might simultaneously encourage the development of others, and ultimately enhance
the overall PCK. However, for the students to learn a specific content, it might well
be asserted that a teachers’PCK must be built around an integration of all aspects of
teacher knowledge in highly complex ways.“Thus, lack of coherence among the
components would be problematic within an individual’s developing PCK and
increased knowledge of a single component may not be sufficient to stimulate
change in practice”(p. 266). Park et al. ( 2011 ) PCK rubric was designed to measure
only two key components (i.e. knowledge of student understanding with respect to
a certain subject matter (KSU) and knowledge of instructional strategies and rep-
resentations of the subject matter (KISR) among thefive components). Taken into
account the specific design ofthisparticular project, it might be reasonable to
suggest that these two components are the ones that students’participation will
inform the most. Teachers need to understand what students already know about a
topic, what those students are likely to have difficulty with in learning the topic, and
what concepts that need to be challenged (Park et al. 2011 ).
51.3 Design of the Project
The study presented in this chapter is conducted in a secondary science classroom
(year 9, 15 year) in which an experienced science teacher taught a lesson of
genetics. The lesson lasted for about 1 hour and the students should learn the
difference between dominant and recessive characteristics. They should also work
with punnet squares tofind out if two brown-eyed parents can have blue-eyed
children. The teacher had participated in a three years professional development
project and had, through earlier research (Nilsson 2014 ), been documented as
possessing a high level of PCK.
The lesson was video recorded and the video was reflected with the approach of a
video club (Sherin and Han 2004 ; Van Es and Sherin 2008 ). In general, video clubs
are used to stimulate teachers’reflections and interpretations of their own teaching,
to build on each other’s ideas and to support the development of a shared language in
a team of teachers. Sharing of classroom videos in so-called video clubs might help
teachers shift the focus towards the relation between their own teaching and their
students’thinking and learning (Sherin and Han 2004 ; Van Es and Sherin 2008 ). As
such, involving teachers in video clubs provides shared reflections on authentic clips
from own and colleagues classrooms. Sherin and Han ( 2004 ) emphasise the
opportunities in engaging teachers in activities where they do not have to respond
immediately to the situation, and where reflection andfine-grained analysis can be
supported by repeated watching of certain interactions. They report on results from
teachers that indicate that the discourse changed over time from a primary focus on
756 P. Nilsson