This research study uses Pedagogical Context Knowledge (PCxK) as a framework to examine changes in preservice and inservice K-8 teachers' understandings of science and pedagogy across a reform-based Professional Development Continuum. The Continuum consists of a core curriculum of inquiry-based science and education courses for elementary education majors, with a bridge to lesson study communities of middle school science teachers in local schools. The Continuum is intended to help teachers move from views of learning as the transmission of knowledge to views of learning as knowledge creation. The PCxK framework extends research on pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) by linking intellectual transformations that inquiry-based approaches demand to transformed self-understandings that, if resisted, can block the change process. The research team of university science and education faculty and veteran teachers is using quantitative and qualitative methods to examine different facets of teacher knowledge development through a study of several longitudinal cohorts of preservice, new, and experienced teachers as aggregate populations and through case studies. This allows for comparisons among groups and individuals with different levels of participation in the Continuum and at different stages in their professional development. The project seeks to understand how teachers' knowledge develops across inquiry learning experiences and how undergraduate learning experiences and the contexts of classroom practice shape new teachers' understandings and practice. The study is expected to inform models of STEM teacher education that account for the interwoven intellectual and personal dimensions of the challenging transition to inquiry-based teaching.
