Professional experiences and construction of the school subject Biology in pre-service teacher education

Abstract

The article examines the curricular component known as Teaching Practice in the Biology teachers’ pre-service education. The study is theoretically based on perspectives of teacher’s knowledge and curriculum studies, and it uses written and oral reports of the training students as empirical data. The work stresses the rich dialogue between the biological knowledge produced in the school context and the teaching profession’s specific knowledge. This knowledge becomes part of the experiential knowledge of the future teachers built during the pre-service teacher course and this contributes to legitimate the teaching profession. Therefore, it is argued that there is a singular curriculum space that values school and university relationships during the teachers' pre-service teacher courses. Thus, this process fosters further learning and the professional development. At the same time that future teachers can be seen as social actors building the school subjects, the very same school subjects influence and reinforce the disciplinary identity of these teachers. Finally, the analysis shows that the preparation in the pre-service teacher courses does not mean a general academic preparation only, but as it requires from the future teachers the use of knowledge from different sources, the preparation occurs in the interior of a school subject.