The Re-Novicing of Elementary Teachers in Science? Grade Level Reassignment and Teacher PCK

There is growing recognition of the prevalence of "within school churn", a phenomenon in which teachers remain within a school but are assigned a new grade level or course. In this study we examine the consequences of within-school churn for the pedagogical content knowledge of elementary teacher participants in an NSF-funded science PD program. We argue grade-level reassignment is akin to out-of-field science teaching for elementary teachers, as they encounter a new set of grade-specific standards, new subject matter topics, and new curricula. We observed that elementary teachers can be "re-noviced" when assigned to a new grade level, in that they may lack content knowledge and/or pedagogical content knowledge for teaching their new science topics. Nonetheless, we argue there are important similarities between experienced and reassigned teachers that merit consideration of their unique professional learning needs in comparison to novice teachers.