University teacher knowledge and teaching is the focus of this presentation.  Teacher function at the university is one of the three ones that academic people must develop along their career. It is a function that is constructed within the interaction between the other two ones:  research and management.

Moreover if we analyze the beginning of academic professional development, university teachers enter as experts of one knowledge field but what happen with the pedagogical dimension?  How is the construction of pedagogical dimension needed for the development of teaching? Does their discipline frame affect their pedagogical knowledge? 

One of the main challenges of this study is to understand university practical teaching within different epistemological frameworks from different knowledge fields. How is the relationship between the knowledge area and teacher practical knowledge? How is this interaction? 

Teacher knowledge is a construction that is connected with teaching action and reflection (Meijer, 1999; Perrenoud,2004; Schön,1992; Tardif,2004). It is a practical knowledge (Meijer, 1999; Montero,2001) where different aspects contributes to its construction and development. There are personal and biographical factors, disciplinary environment ones and, institutional and organizational too (Feixas, 2004).

There are different researches that try to understand university teaching within different knowledge areas. Some researches affirm that university teaching approach depends on which knowledge area this teacher belongs, that is to say that specialized knowledge framework has a direct influence on teaching practice. (Lindblom-Ylänne, Trigwell, Nevgi; 2006; Lueddeke; 2003; Trigwell, 2002). For example those teachers  who teach within the ‘hard’ disciplines ( physical sciences, engineering and medicine) were more likely to apply a teacher centred approach to teaching, whereas teachers from ‘soft’ disciplines (social sciences and humanities) took more student –centred approach teaching(Lueddeke, 2003).

More complex researches show out that teacher epistemological framework has an important influence in teaching practice (Guzmán, 2010; Quinlan,1997). Which is the nature of knowledge and how it is constructed, the epistemological frame affects methodological decisions within teaching practice.

Another research perspective concerning the relationship between subject matter knowledge and pedagogical knowledge is the one that focus on the conceptual construction named “Pedagogical Content Knowledge”, PCK (Berry, A., Loughran, J & van Driel, J., 2008; Grossman, Wilson, Shulman, 2005; Lougrhan, J.; Mulhall,P & Berry, A , 2004; Shulman, 1986; Turner-Bisset, 1999).

PCK includes:

 “[…] the most useful forms of representation […], analogies, illustrations, examples, explanations and demonstrations; that is, the forms to represent and formulate the topic which make it comprehensible for others […] apart from the comprehension of that which determines the difficulty (or ease) involved by learning a particular topic: the previous conceptions and ideas which students at different ages bring to learning” (Shulman, 1986, 9).

 This is a Phd thesis research which main objectives are: to understand how university professor’s epistemological-discipline frame affects their teacher practical knowledge, and to reach a profound comprehension of university teacher practical knowledge construction through the interrelationship between university pedagogical practices and their discipline framework within a particular context.

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