Overview
Educology of Teaching (2020) applies the full apparatus of the educological framework to its most central subject: teaching. It proceeds through the three lenses of educological inquiry — analytic, normative, and empirical — to produce a comprehensive account of teaching that is simultaneously logically rigorous, normatively grounded, and empirically informed.
The Analytic Account of Teaching
Analytically, teaching is defined as an intentional activity in which a teacher provides opportunities, guidance, and supervision for a student's learning of a prescribed range of content. This definition distinguishes teaching from several activities that are frequently confused with it:
Teaching is not training. Training involves the inculcation of skills or habits through repetitive practice, often without the student's understanding of the principles underlying the skill. Teaching, in Christensen's strict sense, involves the student's rational engagement with content — the development of knowing-that, knowing-how, and knowing-to, not merely behavioral conditioning.
Teaching is not indoctrination. Indoctrination involves the transmission of beliefs in a way that bypasses or actively suppresses the student's critical evaluation of those beliefs. Teaching, by contrast, requires the student's rational engagement — it provides opportunities for critical examination, not just acceptance.
Teaching does not guarantee learning. Because teaching is defined by the teacher's intentional activities and not by their effects on the student, teaching can fail. A teacher who provides well-designed opportunities for learning is teaching even if the student does not learn. This logical point has important practical implications for how teaching quality should be evaluated.
The Normative Account of Teaching
Normatively, Christensen argues that good teaching is defined by its fidelity to the educological account of conduced learning — by its genuine orientation toward the student's acquisition of a prescribed range of knowing, understood in terms of the full taxonomy of knowing-that, knowing-how, and knowing-to. Teaching that produces behavioral compliance without genuine knowing is normatively deficient, even if it is efficient by some measures.
The Empirical Account of Teaching
Empirically, Christensen surveys the research on effective teaching — the bodies of evidence on instructional practice, teacher-student interaction, and the contextual conditions that support or impede learning — and interprets them through the educological framework. He argues that much of this research is limited by its failure to specify clearly what kind of knowing it is measuring and at what level of expertise, and that applying the taxonomy of knowing to existing research would substantially improve its clarity and usability.