One way to gain a better understanding of teachers’ everyday practice is by studying teachers’ pedagogical reasoning (PR). Studying PR, or the thinking that underpins teachers’ practice, provides insights into the why underlying teachers’ informed decisions. The concept was originally described by Shulman (1987) as pedagogical reasoning and action (PR&A), a process where content knowledge (CK) is transformed to teachable elements through a cyclic process involving six steps: (1) comprehension, (2) transformation, (3) instruction, (4) evaluation, (5) reflection and (6) new comprehension. Since then, the concept of pedagogical reasoning has been used by many researchers in various research fields and educational contexts resulting in varying conceptualisations. In an attempt to untangle the current conceptual unclarity, this scoping review aims to provide a synthesis of the various conceptualisations of PR in literature between 2000 and 2023. A systematic search across four online databases (ERIC, PsychInfo, Scopus and Web of Science Core Collection) yielded 1,026 results on July 4th, 2023. After deduplication, the remaining publications (n = 549) were subjected to a title and abstract scan. Publications had to meet the following five criteria to be subjected to a full-text screening: (1) the publication was published between 2000 and on July 4th, 2023; (2) the publication appeared in a peer-reviewed journal; (3) the publication was written in English; (4) the publication had an explicit focus on professional or pedagogical reasoning and; (5) the publication focused on the professional or pedagogical reasoning of pre- and/or in-service teachers. From the remaining 148 publications, we were able to retrieve 146 which were subjected to a full-text screening. Here, a sixth inclusion criteria was applied to assess the relevance of the publications, namely: (6) the publication conceptualizes pedagogical reasoning. During a preliminary analysis of the remaining 92 articles, we identified two main theoretical perspectives. The first stream defines PR as a cyclic process where teachers use knowledge to make a decision, reflect on the outcomes and expand their knowledge. With that, this stream often follows or builds upon the original work by Shulman (1987). The second stream separates reasoning from decision-making in their definitions and focus on the content, depth, or richness of PR. For example, the values to explain teachers’ favorite technology tools or the depth of reasoning required to stimulate students’ mathematical reasoning. During the symposium, we’ll discuss these theoretical perspectives, their differences, and implications for research in detail.

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