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Deep Knowledge is a book about how people’s ideas change as they learn to teach. Using the experiences of six middle and high school student teachers as they learn to teach science in diverse classrooms, Larkin explores how their work changes the way they think about students, society, schools, and science itself. Through engaging case stories,Deep Knowledge challenges some commonly held assumptions about learning to teach and tackles problems inherent in many teacher education programs. Larkin digs deep into the details of teacher learning in a way seldom attempted in books about teacher education.

Book Features:

• Offers a teacher education framework based on teaching for understanding and equity.
• Features engaging case studies of science teachers that are applicable to all teachers interested in teaching for social justice.
• Unpacks the problems and challenges teachers face in developing the art and skill of teaching.
• Applies insights from conceptual change learning in science to science teacher learning.

Douglas B. Larkin is an assistant professor in the Department of Secondary and Special Education at Montclair State University in New Jersey. He currently works with preservice secondary science and math teachers in the Newark-Montclair Urban Teacher Residency program.

“Willing to challenge the orthodoxy of science education, Larkin's Deep Knowledge takes on an unspoken aspect of teacher education—the intellectual lives of teachers. This volume transcends science education and engages pedagogy in every field at every level.”
—Gloria Ladson Billings, Kellner Family Professor of Urban Education at the University of Wisconsin–Madison

“This engaging book, based on cases of pre-service teachers learning to teach science in middle and high school, is a must read for those interested in supporting the equitable teaching of science for understanding. There is much to learn from this study about the complexities of the process involved in learning to teach science for social justice.”
—Ken Zeichner, Boeing Professor of Teacher Education, Director of Teacher Education, University of Washington

“In Deep Knowledge, Larkin offers a rich and sensitive account of how teacher candidates’ thinking about science teaching and student diversity evolves as they confront perennial problems of practice in their student teaching.  This engaging and powerful book is a must-read for anyone seeking to understand and influence the exhilarating yet arduous process of learning to teach a diverse student population for deep and flexible understanding.”
—Ana Maria Villegas, Professor of Curriculum and Instruction, Montclair State University.