International Journal of Science Education

Vol. 30, No. 10, 13 August 2008, pp. 1301–1320

RESEARCH REPORT

Exploring Pedagogical Content

Knowledge in Science Teacher
Education
John Loughrana*, Pamela Mulhallb and Amanda Berrya
aMonash University, Clayton, Australia; bMelbourne University, Melbourne, Australia
JohnLoughran
00000013
10
30
john.loughran@education.monash.edu.au
International
10.1080/09500690802187009
TSED_A_318867.sgm
0950-0693
Research
Taylor
2008 August
andReport
& Francis
(print)/1464-5289
Francis2008
Journal of Science
(online)
Education

While the development of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) is considered to be a goal of

teacher education, teaching about the concept itself is an unusual practice. In this case study, we
explore the outcomes when a teacher educator explicitly introduces student-teachers to ideas
about PCK through the use of a CoRes and PaP-eRs conceptualisation. The case study explores
how, through this purposeful use of PCK in a pre-service science teacher programme, student-
teachers’ thinking about their teaching and about their development as science teachers is shaped.

Introduction
Student-teachers are commonly disappointed with their teacher education
programmes (Korthagen, 2001; Wideen & Grimmett, 1995). They expect they will
be told how to teach, and instead are presented with a myriad of teaching issues to
consider that do not readily translate into how to conduct a lesson. Indeed, their
perception that ‘“[t]heory” is largely irrelevant in learning to teach’ is one of the
‘barriers to learning to teach’ that Russell (1997, p. 42) considers to exist between
student-teachers and their teacher education programmes. Although student-teach-
ers ‘generally value the practice teaching component [of their teacher education
programme], there is almost a universal dissatisfaction … with “educational theory”
courses provided by universities’ (Skilbeck & Connell, 2005, p. 6), and, in many
ways, pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) could well be regarded by some as an
element of such ‘educational theory’.
PCK is a theoretical construct that was introduced by Shulman (1986, 1987) as a
way of describing the ‘particular form of content knowledge that embodies the

*Corresponding author. Faculty of Education, Monash University, Wellington Road, Clayton,

VIC 3800, Australia. Email: john.loughran@education.monash.edu.au

ISSN 0950-0693 (print)/ISSN 1464-5289 (online)/08/101301–20

© 2008 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/09500690802187009
1302 J. Loughran et al.

aspects of content most germane to its teachability’ and that comprises ‘the ways of
representing and formulating the subject that make it comprehensible to others’
(Shulman, 1986, p. 9). The present paper offers a challenge to the presentation of
‘educational theory’ to students of teaching through a study of a science teacher
educator who introduced his student-teachers to the idea of PCK using a Content
Representations (CoRes) and Pedagogical and Professional-experience Repertoires
(PaP-eRs) conceptualisation (Loughran, Berry, & Mulhall, 2006; Loughran,
Mulhall, & Berry, 2004). CoRes and PaP-eRs (explained in detail later in the paper)
offer a way in which both the issues of particular science content (e.g., aspects
students find difficult to learn, reasons why the content is important, ways of engag-
ing students with the content, etc.) as well as specific ways of teaching that content
(vignettes of particular teaching and learning episodes) can be captured and
portrayed for others in order to offer insights into the nature of PCK.
Researchers have found the notion of PCK to be useful for thinking about and
exploring aspects of teachers’ professional knowledge and, for some, the develop-
ment of PCK is considered to be a goal of teacher education (Borko & Putnam,
1996). However, the literature is not replete with how the idea of PCK itself might
be usefully employed with student-teachers beyond being part of the ‘educational
theory’ component of the teacher education curriculum. On the other hand, CoRes
and PaP-eRs that explicate expert teachers’ PCK do provide a particular way of
thinking about science teaching (Mulhall, Berry, & Loughran, 2003), and CoRes
might be seen as one way of satisfying student-teachers’ common expectation of
being given tips about teaching activities while at the same time creating possibilities
for seeing beyond this aspect, alone.
This research grew out of a concern to understand the influence of teaching
student-teachers about PCK as a construct (using CoRes and PaP-eRs as a way of
representing it) as a consequence of a teacher educator implementing this approach
in his course. The study is an exploration of issues related to the impact of the ‘how
and why’ of teaching and learning science using PCK as a conceptual framework in
a science teacher preparation programme drawn from both the teacher educator’s and
his student-teachers’ perspectives. The study focuses not on how student-teachers’
PCK develops per se (i.e., documenting changes in understanding of how and why to
teach particular content, and how that changes throughout preservice education), but
instead on understanding participants’ views of how the PCK construct influences
their developing thinking about what it means to be a science-teacher as they learn
about teaching science. The study therefore uses PCK (through CoRes and PaP-eRs)
as a kind of heuristic device to help student-teachers gain insight into the complex
nature of learning about teaching through access to experienced science teachers’
thinking. This is a challenging and important task since so much of the knowledge of
teaching is implicit in experienced teachers’ teaching—which student-teachers are
rarely able to access during their practicum. By using PCK as an heuristic there is an
additional challenge of working to push student-teachers beyond the mindset of an
immediate need to gather up tips and tricks about how to teach. The focus of this
study, then, is on how, by using PCK as a conceptual framework, student-teachers
 Exploring PCK in Science Teacher Education 1303

might better structure and understand what it means to learn to teach science and
how that learning might influence their understanding of the nature of science teach-
ers’ professional knowledge.

