Many K-12 teachers struggle to meet the needs of diverse learners as school reforms promote new disciplinary literacy requirements. In response, language education scholars have argued that teachers must develop "disciplinary linguistic knowledge" (DLK), or an understanding of language in their content area and an ability to design…

This paper, on the central and distinctive contribution of knowledge to teaching, combines philosophical analysis with a discussion of work in research on teaching, student conceptions, and curriculum. The hierarchical argument contains two main points: (1) that content knowledge is a logical precondition for the activities of teaching; and (2)…