Teachers' pedagogical knowledge: What it is and how it functions

This chapter gives an overview of the literature on teachers’ knowledge and how it relates to teacher quality and student outcomes. First, we illustrate the complexity of the teaching and learning process through some models. Second, we review how teachers’ knowledge has been conceptualised and what specific content it is composed of in the different models, focusing in particular on pedagogical knowledge. Third, we summarise the empirical evidence on the relationship between teachers’ knowledge and student learning outcomes. We then describe how pedagogical knowledge is used in decision-making, how it is learned and how it is developed into expertise. We conclude with some implications on teacher education.