Re-examining Pedagogical Content Knowledge in Science Education


Book Description

Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) has been adapted, adopted, and taken up in a diversity of ways in science education since the concept was introduced in the mid-1980s. Now that it is so well embedded within the language of teaching and learning, research and knowledge about the construct needs to be more useable and applicable to the work of science teachers, especially so in these times when standards and other measures are being used to define their knowledge, skills, and abilities. Re-examining Pedagogical Content Knowledge in Science Education is organized around three themes: Re-examining PCK: Issues, ideas and development; Research developments and trajectories; Emerging themes in PCK research. Featuring the most up-to-date work from leading PCK scholars in science education across the globe, this volume maps where PCK has been, where it is going, and how it now informs and enhances knowledge of science teachers’ professional knowledge. It illustrates how the PCK research agenda has developed and can make a difference to teachers’ practice and students’ learning of science.




Examining Pedagogical Content Knowledge


Book Description

This ambitious text is the first of its kind to summarize the theory, research, and practice related to pedagogical content knowledge. The audience is provided with a functional understanding of the basic tenets of the construct as well as its applications to research on science teacher education and the development of science teacher education programs.




Understanding and Developing Science Teachers' Pedagogical Content Knowledge


Book Description

There has been a growing interest in the notion of a scholarship of teaching. Such scholarship is displayed through a teacher’s grasp of, and response to, the relationships between knowledge of content, teaching and learning in ways that attest to practice as being complex and interwoven. Yet attempting to capture teachers’ professional knowledge is difficult because the critical links between practice and knowledge, for many teachers, is tacit. Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) offers one way of capturing, articulating and portraying an aspect of the scholarship of teaching and, in this case, the scholarship of science teaching. The research underpinning the approach developed by Loughran, Berry and Mulhall offers access to the development of the professional knowledge of science teaching in a form that offers new ways of sharing and disseminating this knowledge. Through this Resource Folio approach (comprising CoRe and PaP-eRs) a recognition of the value of the specialist knowledge and skills of science teaching is not only highlighted, but also enhanced. The CoRe and PaP-eRs methodology offers an exciting new way of capturing and portraying science teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge so that it might be better understood and valued within the profession. This book is a concrete example of the nature of scholarship in science teaching that is meaningful, useful and immediately applicable in the work of all science teachers (preservice, in-service and science teacher educators). It is an excellent resource for science teachers as well as a guiding text for teacher education.




Pedagogical Content Knowledge in STEM


Book Description

This volume represents both recent research in pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM), as well as emerging innovations in how PCK is applied in practice. The notion of “research to practice” is critical to validating how effectively PCK works within the clinic and how it can be used to improve STEM learning. ​As the need for more effective educational approaches in STEM grows, the importance of developing, identifying, and validating effective practices and practitioner competencies are needed. This book covers a wide range of topics in PCK in different school levels (middle school, college teacher training, teacher professional development), and different environments (museums, rural). The contributors believe that vital to successful STEM education practice is recognition that STEM domains require both specialized domain knowledge as well as specialized pedagogical approaches. The authors of this work were chosen because of their extensive fieldwork in PCK research and practice, making this volume valuable to furthering how PCK is used to enlighten the understanding of learning, as well as providing practical instruction. This text helps STEM practitioners, researchers, and decision-makers further their interest in more effective STEM education practice, and raises new questions about STEM learning.




Repositioning Pedagogical Content Knowledge in Teachers’ Knowledge for Teaching Science


Book Description

This book enhances readers’ understanding of science teachers’ professional knowledge, and illustrates how the Pedagogical Content Knowledge research agenda can make a difference in teachers’ practices and how students learn science. Importantly, it offers an updated international perspective on the evolving nature of Pedagogical Content Knowledge and how it is shaping research and teacher education agendas for science teaching. The first few chapters background and introduce a new model known as the Refined Consensus Model (RCM) of Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) in science education, and clarify and demonstrate its use in research and teacher education and practice. Subsequent chapters show how this new consensus model of PCK in science education is strongly connected with empirical data of varying nature, contains a tailored language to describe the nature of PCK in science education, and can be used as a framework for illuminating past studies and informing the design of future PCK studies in science education. By presenting and discussing the RCM of PCK within a variety of science education contexts, the book makes the model significantly more applicable to teachers’ work.




