Out-of-field teachers’ subject knowledge as professional development opportunity

Opportunities arise for professional learning as teachers cross boundaries within the subject they are teaching out-of-field. Teachers bring knowledge with them when teaching out-of-field. As well as bringing subject and pedagogical content knowledge of their in-field subject, teachers also have knowledge of the subject they are teaching out-of-field. Learning to teach their out-of-field subject requires recontextualisation of their existing subject knowledge. Using the bricolage as methodology, this study explores out-of-field teachers of mathematics’ conceptualisation of the subject knowledge of mathematics. The out-of-field teachers of mathematics participating in this study tended to conceptualise mathematics as school mathematics, which they saw through the lens of their pupils. Their boundary-crossing work was between school and pedagogical mathematics. This paper argues for school leaders to provide professional development for out-of-field teachers that adopts an opportunity model, identifying the subject knowledge they bring with them. The subject knowledge out-of-field teachers bring with them can be used as a starting point for developing out-of-field teachers’ subject and pedagogical content knowledge, as well as to inform and develop the pedagogical content knowledge of in-field teachers and subject departments as communities of practice.