Science teachers’ teaching actions in their classrooms: Pedagogical content knowledge and skills

Imran Tufail, Chris Eames, Maurice MW Cheng

Abstract


This study offers empirical evidence of science teachers’ teaching actions in their classrooms comprising a combination of knowledge components and teaching skills (PCK&S). Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) is a combination of knowledge components for teaching (Mavhunga, 2020; Tufail et al., 2020) and skills are teachers’ intellectual actions for teaching. The Consensus models of PCK (Carlson & Daehler, 2019; Gess-Newsome, 2015) have highlighted the importance of teachers’ PCK and skills in teaching practices, therefore, the first PCK consensus model (Gess-Newsome, 2015) was adopted as the conceptual framework for this study. This case study examined two experienced science teachers during their teaching of a chemistry unit to Year 10 students in New Zealand classrooms. The data were collected using a questionnaire, document analysis, lesson follow-up interviews, and classroom observations including video recordings. All the gathered data were transcribed and imported into NVivo for coding. The literature-derived analytical framework was constructed for analysis. The finding shows that teachers’ teaching practices reflected varieties of combinations of two or more knowledge components through skills (PCK&S). The combinations of knowledge are tacit while skills are more explicit during practice. The findings seek to contribute to the understanding of how the components of PCK and skills may be related and visualized through the act of teaching.

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References


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