Mastery of Content: Professional Competence and Pre-service Teacher Education

One of the major teaching competences in the new elementary school teacher's degree refers to full mastery of contents. This is also the competence most valued by teachers' educators. However, do teachers in active service think a mastery of contents is so important? Do they use that skill much in practice? Do they see themselves as well trained to use it? What does it mean for a teacher to master the content? In addition, what is the conception of basic training in this competence, and how is it put into practice? In this article we address these issues. We look at the different conceptions of the nature of content and the various trends in teacher training in this regard. Next, we present the results of a questionnaire completed by 343 working teachers in the Community of Madrid and interviews with a subsample of 48 teachers on competence in mastery of content, its importance, its use in practice, pertinent training received and its meaning. The results show that, according to the teachers in the sample, content mastery is the competence for which they were best prepared during their pre-service training at university. Teachers also value this competence highly, both for its importance to the profession and for its use in teaching. It is a fact that mostly teaching practice is seen as academic mastery of content plus mastery of teaching methodology. This conception is far removed from the integrative approaches for professional mastery of content that targeted didactics use to address this teaching competence. Lastly, the implications of all this are discussed from the perspective of the curriculum for pre-service teacher competence training, and lines are drawn to show how this study could be built on in future.