Professional Development through the Use of Learning Study: Contributions to Pedagogical Content Knowledge in Biology

The aim of this paper is to describe a professional development approach—learning study—in which teachers and researchers iteratively and in collaboration develop a teaching strategy for students in upper secondary school to scaffold students’ learningof the relationships between genes and traits. Three research lessons were planned, conducted, and assesed, with an succesive and significant increase in the students’ learning outcomes. The growth in teachers’pedagogical content knowledge was evident from theirimproved awareness of which aspects of the content were critical to learning and thus should be varied during instruction.