5. Discussion and conclusion
In this study we aimed at a deeper understanding of the
development of teachers' understanding of CE and corresponding
challenges for their professionalism in the context of teacher
participation in collaborative inquiry-based curriculum development
regarding CE. The results first showed that during teachers'
involvement in collaborative inquiry-based curriculum development
and (re)designing teaching practices, their understanding of
CE indeed changed and broadened. Moreover, they discovered that
CE was already an implicit part of their teaching practices and they
developed a vocabulary to understand these practices. Teachers
explained that participation in the project helped, especially
because it focused on teachers' daily practices and concerns, systemic
examination of their teaching practice and collaboration in
observing each other's practices and exchanging experiences between
teachers. Teachers in the study differed for their backgrounds
(gender, age, seniority). Given the small amount of
participants, a comparison of groups of teachers is not in order.
Moreover, based on our analyses, there were no indications that
such differences seemed to matter considerably for teachers' attitudes
towards citizenship education and pedagogical
professionalism.