More PCK

Lehane, L. and Bertram, A., 2016. Getting to the CoRe of it: A review of a specific PCK conceptual lens in science educational research. Educación química, 27(1), pp.52-58.

 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0187893X15000671

(Leave and Bertram, 2016)

Pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) has served as an alluring theoretical construct since it was originally defined by Shulman (1986) as he attempted to grasp the knowledge bases that a teacher possesses.(Leave and Bertram, 2016)

PCK would distinguish the knowledge that a science teacher has from that of a scientist, a scientist would have considerable knowledge of the subject but would not necessarily have the knowledge associated with the effective instructional strategies for teaching the subject (National Research Council, 1996). In other words, it is a knowledge that is unique to teachers and is the essence of teaching (Cochran, King & deRuiter, 1993). A scientist's knowledge is structured from a research perspective whilst a teacher's knowledge is structured for the purpose of student learning (Cochran et al., 1993).(Leave and Bertram, 2016)

PCK revolves around both a teacher's understanding and the enactment of their knowledge (Park and Oliver, 2008).(Leave and Bertram, 2016)

varied experiences and understandings of what enhances student learning results in difficulties around how PCK can be conceptualised in the classroom. (That’s why this study employs the learner voice too).(Leave and Bertram, 2016)

In discussions at a worldwide PCK summit in 2012, an attempt was made in coming to a general consensus of a description and conceptualisation of PCK. The attendees, all of which had experiential and expert knowledge into the construct of PCK, believed PCK (personal PCK) to be representative of a teacher's knowledge of, reasoning behind, and purposeful planning for teaching a particular topic in a certain way for enhanced student learning (Gess-Newsome, 2013).(Leave and Bertram, 2016)

Perhaps the most important message in Kind's 2009 review of PCK (Kind, 2009) was the “strong evidence that PCK is a useful concept and tool for describing and contributing to our understanding of teachers’ professional practice” (p. 198).(Leave and Bertram, 2016)

Moving PCK research forward then requires investigations into capturing and portraying PCK and then making this more explicit both with practising teachers and student–teachers.(Leave and Bertram, 2016)

A teacher's professional knowledge is difficult to categorise and because of this is very difficult to articulate and record (Loughran, Mulhall & Berry, 2004).(Leave and Bertram, 2016)

Whilst Baxter and Lederman (1999) believe PCK to be a highly complex construct that is not easily assessed, in order to “capture” PCK, it requires a combination of approaches which can invariably portray a teacher's beliefs about what teachers know, what beliefs they hold, what they do together with their justification for what they do. The authors of this current paper believe that the complex nature of PCK requires instruments which can adequately portray instances of PCK.(Leave and Bertram, 2016)

Two instruments have gained significant attention in the science education researchliterature: these are a Content Representation (CoRe) and a Pedagogical and Professional-experiences Repertoires (PaP-eRs), both developed as complimentary tools by Loughran et al. (2006) from which PCK could be captured. Kind (2009) believed that the CoRe tool offers the most useful technique devised to date in science education research for eliciting and recording the PCK from teachers directly. Indeed both the authors in this current paper have used these tools in their own research and that is why the remaining discussion will focus on these and provide insight into how they have been used in various research contexts. (Leave and Bertram, 2016)

These pedagogical tools (CoRes and PaP-eRs) not only help capture the teachers’ PCK but can also be seen as a way of portraying this knowledge to others. These two tools offer a topic specific orientation as opposed to a general PCK representation (Lee & Luft, 2008). The teachers’ PCK can be detected through such things as content specific teaching procedures, e.g. laboratory work, observations, questionnaires and discussions.(Leave and Bertram, 2016)

PaP-eRs connect the teachers’ actual practice with their CoRe and offer a structure for reflection and evaluation of the teaching. The PaP-eRs are about reflecting on the teaching of the content within the classroom context and help to illustrate aspects of PCK in action.(Leave and Bertram, 2016)

