Amanda Berry

Teacher Professional Development Focusing on Pedagogical Content Knowledge

Because pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) includes teachers’ understanding of how students learn, or fail to learn, specific subject matter, the development of PCK is an important goal to focus on in professional development programs. The research literature clearly indicates the complex nature of PCK as a form of teachers’ professional knowledge that is highly topic, person, and situation specific. This implies that professional development programs aimed at the development of teachers’ PCK cannot be limited to supplying teachers with input, such as examples of expert teaching of subject matter. Instead, such programs should be closely aligned to teachers’ professional practice and, in addition to providing teachers with specific input, should include opportunities to enact certain instructional strategies and to reflect, individually and collectively, on their experiences.

Exploring Pedagogical Content Knowledge in Science Teacher Education

While the development of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) is considered to be a goal of teacher education, teaching about the concept itself is an unusual practice. In this case study, we explore the outcomes when a teacher educator explicitly introduces student‐teachers to ideas about PCK through the use of a CoRes and PaP‐eRs conceptualisation. The case study explores how, through this purposeful use of PCK in a pre‐service science teacher programme, student‐teachers’ thinking about their teaching and about their development as science teachers is shaped.

Revisiting the Roots of Pedagogical Content Knowledge

In recent times there has been growing interest in the notion of a scholarship of practice (Hutchings, 2000; Shulman, 2002a). Scholarship is displayed through a teacher’s grasp of, and response to, the relationships between knowledge of content, teaching, and learning in ways that attest to practice as being complex and interwoven. A consequence of this work is the recognition that teachers’ professional knowledge is difficult to define and categorise, and therefore exceptionally difficult to articulate and document—yet it is increasingly important to do so. Through the work of the Carnegie Foundation (Shulman, 2000, 2001, 2002b) the impetus to encourage the education community to pay more attention to teachers’ knowledge and to better value professional practice has become increasingly important. Yet, attempts to articulate the critical links between practice and knowledge have proved to be exceptionally difficult because, for many teachers, their practice and the knowledge/ideas/theories that tend to influence that practice are often tacit (Schön, 1983). Additionally, definitions of knowledge, and distinctions between these definitions (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1999; Connelly & Clandinin, 2000; Fenstermacher & Richardson, 1993; Korthagen & Lagerwerf, 1996; Richardson, 1994), have impacted on what researchers have looked for, and valued, in attempts to describe a knowledge base that might be described as influencing teachers’ approaches to, and practices of, teaching. Further to this, for school teachers there is little expectation or obvious reason for such articulation (Loughran, Berry, & Mulhall, 2004; Loughran, Milroy, Berry, Gunstone, & Mulhall, 2001) as the demands of time, curricula, and student achievement tend to create a focus more on ‘doing teaching’ rather than explicating the associated pedagogical reasoning. Importantly, however, if science teaching is to be better understood and valued, such

Self Study in Teaching About Teaching

Growing interest in the development of preservice teacher educators’ professional knowledge has been accompanied by increasing activity by teacher educators as researchers of their own professional practices. Self-study of teacher education practices has emerged as one important way of understanding this work, helping teacher educators explore questions about how knowledge of teaching about teaching develops, what informs approaches taken to examine and develop such knowledge, and how teacher educators’ choices affect their students’ learning about practice. This chapter addresses the motivations of teacher educators engaged in self-study of their own practices and the growth of knowledge of teaching about teaching that has developed through such work. The chapter illustrates how the nature of the knowledge developed by teacher educators about their practices is often rich in complexity and ambiguity. Within the problematic world of teaching about teaching, one way of conceptualizing this knowledge is as a series of tensions that influence teacher educators’ learning about practice developed through self-study.

Professional Self-Understanding as Expertise in Teaching about Teaching.

This paper explores an aspect of the knowledge of teaching required by teacher educators and how that knowledge might be developed if teaching (about teaching) is to be conceptualised as a distinct and important field in its own right – with its own forms of knowledge, ways of working and perspectives on the world. The paper focuses on self‐understanding as a component of teacher educators’ knowledge of practice and examines how the development of self‐understanding can be conceived as a form of teacher educator expertise. Few studies have explicitly considered teacher educators’ self‐understanding as a form of professional knowledge; hence, this article makes a contribution to explicating and documenting this aspect of teacher educators’ practice.

