Yep, CFAR is training new instructors (I’m one of them).
I imagine that being able to teach X has essentially two requirements: First, understand X deeply—which is what we want to achieve anyway. Second, general teaching skills, independent on X—these could be taught as a separate package; which could already be interesting for people who teach.
In the education literature, these are called content knowledge and pedagogical knowledge respectively. There is an important third class of thing called pedagogical content knowledge, which refers to specific knowledge about how to teach X.
The example Val likes to use is that if you want to teach elementary school students about division, it’s really important to know that there are two conceptually distinct kinds of division, namely equal sharing (you have 12 apples, you want to share them with 4 friends, how many apples per friend) and repeated subtraction (you have 12 apples, you have gift bags that fit 4 apples, how many bags can you make). This is not quite a fact about division, nor is it general teaching skill; it is specifically part of what you need to know to teach division.
Yep, CFAR is training new instructors (I’m one of them).
In the education literature, these are called content knowledge and pedagogical knowledge respectively. There is an important third class of thing called pedagogical content knowledge, which refers to specific knowledge about how to teach X.
The example Val likes to use is that if you want to teach elementary school students about division, it’s really important to know that there are two conceptually distinct kinds of division, namely equal sharing (you have 12 apples, you want to share them with 4 friends, how many apples per friend) and repeated subtraction (you have 12 apples, you have gift bags that fit 4 apples, how many bags can you make). This is not quite a fact about division, nor is it general teaching skill; it is specifically part of what you need to know to teach division.