Early career teachers' experiences of developing professional knowledge - from research-based teacher education through five years in the profession

This study aims to explore early career teachers’ (ECTs’) experiences of professionalknowledge developed during their research-based teacher education and throughout their firstfive years in the profession. This study uses Shulman’s (1986) framing of professionalknowledge, which posits that teachers must have content knowledge, general pedagogicalknowledge, and pedagogical content knowledge. Ten Finnish primary school teachers withfive years of work experience participated in this study. The data was collected from individualinterviews and analysed using qualitative content analysis. Three major areas of knowledgewere identified that together distinguish ECTs’ professional knowledge: pedagogical and didactic,relational, and research-related knowledge. The results indicate that teacher educationprovides a solid foundation while the first five years of professional experience add to theteachers’ professional knowledge.