students' accounts of the knowledge underpinning effective teaching and learning in classrooms

Abstract

This paper describes a qualitative study, funded by the ESRC, of teachers' and students' perceptions of effective teaching and learning in the first year of English secondary schools. The paper is concerned with the active sense making that teachers and students engage in when reflecting on episodes of effective teaching and learning. This sense‐making process, it is argued, underpins particular forms of craft knowledge that are possessed by students and teachers. The elements of teachers' and students' craft knowledge are identified and the patterns of interaction between them are explored. It is shown that the common‐sense theories of participants bear striking associations with the transactional theories of learning proposed by Bruner and Haste and Vygotsky.