Not a stale metaphor: the continued relevance of pedagogical content knowledge for science research and education

Abstract

Pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) is a foundation for teacher standards such as the Interstate Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium (InTASC) (Council of Chief State School Officers, 2011) and a critical element of teacher preparation and professional development for multiple fields, including science teaching (Purzer, Moore, Baker, & Berland, 2014). But several years ago Settlage (2013) presented a powerful critique of PCK, rejecting the way it positions knowledge in the abstract, "solely … what teachers store in their heads" (p. 10) and calling for more evidence connecting PCK conceptualisations to actual teaching activity. In truth, theoretical descriptions of PCK abound (Darling-Hammond & Bransford, 2005; Hashweh, 2005; Lee & Luft, 2008) and most utilise the lens of the researcher (Lee & Luft, 2008). While this helps us conceptualise teaching and imagine what could be, what is needed are more illustrations of what is.Abell (2008) asked if PCK is still a viable framework for teaching and educational research, and our conversations with colleagues raised similar concerns, especially when attempting to bridge the theory-to-practice gap and describe how PCK could be utilised as a framework for improving classroom teaching practice. A robust body of research positions reflective inquiry as the foundation for adaptive teaching practices (Author, 2013;Korthagen & Vasalos, 2005;Loughran, 2010;Rodgers & Raider-Roth, 2006) and during reflection pedagogical knowledge and content knowledge elements of PCK can be combined with observations of students' responses, resulting in renewed and revised instructional actions. Such reflective, adaptive inquiry utilises the integrative knowledge that is PCK (Gess-Newsome, 1999) and the resulting instructional actions enact PCK: they put into action the amalgamation of content and pedagogical knowledge (Shulman, 1987) with "particular inner knowledge" (Borowski, et al., 2012, p. 25) unique to the teacher, the context, and the students at hand. Our

The Impact of High School Life Science Teachers’ Subject Matter Knowledge and Knowledge of Student Misconceptions on Students’ Learning

“…Studies have shown that students' misconceptions are topic specific and elicited by the context of instruction (Chen et al, 2016;Auerbach et al, 2018). Likewise, teachers' PCK, or KOSM, is also considered to be topic or domain specific (Blömeke et al, 2015), situated in varying contexts (Ball et al, 2008;Lee and Luft, 2008;Borowski et al, 2010;Depaepe et al, 2013;Gess-Newsome, 2015;Hayden and Eades Baird, 2018). Depaepe et al (2015) showed that students had lower scores on items that required a higher level of PCK of their teachers, compared with items that required only teachers' SMK.…”

“…, 2010 ; Depaepe et al. , 2013 ; Gess-Newsome, 2015 ; Hayden and Eades Baird, 2018 ). Depaepe et al.…”

Innovating Higher Education via Game-Based Learning on Misconceptions

“…Our claim is that more research as well as research-based development of games for pre-service teachers is needed. Therefore, we set out to develop a game for higher education that meets the above-mentioned quality criteria and can be flexibly implemented into the framework of learning about misconceptions and therefore develop pre-service teachers' PCK [25,26]. Misconceptions have been one of the most prominent, but also one of the most complex, topics in science education research and thus also in science teacher training for almost 50 years [27].…”

Pedagogic Content Knowledge of Science: A Framework for Practice and Construct for Understanding Teacher Preparation

“…Since then, PCK has been used extensively as a construct to research teacher cognition as well as a framework to model practice (Abell, 2008; Berry & van Driel, 2012; Goodnough, 2006; Magnusson et al, 1999). However, Hayden and Baird (2017) point out that while there is extensive literature that describes PCK, its use and assessment among prospective and practicing teachers, more illustrations of what PCK is and how practitioners make sense of this construct are needed.…”