Informatics in Schools: Improvement of Informatics Knowledge and Perception


Book Description

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Informatics in Schools: Situation, Evolution, and Perspectives, ISSEP 2016, held in Münster, Germany, in October 2015. The 17 full papers presented together with 1 invited talk were carefully reviewed and selected from 50 submissions. The focus of the conference was on following topics: sustainable education in informatics for pupils of all ages; connecting informatics lessons to the students’ everyday lives; teacher education in informatics or computer science; and research on informatics or computer science in schools (empirical/qualitative/quantitative/theory building/research methods/comparative studies/transferability of methods and results from other disciplines).




Exploring Mathematics and Science Teachers' Knowledge


Book Description

Globally, mathematics and science education faces three crucial challenges: an increasing need for mathematics and science graduates; a declining enrolment of school graduates into university studies in these disciplines; and the varying quality of school teaching in these areas. Alongside these challenges, internationally more and more non-specialists are teaching mathematics and science at both primary and secondary levels, and research evidence has revealed how gaps and limitations in teachers’ content understandings can lead to classroom practices that present barriers to students’ learning. This book addresses these issues by investigating how teachers’ content knowledge interacts with their pedagogies across diverse contexts and perspectives. This knowledge-practice nexus is examined across mathematics and science teaching, traversing schooling phases and countries, with an emphasis on contexts of disadvantage. These features push the boundaries of research into teachers’ content knowledge. The book’s combination of mathematics and science enriches each discipline for the reader, and contributes to our understandings of student attainment by examining the nature of specialised content knowledge needed for competent teaching within and across the two domains. Exploring Mathematics and Science Teachers’ Knowledge will be key reading for researchers, doctoral students and postgraduates with a focus on Mathematics, Science and teacher knowledge research.




Science Education for Diversity


Book Description

Reflecting the very latest theory on diversity issues in science education, including new dialogic approaches, this volume explores the subject from a range of perspectives and draws on studies from around the world. The work discusses fundamental topics such as how we conceptualize diversity as well as examining the ways in which heterogeneous cultural constructs influence the teaching and learning of science in a range of contexts. Including numerous strategies ready for adoption by interested teachers, the book addresses the varied cultural factors that influence engagement with science education. It seeks answers to the question of why increasing numbers of students fail to connect with science education in schools and looks at the more subtle impact that students’ individually constructed identities have on the teaching and learning of science. Recognizing the diversity of its audience, the book covers differing levels and science subjects, and examines material from a range of viewpoints that include pedagogy, curricula, teacher education, learning, gender, religion, and ICT, as well as those of in-service and trainee teachers at all levels.




Expert Teacher


Book Description

'But what does this look like in the classroom?' This question generally occurs to educators when they enquire into evidence-based approaches to teaching - and often they will get to the end of a teaching manual only to find that it remains unanswered. In The Expert Teacher, however, Darren Mead provides many of the answers. One of the most universally respected teachers in Britain, Darren has devoted his professional life to attaining pedagogical excellence. In this book he examines in depth what expert teachers do to help students progress their learning and strive for academic success. He lays bare the concept of pedagogical content knowledge and eloquently explains how to utilise it to overcome student misconceptions, create contexts and connections in learning and teach difficult and important content - empowering educators to transform their sub-ject knowledge into multiple means of representing it in teachable ways. The intention of The Expert Teacher is to help teachers to reflect on what and how they plan, how they teach and how to improvise around these plans, and to pave the way for deep professional thinking about best practice. It is split into two parts - entitled How is Your Subject Learned? and Expert Teaching and Learning - and provides educators with a variety of practical tools, illuminating examples and flexible frameworks geared to help them underpin and reinforce the very ampersand in expert teaching & learning. A warning though: this book is not for teachers seeking quick fixes or superficial tricks. The Expert Teacher is for educators who are eager to experience the excitement of knowing and teaching their subject masterfully. Suitable for all teachers in all settings.




Argumentation in Science Education


Book Description

Educational researchers are bound to see this as a timely work. It brings together the work of leading experts in argumentation in science education. It presents research combining theoretical and empirical perspectives relevant for secondary science classrooms. Since the 1990s, argumentation studies have increased at a rapid pace, from stray papers to a wealth of research exploring ever more sophisticated issues. It is this fact that makes this volume so crucial.