THE CONSTRUCTION OF PEDAGOGICAL KNOWLEDGE AND THE CHALLENGES OF EDUCATIONAL PRACTICE

Abstract

This article contributes to debates on teaching as knowledge work by examining how pedagogical knowledge is constituted within school contexts marked by heterogeneity, regulatory pressures, and the reconfiguration of the teaching profession. While scholarship acknowledges that teaching entails situated decision-making and complex mediations among content, learners, and concrete working conditions, persistent readings still frame teachers’ knowledge as a prescriptive repertoire, underestimating the processes through which it is produced, validated, and transformed in everyday practice. The gap addressed here concerns how pedagogical knowledge is built under contemporary dynamics of intensification, standardization, and performativity, which constrain autonomy, pedagogical time, and professional collaboration. The article aims to analyze, from a theoretical standpoint, the articulation among teachers’ knowledge, reflexivity, and professionality, while also examining the challenges that reposition mediations between theory and practice. Methodologically, the study adopts an analytical-interpretive literature review based on an intentional selection of foundational texts in the field. The findings indicate that pedagogical knowledge emerges as a processual, ethical, and political construction forged in praxis, and becomes vulnerable to technicist capture when institutional conditions for critical reflection, collective work, and professional judgment deteriorate.