Effective Teaching:

Pedagogical Content Knowledge

Palanisamy Kathirveloo

Marzita Puteh

Fakulti Sains Matematik

Universiti Pendidikan Sultan Idris

Corresponding Author: palanisamy7552@gmail.com

ABSTRACT

Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) plays an important role in classroom instructions.

In the teaching and learning process, a PCK involves teachers’ competence in delivering

the conceptual approach, relational understanding and adaptive reasoning of the subject

matter. The aim of this study is to explore the PCK of mathematics teachers in teaching

fractions. Students are facing difficulties in the conceptual understanding of fractions due

to teachers’ ignorant and lack of PCK in teaching fractions. Evidence provided in this

paper is basically based on the past literature. Without full grasp of PCK, teachers may

face difficulty in teaching the subject effectively.

Keyword: Pedagogy Content Knowledge, Conceptual Approach, Relational

Understanding, mathematics

ntroduction
In the era of globalization, education needs more real and practical instruction. Not only

students have misconceptions of the subject matters, teachers may teach wrong concepts

especially in mathematics. Thus, Shulman (1987) proposed PCK to reduce teachers’

misconceptions. PCK is a blending of content and pedagogy in order to enhance the

understanding of how particular topics, problems, or issues are organized, represented,

and adapted to the diverse interests and various levels of abilities of learners (Shulman,

1987). The important skill that a teacher should process is the capacity to transform the

knowledge to be taught to the students in a way that could be easily understood. An actual

teaching should not only contain the teacher’s skillful demonstration of his knowledge but

should also include the ability to guide the students to understand meaningfully the

content of the knowledge (Hansen, 1995). This shows the importance of PCK in instruction of

any classroom. Shulman and Grossman (1988) divided knowledge into two components;

substantive knowledge - the key facts, concepts, principles and explanatory frameworks in

a discipline and syntactic knowledge - the rules of evidence and proof within a discipline.

Most studies have shown that PCK is important to the educators and teachers in the

classroom instructions. We can summarize what most studies founds in their findings-

proper and structured planning of lesson plans would contribute to better understanding

and would cater for various levels of abilities.

Issues on Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK)

Although the academics give varied opinions to the various components of teachers’

knowledge but they agreed about the importance of teachers’ proper in teaching the

students. Shulman defined PCK as teachers’ interpretations of subject matter knowledge

in the context of helping the students learning. We can said that teachers’ understanding

of subject matter itself will influence children’s learning. In PCK, students will only
response if they are confident with their understanding and will communicate to the

teachers. This will help the teachers to ‘catch’ when their misconceptions and errors

occur. By this way, teachers may be able to overcome their misconceptions and errors

immediately. Thus teachers need to have proper understanding of the subject they teach.

Shulman and other researchers have contributed to our understanding of particular aspects

of PCK. Shulman (1986) also stressed the need for teachers to know their students

thinking. The transformations of subject matter knowledge (SMK) into pedagogical

content knowledge is a significant focus in teacher education. Educators and researchers

(e.g., Graeber, 1999; Leinhardt, Putnam, Stein, & Baxter, 1991) have stressed that

teachers need to alleviate their misconceptions about their subject matter. In New

Zealand, a recent report from the Education Review Office claims that 23% of the

teachers have low pedagogical content knowledge in mathematics (Education Review

Office, 2006). The finding shows the importance and the needs of PCK among teachers.

Lack of PCK will influence teacher’s effective teaching and learning process in the

classroom. Teachers is a person who is entrusted to enhance students’ achievement. Thus,

the teachers should be free of misconceptions and errors. In order to carry out their duties

well they need particular and special knowledge that PCK suggests.

Mathematics Pedagogical Content Knowledge (MPCK)

In general, pedagogical content knowledge affects how teachers think about their subject

matter knowledge. A skilful and very knowledgeable teacher has the potential to make the

learning of mathematics more meaningful to the students (Public Agenda, 2000 in

Graham & Fennell, (2001)). Teaching or instructions without deep understanding is

meaningless. Effective instruction should involve PCK. PCK covers conceptual and

procedural knowledge, and the stages of understanding that they are likely to pass through

in moving from a state of having little understanding to the mastery of it. As such,
teachers should have knowledge on how to teach, their students effectively. The National

Council of Teachers of Mathematics (2000) pointed out that effective teaching requires

knowing and understanding mathematics, students as learners, and pedagogical strategies

(p.17).

MPCK and Fractions

Learning and mastering fractions is still a major issue for students in both primary and

middle schools (Saxe, Taylor, Mcintosh, & Gearhart, 2005). Fractions is considered as

one of the problematic topics to teach and to understand especially at elementary or

primary level. According to Smith (2002), difficulty with fractions among teachers is well

documented in many countries, and many authors consider fractions to be the most

difficult area of mathematics covered in primary schools. Studies have shown that

teachers and students, have difficulties on fraction concept and division in fractions (Ball,

D.L., 1990; Redmond, 2009). Shweta Naik in her findings said that confusion arise

among teachers, to determine which answer is right or wrong provided by their students

for the given questions.

7 2/5 – 7 × 2/5

a) 0 b) 2/5 c) 4 3/5 d) 23/5

The above question with multiple responses is a challenge for the teachers’ knowledge

about the concepts. The conversion of mixed number into fractions are learned as

multiplication of the whole number and the denominator followed by addition of the

numerator. This procedural understanding develops a belief of the existence of a

multiplication sign between 7 and 2/5. The existence is also supported by the rules from

algebra as it is often said that if there is no sign between two letters (or a letter and a

number) then there is a multiplication sign. So xy indicates x x y. Similarly, 7 2/5

indicates 7 × 2/5. These lead teachers towards wrong answer i. e., option (a) 0. But

interestingly when these teachers are interviewed and asked about the reasons for the rest

of the answers, they started thinking about students reasoning. This unpacking of what

students thought, gave them insight about the structure of fraction representation itself.

Thus, we can determine the level of teacher’s conceptual understanding and relational

connectedness in teaching of fractions. PCK is assumed to help teachers to sequence their

instructions in a workable way. Conceptual and relational understanding will help

teachers to understand their students thinking or reasoning. In order to become a better

teachers of mathematics they need to deepen their understanding of the mathematics.

They are also expected to apply PCK whenever they teach subject matter for the various

levels of abilities of their students.

Conclusion

In the context of Malaysia, there are few studies on PCK. As educators, we are

concerned about the effectiveness of, PCK. Still others claim that we are “deskilling” or

“deprofessionalizing” teachers by “testing” them. This is counterproductive. In

conclusion, there is a powerful relationship between what a teacher knows, how she

knows it, and what she can do in the context of instruction. Mathematics teacher

educators assume a significant responsibility for enhancing the content and pedagogical

knowledge of prospective teachers as well as influencing their belief regarding

mathematics teaching and learning and their awareness of their students’ mathematical

dispositions. In our context, we need to assess the teacher education system in Malaysia

for better and quality instructions in the future. Most of the studies on PCK focus on pre-

service teachers, novice teachers, and prospective teachers but very few on in-service

teachers or experience teacher or expert teachers.

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