restricted time made available within school programmes for science teaching and
learning because other subjects take precedence within the current political climate.
Thus few opportunities exist for teachers to develop rich pedagogical knowledge
(PCK), that is, the very special, often tacit form of professional knowledge a teacher
possesses that enables him/her to successfully teach certain topics to particular
groups of students. PCK encompasses teachers’personal orientations towards
science and science teaching (beliefs and attitudes) and knowledge of their learners’
characteristics, which in turn impact on what content they select to teach for a
particular topic, the specific instructional strategies they choose to use and how they
monitor students’learning (Magnusson et al. 1999 ). New curriculum imperatives
such as inquiry learning in science requires sophisticated PCK since
...teaching elementary science via inquiry is a highly complex task, requiring a high level
of planning and preparation as well as on-the-spot decision-making to meld multiple factors
including the instructional context, knowledge of how children learn, how learners are
likely to think and what they willfind confusing, pedagogical knowledge, and science
content knowledge. (Nowicki et al. 2013 , p. 1138)Crucial sources of this PCK are science content knowledge and classroom teaching
experience, both of which are known to be limited for many primary teachers (Fleer
2009 ). The underdeveloped science content knowledge (CK) and PCK of many
primary teachers leads, not surprisingly, to low levels of confidence in teaching
science and even avoidance (Tytler et al. 2008 ), which compounds the problem.
This avoidance behaviour of some teachers can be linked to self-efficacy beliefs,
which involve judgments about one’s ability to carry out a particular task effectively
(Bandura 1997 ) and are both domain- and context-specific. In the context of this
study self-efficacy relates to a teacher’s belief in his/her ability to teach science
effectively.
For science educators searching for ways to bring about reform in primary
science education increasing science teaching self-efficacy amongst teachers
becomes a key goal because it is known“teachers with high science teaching
self-efficacy belief develop a lasting interest in science, a positive desire to help
students, and a willingness to improve their science teaching”(Velthius et al. 2015 ,
p. 217). They invest time, set goals, and display resilience and persistence when
things do not go smoothly. Thus when considering professional learning oppor-
tunities to foster strong self-efficacy beliefs for science teaching, it is important to
find the sources of these beliefs. Clearly since strong CK is a prerequisite for strong
PCK (Magnusson et al. 1999 ), it is not surprising that various studies have shown
the amount of content or subject matter knowledge is an important predictor for
science teaching self-efficacy (e.g., Rohaan et al. 2012 ). However, some authors
warn against the acquisition of formal science knowledge as a sole means of
improving primary teachers’attitudes towards science teaching and point to better
understanding of the nature of science and PCK development as essential com-
ponents of teachers’professional knowledge for teaching inquiry-based science
(e.g., Fleer 2009 ). Nowicki et al. ( 2013 ) add that teacher learning might prove more
800 A. Hume