The students also felt that when the teacher showed interest and had a positive
attitude towards his subject they became more engaged.
Student 8: He is nice, positive and structured. I really appreciate that he always explains to
us what is the aim of the lesson and what we should achieve.
Student 9: He is really determined and committed and he makes all of us really engaged in
our own learning.Further, a well-structured lesson with a clear formulated and communicated goal
(i.e. science Big Idea) made it easier for them to understand the specific content.
Some students highlighted that they often experience that teachers present so many
different things in one lesson so that they seem to loose the aim and the specific
goals for learning. In terms of the teachers’PCK, the teachers’content knowledge
as well as his enthusiasm seemed to be important both for the students’interest for
science and for their attitudes towards their own learning processes.
51.7 Discussion—Learning About Teaching
from Students
As Shulman noted PCK is“...the most powerful analogies, illustrations, examples,
explanations, and demonstrations—in a word, the ways of representing and for-
mulating the subject that makes it comprehensible for others”(Shulman 1986 , p. 9).
This project pays attention to how specific content becomes (or not) comprehen-
sible for students through capturing a teachers’PCK through students’voices. As
noted, listening and paying attention to students’views and experiences might the
chapter strives to give a new perspective to science teacher knowledge and how to
involve the learner into capturing a teacher’s PCK. Shulman ( 1986 ) noted that two
main components of teacher knowledge is (a) knowledge of instructional strategies
incorporating representations of subject matter and responses to specific learning
difficulties and (b) knowledge of student conceptions with respect to that subject
matter. Both these components are strongly supported within students’reflections in
the video clubs. The students noted that the teacher must be able to quickly pick up
his/her subject knowledge when students ask questions and give different analogies
and examples that give students a context.
The teacher picked up example after example and enriched the science content
with different analogies and metaphors in order to promote students’understanding
of the subject area. The teacher had the“fingertip feeling”when he wove together
the context and content, in a very skilful way. Further, his affective skills (en-
gagement, personality and joy) relates well with Shulman’s( 2015 ) notion that“The
affective aspects of teacher understanding and action are important both because a
lot of what teachers‘know and do’is connected to their own affective and moti-
vation states, as well as their ability to influence the feelings, motives, persistence,
and identity formation processes of their students (p. 9)”.
764 P. Nilsson