51.2 Pedagogical Content Knowledge to Promote
Students’Learning
As PCK is deeply rooted in a teachers’everyday work, it is reasonable to suggest
that it encompasses both theoretical dimensions as well as experiences gained from
ongoing teaching activities and interactions with students. Shulman ( 1987 ) argued
that developing PCK involves a considerable shift in teachers’understanding“from
being able to comprehend subject matter for themselves, to becoming able to
elucidate subject matter in new ways, reorganise and partition it, clothe it in
activities and emotions, in metaphors and exercises, and in examples and demon-
strations, so that it can be grasped by students”(p. 13). As such, the relation
between teachers’teaching and students’learning is explicitly focused. Magnusson
et al. ( 1999 ) described PCK as consisting offive components; (1) Orientations
toward science teaching; (2) Knowledge and beliefs of science curriculum,
including national, state and district standards and specific science curricula;
(3) Knowledge and beliefs of student understanding of specific science topics;
(4) Knowledge and beliefs of assessment in science; (5) Knowledge and beliefs of
science instructional strategies for teaching science. Magnusson et al. ( 1999 ) stated
that the“development of PCK is not a straightforward matter of having knowledge;
it is also an intentional act in which teachers choose to reconstruct their under-
standing tofit a situation”(p. 111). More recently, Park and Oliver ( 2008 ) noted
that the development ofonecomponent of PCK might simultaneously encourage
the development of others, and ultimately enhance the overall PCK—suggest
introduce later when you explore the idea? Because PCK includes teachers’
understanding of how students learn, or fail to learn, specific subject matter, the
development of PCK is an important goal to focus on in professional development
programmes (Van Driel and Berry 2012 ). Therefore, if we can identify PCK as the
knowledge that teachers use in the process of teaching, our understanding of what
‘good science teaching’looks like and how to develop this more consistently might
be enhanced.
According to Park and Oliver ( 2008 ), PCK development means the development
of single components of PCK or the integration of these components linking them
with one another. Park et al. ( 2011 ) developed an instrument, the PCK rubric, to
measure the level of a teacher’s PCK based on observations of the teachers teaching
and pre-/post-observation interviews. Their instrument was initially grounded in the
Parks and Oliver’s( 2008 ) pentagon model in which PCK was defined as an inte-
grated knowledge of five components; Orientations to Teaching Science,
Knowledge of Students’ Understanding in Science, Knowledge of Science
Curriculum, Knowledge of Instructional Strategies and Representations for
Teaching Science and Knowledge of Assessment of Science Learning. Park and
Oliver ( 2008 ) noted that on one hand, the development of one component of PCK
51 Capturing Science PCK Through Students’Experiences 755