The theme of this symposium is teachers' professional knowledge: it's nature, construction, use and social recognition. Teacher knowledge as a concept tries to capture the complexity of teaching and of learning how to teach and is central to teachers' professionality and professionalization (Tardif, 2000). The work of Shulman (1986) is paramount to research in the field, but several other authors have contributed to it. It has emerged in the last decades as an important area of research, particularly to a needed re-assignment of meaning to professional teaching against the universe of complexity and heterogeneity that characterizes societies that schools and teachers must respond to. Although central to professional action and status, teachers' knowledge has been regarded as “the weakest link” of the teaching profession (Roldão, 2007), since responsibility and power over educational knowledge is a key feature of teacher professionalization and teachers are usually perceived and self perceiving as external to the realm of knowledge production. In a time of change and challenge for teachers (Persson, 2005; Zgaga, 2007), the relationship between teacher professionalization and the power and responsibility over professional knowledge production becomes increasingly relevant and complex. The emphasis on the role of teachers as knowledge producers is parallel with changes in the ways in which knowledge production is understood (Nowotny, Scott, & Gibbons, 2001), but it's not new to teaching or teacher education. Already in the 1920s, Dewey claimed that contributions by class teachers to research were “a neglected field” (1929, p. 26) and that the involvement of the “teacher as researcher” was needed (p. 48). Stenhouse, in the 1970s-1980s, has also elaborated an influential theorization over the centrality of research within teaching activity (1975). Recent changes in teacher qualification in Europe (DGEC/EC, 2005; CEC, 2007) have also brought to the foreground the question of teachers knowledge and it's specificity, as well as who is responsible for its production. In this symposium, we'll address some of the urgent issues about this theme: What is teachers professional knowledge? What is it's specificity compared to educational knowledge and other professional knowledges? Who does, and how, produce teachers professional knowledge? How is it shared, if it is? What is the relationship between teachers professional knowledge and representation(s) of the nature of the teaching profession? How do teacher education programs relate to, and deal with professional knowledge and it's specificity? The questions are, therefore, both epistemological and political.

The three presentations are theoretical discussions and elaborations illustrated with examples from the authors' professional experience and research projects. Some recent research literature reviews will be used. In trying to underpin the specificity of teachers’ knowledge, the range goes from early childhood education to university teaching.

Considering the nature of the questions, the symposium hopes to contribute to a clarification of the questions themselves, highlighting the urgency of addressing them. The possibility to compare different national perspectives and policies against the european and international context is also an expected outcome, that may allow for meaningful contributes to actual policies in teacher education across Europe. We thus hope the symposium will be a valuable contribution to knowledge in this field.