The overall prestige of the teaching profession has increased over the last decade.

With the above considerations in mind, the OECD Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI) Symposium on “Teachers as Learning Specialists – Implications for Teachers’ Pedagogical Knowledge and Professionalism” (Brussels, 18 June 2014) brought together leading experts in the field to begin explore two overarching questions: (1) What is the nature of the pedagogical knowledge base of the teaching profession, and (2) is the pedagogical knowledge of the teaching profession up-to-date?

Part I of this book provides a broad contextual overview of teacher’s knowledge and the teaching profession. We explore the dynamics of knowledge in the teaching profession from a structural, functional and social perspective and what complexity theory can offer to understanding the governance of teachers’ knowledge. Next we look at how teachers’ professionalism and pedagogical knowledge is manifested through instruments such as qualification frameworks and professional standards. Parts II and III bring together the set of papers contributed by experts at the symposium.

The purpose of Part II is to explore current conceptual and empirical work on teachers’ pedagogical knowledge, and how pedagogical knowledge can be measured as an indicator of teacher quality. It investigates the following:

Chapters 4 to 8 synthesise literature on teachers’ pedagogical knowledge, propose various models and concepts to better understand the complex nature of teacher competence, including both cognitive and affective-motivational facets. They also underline how teachers draw on their pedagogical knowledge in the classroom and investigate the motivational factors that drive expert teaching.

Part III is designed to be forward-looking and explores the impact of 21st century demands on teachers’ knowledge and the teaching profession through the following questions:

Chapter 9 investigates whether and how incorporating findings from the Science of Learning into teachers’ knowledge base could enhance teaching and learning. The authors argue that teachers who understand the mechanisms that underlie learning can enhance the cognitive engagement of their students and help to realise the potential for each and every student to learn. Chapter 10 reviews the definition of “21st century skills” and terms like “deep learning” and “transfer of knowledge”. It provides a state of the art of the empirical evidence on how these various competencies matter for success in education, work and other aspects of adult life, and underlines the challenges in assessment and in teaching for transfer.

We conclude with a summary of the work presented in this volume and discuss implications for the teaching profession. The argument that will emerge is that teaching should become a more evidence-based practice, and importantly, be informed by scientific research on teaching and learning. We argue that grounding the practice of teaching in a scientific knowledge base will address the challenges that are giving the profession a low status. Doing so would address the argument made previously that teachers do not generally use scientific knowledge in their practice, or that they do not contribute to building a pedagogical knowledge base founded on scientific principles.

Of course, this would require considerable reforms to how teachers are trained, the duration of training, and correspondingly, reforms to the roles and responsibilities of teacher educators. As a consequence of such reforms, we would expect corresponding changes to minimum standards for entry into teacher education programmes, and likewise, for certification and licensing. More stringent entry requirements, a lengthier training period, and practice grounded in a scientific knowledge base typically leads to the profession being granted autonomy and trust over daily practice and governance, and consequently, a higher prestige.

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