Teachers’ personal theories of knowledge development

There are several theories put forth by educational philosophers that have informed processes of curriculum development both at national and local levels. In other words, these theories provide with broader roadmaps for developing or fostering certain knowledge to be taught by teachers and learned by students. However, teachers depending on various factors including their knowledge, beliefs, and context tend to improvise practices in schools in order to meet the requirements of students for meaningful learning. Hence, teachers’ personal theories serve as powerful models for how teachers engage with what knowledge is to be created and learned by students in schools. Stemming from a larger research project of exploring engagement of secondary school teachers in curriculum planning and decision making, this paper discusses teachers’ philosophical thoughts and examines through an analysis of data collected from secondary schools in Chitral their thinking and actions as manifested through their curricular engagements for knowledge creation in schools. In doing so, we also describe / propose that teachers’ personal theories can effectively be used a conceptual frameworks / models to further enhancing teachers curricular engagements for developing knowledge in line with students’ needs for meaningful learning.