The pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) of ethical identity education

Most scholarly inquiries into education and identity take place through descriptive psychological or sociological studies or normative research rooted in various approaches to critical social theory. This article supplements this educational research by presenting an inquiry into identity through an ethical lens and what subject matter teachers need to know to aid students in their identity conceptualisation. Based on a phenomenological inquiry into the wisdom of practice of 20 exemplary teachers of Israel education, a discipline in which educators seek to cultivate the development of students’ ethical identity through subject matter learning, this study presents a theory of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) for ethical identity education grounded in qualitative evidence. This paper contends that educators should embrace a Pedagogy of Difference as an alternative to a Pedagogy of the Oppressed towards the mission of cultivating human agency and argues for advancing teacher knowledge of identity development that empowers students to conceive their own authentic visions of the good life.