Further findings of an international D&T teacher education research study: the DEPTH2 project

This paper reports a series of case studies from the new phase of an international project – Developing Professional Thinking for Technology Teachers (DEPTH2). The first phase of the project was a study conducted with both primary and secondary technology pre-service teacher education students in a number of different countries who were given the same teacher-knowledge graphical framework as a tool to support reflection on their professional knowledge. We discovered that, despite the different country contexts, student teachers of technology could articulate aspects of their developing teacher knowledge using the same framework for teacher professional development. The common graphical tool enabled them to set out their subject knowledge, pedagogical knowledge and ‘school’ knowledge and was useful in helping them become more self-aware (Banks et al 2004). In this second phase of the project we have developed this line of research in two ways. First, we extended the range of participants to include experienced teachers involved in in-service work connected to curriculum development. Second, we looked at the interrelationship for pre-service teachers between their developing professional knowledge and their own personal subject construct. In this paper, the framework itself is first described, followed by examples of investigations in train across five case studies showing the way that it has been used to illuminate technology teacher knowledge in each case. Lessons are drawn for each country specific investigation, and some wider conclusions are made that have implications internationally along with some suggestions for further work.