Exploring Teacher Pedagogical Content Knowledge (Pck) Development Using Cores (Content Representations)
This chapter describes how Activity Theory (AT) was used as a framework for examining the development of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) for early career secondary teachers in science and technology. In this study, AT was proposed as a promising lens
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11. EXPLORING TEACHER PEDAGOGICAL CONTENT KNOWLEDGE (PCK) DEVELOPMENT USING CORES (CONTENT REPRESENTATIONS)
INTRODUCTION
This chapter describes how Activity Theory (AT) was used as a framework for examining the development of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) for early career secondary teachers in science and technology. In this study, AT was proposed as a promising lens through which the complexity of the education context and the nature of teacher work could be explored as these beginning teachers built their PCK. PCK is a blend of content knowledge and pedagogical knowledge that is built up over time and experience and is seen to be unique to each teacher (Shulman, 1987). The academic construct of PCK recognises that teaching is not simply the transmission of concepts and skills from teacher to students but rather a complex and problematic activity that requires many and varied “on the spot” decisions and responses to students’ ongoing learning needs. It is this complexity, and the interactional and dialectical nature of PCK, that suggested that AT was a good choice for exploring its development. This can be explained in part by the proposition that PCK is made up of five components that involve a set of knowledges (Magnusson, Krajcik, & Borko, 1999). In these authors’ view, an experienced teacher’s PCK includes their knowledge of: subject content (and beliefs about it, and how to teach it); curriculum (what and when to teach); assessment (why, what and how to assess); students’ understanding of the subject; and instructional strategies. AT offered the potential to examine how these knowledges can be seen through a process of change such as the development of PCK, as the dialectical tensions which exist within a school/classroom are accounted for by the dynamic nature of AT (Engeström, 2001; Roth, 2004). This permits an examination of how the activities of teaching and learning within a formal school system, and in particular the interactions between these activities may shape, enable or inhibit this PCK development. PCK Development in Science and Technology It has been argued (Kind, 2009; Rohaan, Taconis, & Jochems, 2009) that expert teachers are not born with PCK, and that student teachers need to acquire the D. S. P. Gedera & P. J. Williams (Eds.), Activity Theory in Education, 169–181. © 2016 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.
C. EAMES
teaching skills and knowledge to become experienced professionals in their fields. Graduates of science and technology entering secondary teacher education courses may be unaware of the learning challenges that lie ahead for them as beginning teachers (Cowie, Moreland, Jones, & Otrel-Cass, 2008; Loughran, Mulhall, & Berry, 2008). Their understanding that effective teaching is a skilled and purposeful activity involving complex processes of pedagogical reasoning and action may be limited (Shulman, 1987). It has been shown that beginning science teachers can also lack a deep conceptual understanding of their subject matter, with disjointed and muddled ideas about part
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