How teachers express their knowledge through narrative

The study we carried out deals with how teachers express their practical knowledge. The main objective was to classify how it is expressed, so that we can see its components, its limits, and how close it is to theoretical knowledge, understanding as such that which is based on research and aimed at explaining phenomena by looking for regular features. As methodology we used the teachers' oral accounts, because we think that this type of narrative can be a fundamental source for learning about educational practice. It allows us not only to compare the discourse of different teachers, but also to gather different voices that share the practice of teaching the same content. The study was made with kindergarten and primary school teachers from seven schools in Salamanca (Spain), who were asked to narrate everything they did to teach reading. Among the results it should be noted that this is highly descriptive knowledge, based on the illustration and description of the activities carried out in classrooms. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.