Co-constructing Professional Learning: Teachers and Researchers Working Together to Respond to Student Diversity

To become an expert teacher, it is theorised that a practitioner will need to develop three distinct knowledge bases; content knowledge, pedagogical knowledge, and pedagogical content knowledge (Lachner et al., 2016). Expert teachers integrate these knowledges into curriculum scripts, and are able to use their professional vision to activate their knowledge in ways that reflect their context (Lachner et al., 2016). Access to quality professional learning is a key mechanism for ensuring teachers are able to continuously build their knowledge base. This is particularly important in the area of high ability, where training providers often neglect to equip pre-service teachers with the knowledge needed to work effectively with this cohort (Plunkett & Kronborg, 2021). This is despite the important relationship that exists between a teacher’s knowledge base and their capacity to meet the needs of their high-ability learners. For instance, the abilities of students will often mediate what a teacher needs to know about the subject they are teaching, with high-ability students requiring their teacher to provide them access to advanced content (Van Tassel-Baska, 2019).