PaP-eRs are developed from detailed descriptions offered by individual teachers, and/or as a result of discussions about situations/ideas/issues relating to the CoRe, as well as classroom observations (Loughran et al., 2006). (Leave and Bertram, 2016)

Originally Loughran et al. (2006) developed the CoRe and PaP-eR to capture and portray the PCK of experienced teachers. They noted from their experiences that the act of describing ones’ PCK through CoRe construction requires teachers to problematise the content and teaching and can facilitate to process of teachers to share with others their knowledge about how to teach particular content for enhanced student learning (Loughran et al., 2006). Hume and Berry (2013), Nilsson and Loughran (2012)

When pre-service teachers were asked to construct CoRes, Hume and Berry (2011) noted that pre-service teachers found this task to be challenging and their lack of experimentation and classroom experience proved to be a limiting factor. In spite of this, Hume and Berry (2011) found that with appropriate and timely scaffolding, the process of CoRe construction could potentially aid pre-service teachers in their PCK development.(Leave and Bertram, 2016)

They also concluded that if pre-service teachers continued to work together and practice their CoRes creation, they not only improved but were aided in their preparation for classroom teaching and learning (Hume & Berry, 2011). (Leave and Bertram, 2016)

Involvement in the CoRe workshops provided the pre-service teachers with an avenue to share ideas and work together to consider how they would teach a variety of topics through inquiry. The pre-service teachers struggled initially however they reported that the supportive, discursive environment created during the CoRe workshops acted as scaffold to enhancing their awareness of inquiry. (Leave and Bertram, 2016)

Chordnork and Yuenyong (2014) also used the CoRe with elementary school teachers to facilitate them in developing a greater understanding of teaching global warming. Findings from their study suggested that teachers found that the CoRe offered a means to understand PCK and its influence on science teaching.(Leave and Bertram, 2016)

Bertram and Loughran (2014) explored how PCK might begin to be developed in pre-service physics teachers. They used the CoRe as a frame for 'planting the seed” (p. 151). They recognised that pre-service teachers would lack appropriate PCK since PCK is linked with classroom experience. Their research revealed, that by using a CoRe, the pre-service teachers “shifted from a mostly transmissive content-focused delivery to one that considered more pedagogically-reasoned approaches … thereby providing that some aspects of their PCK have begun to be developed” (p. 151).(Leave and Bertram, 2016)

Indeed pre-service teachers, while lacking experience in the classroom as the facilitators of learning, have developed scripts for teaching based on their years in what Lortie (1975) refers to as the apprenticeship of observation.(Leave and Bertram, 2016)

Nilsson (2013)again used the CoRe to facilitate pre-service teachers PCK. She noted from her study that developing a CoRe together with self-assessment and formative interactions with teacher educators and peers can potentially lead to PCK development.

Williams et al. (2012) also used the CoRe as a tool for building the PCK of early career teachers and results showed that involvement in the CoRe construction helped these novices develop confidence in what they were teaching and to try new pedagogical strategies. Williams et al. (2012) also found that the support of expert teachers contributed hugely to the successful design of the CoRe.(Leave and Bertram, 2016)

Also the process of developing the CoRe with experts was nearly as important as the product of the CoRe itself (Eames et al., 2011). This suggests that taking part in the construction of a CoRe can allow for experiential learning. This is vindicated by Lehane et al. (2013) who stated that the CoRe can act as a gateway for novice teachers to gain insight into expert teachers’ knowledge and experience.(Leave and Bertram, 2016)

Even though the CoRe was originally constructed to represent group PCK, others have found use in the individual construction of CoRes (Lehane & Bertram, 2013). While the group construction and the professional learning community created does have its own benefits, studies have shown that teachers can also gain professional learning from creating a CoRe individually.(Leave and Bertram, 2016)

Kind's (2009) review ended with her view:

“Education courses should make explicit what PCK is, for example, by introducing CoRes as a way of describing current practice and/or using completed CoRes as exemplar material. CoRe completion promotes develop- ment of reflective practice skills, offering a means of acknowledging changes in PCK through application of classroom experience.(Leave and Bertram, 2016)

