In order to teach in ways that promote students’understanding, Shulman ( 1986 ,
1987 ) claimed that teachers need pedagogical content knowledge (PCK), a special
kind of knowledge that teachers have about how to teach particular content to
particular students. PCK was originally developed to represent one of the profes-
sional knowledge bases that an expert teacher possesses, and was later described as
representing“the blending of content and pedagogy into an understanding of how
particular topics, problems, or issues are organised, represented, and adapted to the
diverse interests and abilities of learners, and presented for instruction”(Shulman
1987 , p. 8). Among researchers, there is a common assumption that high level of
PCK will predict high level of student achievement and some researchers stress that
PCK makes the greatest contribution to explaining student progress.
But how do teachers know if their teaching is appropriate in order to promote
students’ understandings? Schneider and Plasman ( 2011 ) noted that “science
teachers’knowledge of students’thinking about science includes teachers’ideas
about students’initial science ideas and experiences (including misconceptions),
the development of science ideas (including process and sequence), how students
express science ideas (including demonstration of understanding, questions,
responses), challenging science ideas for students, and appropriate level of science
understanding”(p. 537). Teachers’learning about their students’ideas and that
these ideas are not accurate prompt them to revisit their own ideas and teaching
practices. Some teachers are interested in learning what studentsfind interesting so
they could gain students’attention at the beginning of a lesson (Schneider and
Plasman 2011 ). However, most research on teachers’PCK is built around efforts to
capture teachers’reflections on their own teaching practice and less on the relation
between teachers’teaching and students’learning of science. It might well be
argued that in the research literature there is a lack of research that includes stu-
dents’conceptualizations of PCK and what aspects within a teachers’professional
knowledge make difference for their learning of science.
This chapter intends to capture PCK through a group of secondary science
students’experiences and reflections on a lesson of genetics. Yerrick et al. ( 2011 )
argued that the voices of children are conspicuously lacking in the research liter-
ature.“It is a rare account when challenged students can voice any preference or
offer input regarding their view of a science teacher’s expertise. Yet, though they
may not be invited to speak often on such matters, they have unique, important, and
often impassioned perspectives on who can teach them”(p. 14). With its particular
focus on identifying thestudents’experiences of aspects within a science teachers’
teaching that promote their learning, the chapter brings new dimensions to earlier
research on science teacher PCK. The chapter presents empirical data to discuss
what aspects within their teacher’s teaching the students identify as important for
their learning of science and how these aspects might be conceptualised as com-
ponents of PCK. As such, investigating students’experiences might improve our
understanding of students’thinking about themselves as learners, as well as of
teachers’knowledge of how to represent and formulate the subject to make it
comprehensible for others (i.e. their PCK).
754 P. Nilsson