The Development of Pedagogical Competence in Tacit Knowing Towards a Polanyian Framework for the Empirical Analysis of Competence Development

• Published in: Tradition & discovery Vol. 48; no. 2; pp. 22 - 35
• Main Author: Wieser, Clemens
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 01.07.2022
• ISSN: 1057-1027
• DOI: 10.5840/traddisc202248210

Polanyi’s theory of personal knowledge provides a paradigmatic conceptual framework for the empirical analysis of tacit knowing and learning. We use this framework to analyze the development of pedagogical competence. Drawing on Polanyi, we regard pedagogical competence as a particular field of professional tacit knowing that relates subsidiary and focal awareness of events in class, effects situated appraisal, and relates events to teaching intentions. The development of pedagogical competence takes place when a teacher struggles to relate teaching intentions to ongoing events in tacit knowing and engages in situated experimentation. Based on Polanyi’s conception of subsidiary awareness, focal awareness, and appraisal, we present an empirical vignette from a case study. In it, a teacher engages in situated experimentation to resolve two opposing semantic fields in class: an intended field of interaction, which focuses on the lesson topic, and the field of student peer relations. Based on our analysis, we argue that the teacher’s competence development is focused on the educative task of managing students’ peer culture, while the teacher’s focal awareness remains on the didactical task of teaching a subject.