Pernilla Nilsson

Teaching for Understanding: The complex nature of pedagogical content knowledge in pre‐service education

This paper explores the development of student‐teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) during pre‐service education. Four student‐teachers in mathematics and science participated in a project teaching physics to students aged 9–11 years once a week over a 12‐month period. One‐third of the lessons were videotaped and the student‐teachers were later interviewed using the videotape for stimulated recall. Participants reflected on their classroom practice based on their conceptual understanding of physics. This empirical study emphasises the role of teaching experience and reflection in science teacher education as a way of better understanding the complex entities that constitute a knowledge base for teaching. The paper draws attention to the value of student‐teachers participating in experiences that might contribute to the development of their PCK and supports a view of PCK development as a process of transformation.

Exploring the Development of Pre-Service Science Elementary Teachers’ Pedagogical Content Knowledge

This paper explores how a group of pre-service elementary science student teachers came to understand the development of their Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) over the course of a semester’s study in a science methods course. At the start of the semester, PCK was introduced to them as an academic construct and as a conceptual tool that they could use to plan for, and assess, the development of their professional knowledge and practice as beginning science teachers. All participants were provided with a tool known as a CoRe (Content Representation) and the manner in which they worked with the CoRe was such that it supported them in planning for and assessing their own learning about teaching elementary science through a focus on the development of their PCK. Through analysis of data derived from the application of a CoRe based methodology (modified and adapted for this study) to the teaching of the science topic of Air, participants’ reasons for, confidence in, and perceived meaningfulness of their learning about science teaching could be examined. In so doing, the nature of participants’ PCK development over time was made explicit. The results illustrate real possibilities for ways of enhancing student teachers’ ongoing professional learning in teacher preparation and offer a window into how the nature of PCK in pre-service education might be better understood and developed.

From lesson plan to new comprehension: exploring student teachers’ pedagogical reasoning in learning about teaching

The research reported in this paper is based on an exploration of the ways in which student teachers learn about the issues and concerns that shape their own professional learning. Shulman’s process of pedagogical reasoning and action was used as a conceptual framework to systematically elucidate different critical incidents that student teachers experienced and to then apply it as an analytic framework for developing deeper understandings of the complex task of learning to teach primary science. Primary science student teacher participants (n = 22) were stimulated to reflect upon critical incidents in order to facilitate identifying their teaching concerns and teaching needs. The results indicate that by helping student teachers to focus on critical incidents in their learning to teach, they come to question their practice more deeply and, through such reflection, gain new insights into teaching as being problematic.

When Teaching Makes a Difference: Developing science teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge through learning study

It is a common view that developing teachers’ competence to restructure or reframe their knowledge and beliefs is inevitably a complex challenge. This paper reports on a research project with the aim to develop science teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) through their participation in a learning study. A learning study is a collegial process in which teachers work together with a researcher to explore their own teaching activities in order to identify what is critical for their students’ learning. During one semester, three secondary science teachers worked in a learning study together with a researcher in a cyclical process in order to create prerequisites and further identify conditions for students’ learning. During the learning study, data were collected from video-recorded lessons and stimulated recall sessions in which the teachers and the researcher reflected on the lessons to analyze their development of PCK, their students’ learning and the impact of that knowledge on their own teaching. The results provide an insight into how the teachers developed their self-understanding in which they questioned their own epistemological beliefs, aims and objectives of teaching and taken-for-granted assumptions about science teaching and learning. As such, the study provides an understanding of teacher professional learning through a careful investigation of how teachers’ PCK is enhanced through their participation in the learning study, and further, how students’ learning might be developed as a consequence.

What Do We Know and Where Do We Go? Formative Assessment in Developing Student Teachers' Professional Learning of Teaching Science.

In the context of teacher education, it could well be suggested that assessment activities that build on formative interactions between student teachers and teacher educators might offer new windows into better understanding teaching and learning. This paper presents findings from a study into a primary science teacher education initiative that seeks to build the foundations on which 24 primary science student teachers, through the use of formative assessment of their science teaching and learning, can begin developing their pedagogical content knowledge (PCK). In the project, formative assessment consists of activities used by teacher educators to stimulate interactions, self- and peer-assessment in order to provide insights into how student teachers develop their PCK during a semester. Content Representations (CoRes), were used as a tool to unpack the student teachers’ approach to teaching a science topic and the reasons for that approach. The results indicate that the use of CoRes, together with subsequent self-assessment and formative interactions with teacher educators and peers, do have the potential for PCK development for student teachers. The results further highlight the need for developing reliable and valid tools for capturing and assessing student teachers’ PCK in pre-service teacher education.

