Phronesis in Practice: Mapping the Folk Pedagogy of Everyday Teaching

This project documents the folk lexicon of everyday teaching—short sayings, aphorisms, and rules-of-thumb (“folk wisdom”) teachers use to guide decisions in practice. Using a cross-sectional online survey, we will elicit these sayings in teachers’ own words, capture the contexts in which they are used, and describe patterns across career stage, school type, and location. Findings will be descriptive and exploratory, producing a thematically organized lexicon and initial subgroup contrasts to inform future, deeper studies of practice-based knowledge.

This project collects and studies practice based evidence, everyday sayings, and bits of wisdom teachers use to help make decisions in their work. By surveying teachers from different backgrounds, it aims to create a guide that shows common themes and differences in how teachers think and talk about their practice.