Usually, lower division courses fulfill a college- or university-wide requirement (such as a distribution or general education requirement) for graduation.

Master/Mentor Teacher

A teacher with extensive levels of teaching experience and demonstrated effectiveness in the classroom who may provide mentoring and professional guidance to less experienced colleagues in a variety of ways. Currently, few guidelines exist for determining which teachers qualify as master or mentor teachers. Increasingly, master teachers are being called upon to work with their colleagues in colleges and universities to improve teaching practice or the content of specific courses or curricula. For example, master teachers may team-teach courses for preservice teachers or may offer a variety of professional development activities for more experienced teachers.

Out-of-Field Teaching

Teachers teaching subject areas in which they do not have endorsement and in which they have little or no formal training. Although the definition is not precise, out-of-field teaching often refers to teaching in subject areas in which the teacher did not earn a major or minor during the undergraduate years and in which he or she does not have an endorsement.

PDS

Professional Development School (see Chapter 5 for a more complete description). Also see definition below.

Pedagogical Content Knowledge

Shulman (1986) was the first to propose the concept of pedagogical content knowledge, stating that it “…embodies the aspects of content most germane to its teachability … pedagogical content knowledge includes for the most regularly taught topics in one’s subject area, the most useful forms of representation of those ideas, the most powerful analogies, illustrations, examples, explanations, and demonstrations—in a word, the ways of representing and formulating the subject