Developing and Assessing Professional Knowledge as a Science Teacher Educator: Learning About Teaching from Student Teachers

This chapter offers insights into what a science teacher educator learnt from analysing her student teachers’ development of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) during a semester of study in a primary science teacher education program in Sweden. The self-study is built on a science education project in which 33 primary science student teachers used CoRe (Content Representation) as a tool to unpack their approach to teaching a science topic and the reasons for that approach. Through a modified approach to using CoRe, the student teachers also self-assessed their learning in order to capture and identify development of their PCK over time. Central to the study is the issue of how the teacher educator, in working with a critical friend, developed increased awareness of the needs and concerns of her student teachers and, furthermore, how this awareness reshaped her understanding of her teacher education practice.

Making PCK Explicit—Capturing Science Teachers’ Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) in the Science Classroom

One way for teachers to develop their professional knowledge, which also focuses on specific science content and the ways students learn, is through being involved in researching their own practice. The aim of this study was to examine how science teachers changed (or not) their professional knowledge of teaching after inquiring into their own teaching in learning studies. The data used in this article consisted of interviews and video-recorded lessons from the six teachers before the project (PCK pre-test) and after the project (PCK post-test), allowing an analysis of if and if then how the teachers changed their teaching practice. Hence, this study responds to the urgent call to focus direct attention on the practice of science teaching. When looking at the individual teachers, it was possible to discern similarities in the ways they have changed their teaching in lesson 2 compared to lesson 1, changes that can be described as: changes in how the object of learning was defined and focused, changes in how the examples that were presented to the students were chosen and changes in how the lessons were structured which in turn influenced the meaning of the concepts that were dealt with. As such, issues for enhancing teachers’ professional learning were unpacked in ways that began to demonstrate, and offer insights into, the extent of their PCK development over time.

Developing a scholarship of teaching in engineering : Supporting reflective practice through the use of a critical friend

This paper reports on a case study in which six engineering teachers in a Masters program of machine engineering worked with a critical friend from a university based centre of teaching and learning in order to develop their scholarship of teaching. The research question that framed the study became: ‘what do engineering teachers learn, in terms of developing a scholarship of teaching, from working and reflecting together with a critical friend?’ The results give insights into how the collaboration with the critical friend and with each other caused the engineering teachers to (re)think their values, beliefs and professional practice as teachers. As this study illustrates, uncovering the knowledge behind an action, framing and reframing problems of practice and formulating ideas for future actions can ultimately guide teachers in refining their practice and, in so doing, develop their scholarship of teaching.

Capturing the complexity of practice : A self-study in the context of engineering education

This article is based on a project in which a teacher educator, acting as a critical friend, worked with six engineering teachers in a Masters program in Machine Engineering in order to stimulate their reflection on their own teaching and learning as a way of developing their scholarship of teaching. The article draws particular attention to ways of expressing the learning from self-study in order to illuminate the complexities of teaching and to begin to encourage the articulation of the scholarship of teaching as a consequence of a collaborative experience. The results highlight how making teaching visible through the use of self-study offers new ways to capture the complexity of practice, which in this article is considered to be an important aspect of developing the scholarship of teaching.

Teaching one thing at a time or several things together? – teachers changing their way of handling the object of learning by being engaged in a theory-based professional learning community in mathematics and science

Abstract Twelve lower secondary schoolteachers in mathematics and science were asked to teach a topic of their choice during a lesson that was video-recorded. We were able to analyse 10 of the cases and we found that all of them were similar in one respect: concepts and principles were introduced one at a time, each one followed by examples of the concept or principle in question, apparently to highlight its essential meaning. All the teachers participated in three modified lesson studies with three cycles in four different groups during three semesters. The modified lesson studies were built on a theoretical idea supported by a large number of recent studies. The theory states that new meanings (of concepts and principles, for instance) are learned through engaging with instances of contrasting concepts and principles. The core idea is that new meanings derive from differences, not from sameness. After the three modified lesson studies, the teachers were asked to once again teach the same topic as in the recorded lessons before the lesson studies. The new lessons were also recorded and the analysis showed that there was one thing in common in all cases: all of the 10 teachers dealt with the relevant concepts and principles in relation to each other (i.e. simultaneously) and not one at a time. By thus bringing out the differences between them, their meaning was made possible to grasp for the students. The study lends support to the conjecture that the modified lesson study is a powerful tool for enabling teachers to structure the content of their teaching in accordance with a principle that is more powerful in making learning possible, even if this contradicts their taken-for-granted practice.