Introduction Judgements in teaching include both instructional (epistemic) and regulative (moral) aspects. Teachers have to exercise professional judgement when selecting emphasis for the content to be taught, designing a sequence of contents in a specific topic, choosing correct examples to demonstrate a concept, interpreting learners’ errors, dealing with cultural differences among learners, and so forth. Some of these decisions are subtle, others are explicit. Some are made in situ and others pre or post facto. Broadly, there is an agreement that professional judgement in teaching derives from theoretical knowledge (educational theories and subject matter knowledge; this chapter will concentrate on educational theories), and from working knowledge (variety of contextually specific experiences). What is less clear is how theoretical knowledge, which is formal, systematic, ordered and context independent, informs teachers’ professional judgement that is situated and context-dependent. Concepts developed to explain this relation such as ‘reflection in action’ (Schön 1983) and ‘situated learning ‘(Lave and Wenger 1991), locate professional judgement in everyday professional practice, attempting to create finer distinctions within informal learning, but neglect the role of theoretical knowledge in the exercise of professional judgement. This is a serious neglect (Muller 2009; Young 2010; Young and Muller 2010; Winch 2010; Kotzee, 2012) that must be addressed, if teaching is to be considered a field of expertise; if a judgement made by teachers is to be distinguished from an ordinary judgement. Placing teachers’ judgement primarily in experiential knowledge contributes to further de-professionalisation in teaching. © 2014 M. Young and J. Muller. All rights reserved.
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