The authors agree with Kind's views and believe that the development of the CoRe and PaP-eRs and the contribution that the instrument has made to science education research is not something that should be ignored or forgotten. The diversity of contexts in which it has been used suggests that imaginative applications of these instruments can continue to contribute to research in science education.(Leave and Bertram, 2016)

To date, the CoRe has been the more widely used of the two in the literature. While the CoRe does provide a unique portray of PCK, it is reflective of espoused PCK. A greater focus on reporting enacted PCK is needed to compliment the CoRe. Therefore the authors would suggest the need to provide narrative accounts of a teacher's PCK in their actual classroom context. Having a repository of enacted PCK from actual and varied classroom settings would broaden the appeal of using these tools to facilitate teachers’ professional development.(Leave and Bertram, 2016)

Other possible research may lie in using the CoRe for specific research purposes, for example Lehane et al. (2013) used the CoRe to develop inquiry orientations, so the potential is there to develop alternative teaching methodologies using the CoRe scaffold. Also the non-specific nature of the CoRe means that its design could be extended to other subject areas.(Leave and Bertram, 2016)

Lou

https://books.google.com/books/about/Understanding_and_Developing_ScienceTeac.html?id=huwni2AWXRQC

CoRe: A way to build pedagogical content knowledge for beginning teachers

Chris Eames, John Williams, Anne Hume, John Lockley

https://researchcommons.waikato.ac.nz/server/api/core/bitstreams/b7396645-4488-4032-9d48-2d0b7ee143da/content

https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED442631.pdf

https://www.wcu.edu/WebFiles/PDFs/Pedagogical_Content_Knowledge_EncyclopediaofEducation.pdf

CoRes and PaP-eRs as a strategy for helping beginning primary teachers develop their pedagogical content knowledge (Bertram, 2014)

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0187893X14705452

Content Representations (CoRes) and Pedagogical and Professional-experience Repertoires (PaP-eRs) have been extensively reported in science education literature as significant instruments which are claimed to be effective in articulating and portraying aspects of the tacit, intrinsic and individualized component of teachers’ professional knowledge that has come to be known as pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) (cf. Kind, 2009; Hume and Berry, 2011; Loughran, 2012).

A CoRe is a table which sets out to represent science teachers’ understanding of the content for a particular topic (see Table 1 in the Appendix for an example of a completed CoRe by the participant described in this study). It does this through asking teachers to consider the central or “Big Ideas” of the topic being taught—that is, what are the essential tenants of the content that students are to learn. These “Big Ideas” form the column headings. The rows consist of eight prompts which aims to reveal the teachers’ reasoning behind pedagogical choices/activities, knowledge of their students (such as alternative conceptions, difficulties, and points of confusion) and ways of assessing student understanding.

PaP-eRs are linked to the CoRe. A PaP-eR attempts to draw out aspects of a teacher’s PCK in action (see Table 2 in the Appendix as an example of a completed PaP-eR by the participant described in this study). They are a detailed description and reflection of a teacher’s reasoning and thinking about one particular lesson based on a particular part of the content from the CoRe. A paper is commonly presented as narrative account of the lesson from the teacher’s perspective: what did they do and why did they do it? 

Loughran and colleagues, therefore, believed that through a combination of a CoRe and its associated PaP-eRs ‘teachers’ PCK becomes evident through making explicit the nature of their pedagogical reasoning and the associated decision making within the context of teaching particular science content’ (Loughran, et al., 2012, p. 21). In this regard, they believed that a Resource Folio represented solid, concrete portrayals of science teachers’ PCK.

In the interview, Gordon was asked to recall one teaching episode that they had recently taught which was related to the content from his CoRe. In recalling this episode, he was asked questions which guided him in remembering specific moments, decisions, and reasons for his actions in that lesson; and how he had thought about his students, the content and his own practice. The idea of these questions was to encourage rich narrative accounts which are known to more likely uncover teachers’ tacit knowledge of their practice.