Confidence and Uncertainty in Teaching about Teaching

This paper explores teacher education through a self-study approach to researching practice. The development of the notion of tensions—in this case, the tension between confidence and uncertainty—is used as a way of understanding the complex nature of teaching and learning about teaching with a focus on teacher education practice. The paper is organised so that each section illustrates a particular concern or issue arising from an examination of practice by posing questions about the particular aspect of practice under consideration. The paper illustrates how the results of self-study research can help to build confidence both individually and collectively among the teacher educator profession, so that genuine change in teacher education practices might be enacted in teacher education programs.

Lost and Found in Transition: The Professional Journey of Teacher Educators.

This paper considers the professional development of a group of 75 primary and secondary teachers in Melbourne, Victoria, who had been charged with the responsibility of leading the professional learning of their colleagues in their schools. To support these leaders of professional learning in their roles, the Victorian state government’s Department of Education and Early Childhood Development contracted members of the Pedagogy and Professional Learning Research Group at Monash University to develop and implement an appropriate Professional Learning program. The Leading Professional Learning (LPL) program ran for seven months and consisted of a series of four face‐to‐face workshops that were sustained through the formation of peer networks. Each participant in the program was responsible for designing and implementing a school‐specific professional learning project appropriate to their school setting. At the final workshop in the LPL program, participants reflected on and recorded their learning through the formalised process of case writing. Their cases were published in a book of Cases of Professional Dilemmas and form the basis of the data‐sets that have been used to research participants’ learning about leading the professional learning of their colleagues. As a consequence, this paper offers interesting insights into the journey of these educators of teachers as they have developed deeper understandings of what it means to be a teacher educator.

Teaching About Teaching Science Aims, Strategies, and Backgrounds of Science Teacher Educators

Despite pressing concerns about the need to prepare high-quality teachers and the central role of teacher educators (TEs) in this process, little is known about how TEs teach about teaching specific subject matter, and how they develop their expertise. This empirical study focuses on the specific expertise that science TEs bring into teacher education. Individual interviews and story lines were conducted with 12 experienced science TEs from four different teacher education institutions in Australia and the Netherlands, to gain insight into their aims for teaching about science teaching, and how their expertise has developed on the basis of their professional background and experiences. The findings of this exploratory study reveal similarities among the concerns of these TEs and yet considerable diversity among their approaches. The study aims to contribute to a better understanding of science TEs’ work and the development of a pedagogy of science teacher education.

Many Miles and Many Emails: Using Electronic Technologies in Self-Study to Think About, Refine and Reframe Practice

We met several years before our professional collaboration began. Both of us are experienced teacher educators, although we work in different countries (Mandi in Australia and Alicia in the USA), and in different discipline areas (Mandi in biology and Alicia in social studies). From our first meeting we knew that we had a lot to talk about, that we were able to communicate well with one another and that we would love to work as collaborators. But what were we to do with our locations on different continents and at least 10,000 miles between us? After a few years of once yearly meetings at the American Educational Research Association (AERA) conference and as our collegial friendship grew, we began to realize that we had a lot to gain as teacher educators by working together. So, Alicia sent the following invitation to Mandi:

Exploring the Nature of Teachers’ Professional Learning

In recent times, the distinction between traditional Professional Development (PD) and Professional Learning (PL) is becoming increasingly apparent. The shift associated with the intent and the language between PD and PL is evident in the report by Wei et al. (2009). The distinction between PD and PL is also captured by Mockler (2005) who characterized PD as something delivered in a ‘spray-on’ manner in which teachers attend a ‘PD day’ then return to their schools with the expectation that they will implement the workshop ideas in their own practice. What is clear is that the professional learning of teachers has become increasingly recognised as important in enhancing not only the quality of teaching in schools but also for developing the teaching profession more generally (Berry, Clemans, & Kostogriz, 2007). PL approaches tend to emphasize practices that are: sustained over time; responsive to the specifics of school and classroom contexts; underpinned by research and practice-based evidence; and, supported by professional learning communities and collaboration (Hayes, Mills, Christie, & Lingard, 2006; Hoban, 2002). In short, PD could be viewed as doing things to teachers so that they apply them in their practice while PL is about working with teachers to help them develop their skills, knowledge and abilities in ways that are responsive to their (pedagogical) needs, issues and concerns.