Issues in Learning to Teach

Teacher educators face a difficult task in preparing their student-teachers to be good
teachers. Most student-teachers have preconceived views about teaching, and about
what they need to learn about teaching, that are at odds with those of their teacher
educators (Pajares, 1992). Whereas student-teachers think of teaching in terms of
good classroom management skills and activities that transmit information, and of
learning to teach as acquiring such skills and a repertoire of activities, their teacher
educators see the need to help them to think about a range of complex issues that may
not seem particularly useful in the classroom. For student-teachers, there often seems
to be a big gap between the practice of teaching and the theories being espoused by
their teacher educators; which are seen as having little value (e.g., Holt-Reynolds,
2000; Russell, 1997).
Part of the difficulty appears to be that student-teachers tend to underestimate the
cognitive aspects of teaching. As school learners, they did not have access to their
teachers’ thinking and decision-making as they were being taught (Munby, Russell,
& Martin, 2001, p. 895). As beginning teachers, other problems emerge as they talk
to and observe practising teachers teach—since practising teachers may (uninten-
tionally) reinforce preconceptions of teaching as routines to learn and perform.
Much teacher knowledge is tacit and contextually bound, and as teachers lack a
language for sharing their thinking (Carter, 1993) and have little time for reflecting
on their practice, they are often unable to explain adequately to student-teachers
what they do, and why, in their teaching. A further challenge associated with learning
to see teaching as complex and sophisticated knowledge comes from the prevalence
of traditional teaching practices, which means that student-teachers’ practicum expe-
riences often do not support the ideas being presented in their teacher education
courses (e.g., Borko & Putnam, 1996), thus perpetuating the notion of a theory–
practice divide and making learning to teach, from a teacher-educator perspective,
an even more demanding endeavour.
An additional problem for science teacher educators arises from the intertwined
nature of PCK and subject-matter knowledge. Studies suggest that student-teachers
often lack a deep conceptual understanding of the content they are supposed to
teach, and that their subject matter knowledge is ‘fragmented, compartmentalized,
and poorly organized, making it difficult to access this knowledge efficiently when
teaching’ (Gess-Newsome, 1999b, p. 63). As Gess-Newsome (1999b) highlights,
this results in student-teachers tending to focus on teaching facts and algorithms,
and giving little attention to developing student understanding. Likewise, the science
teacher educator in the case study that is the basis for this paper also considered that
science teachers require a highly integrated picture of science knowledge, as well as
awareness of key science ideas in order to teach for understanding (Loughran, Berry,
1304 J. Loughran et al.

Mulhall, & Woolnough, 2006). As we elaborate later, this teacher educator consid-
ered teaching his student-teachers about PCK, getting them to discuss and reflect on
CoRes and PaP-eRs that portray the PCK of expert science teachers, and then to
develop their own examples (hereafter collectively called the PCK approach) to be a
form of ‘reverse engineering’. He saw this approach as having great potential in help-
ing his student-teachers focus on ‘teaching and learning around a conceptual base’, a
goal that had previously eluded him.

PCK and Teacher Education

Shulman’s (1986, 1987) suggestion that teachers needed strong PCK to be the best
possible teachers has resulted in a range of studies into PCK in pre-service science
teacher education. Such research has tended to focus on identifying and understand-
ing both the nature of PCK—often described as ‘fuzzy’ (e.g., Gess-Newsome,
1999a, p. 10)—and its development.
The work of van Driel and De Jong (1999, 2001) highlighted concerted efforts to
understand the nature of PCK in student-teachers of chemistry and the possibilities
for its development. Similarly, Veal, Tippins, and Bell (1999) attempted to map the
‘evolution’ of PCK in prospective physics teachers, while Appleton and Kindt (1998)
argued strongly that PCK in prospective elementary science teachers was largely
based around notions of science ‘activities that work’ (later developed in greater
detail in Appleton, 2006). Recently, Johnston and Ahtee (2006) argued there was a
link between primary student-teachers’ attitudes and confidence in physics teaching,
and that both were supported through good subject matter knowledge and PCK.
Through their longitudinal study into PCK in secondary science teacher educa-
tion, Lederman and Gess-Newsome (1999) recognised that student-teachers framed
their goals for development around issues and concerns (such as classroom manage-
ment) that were far removed from the complexities associated with thinking about or
constructing PCK; in particular, they noted a ‘relative absence of concerns related to
subject matter’ (Lederman & Gess-Newsome, 1999, p. 202). Furthermore, as they
considered what their findings had to say about student-teachers’ understandings of
teaching science, Lederman and Gess-Newsome suggested that student-teachers
needed opportunities to reflect on, and develop their understandings of, the struc-
ture of science knowledge as well as opportunities to apply these understandings in
classroom practice.
Amongst the range of studies of PCK in teacher education, there does not appear
to have been any exploration of the effect of teaching student-teachers about the idea
of PCK itself, much less through a particular conceptualisation such as CoRes and
PaP-eRs, in order to make concrete the abstract notion of PCK. CoRes and PaP-eRs
were developed as both a method for exploring and representing expert science teach-
ers’ PCK (Loughran et al., 2004; Loughran, Berry, & Mulhall, 2006) as comprised
within a Resource Folio that represents PCK around a specific science topic (e.g.,
forces, particle theory, etc.). Each Resource Folio includes a CoRe and PaP-eRs—see
Mulhall et al. (2003) for examples readily viewed on the Internet.
 Exploring PCK in Science Teacher Education 1305

A CoRe sets out the aspects of PCK that are most closely attached to a science
topic, and that most probably extend across various contexts (e.g., the key content
ideas, known alternative conceptions, insightful ways of testing for understanding,
known points of confusion, and ways of framing ideas to support student learning).
PaP-eRs characterise teacher knowledge about specific aspects of teaching the topic
content by providing ‘windows’ into how such knowledge might inform effective
classroom practice. A PaP-eR offers insights into a teaching and learning situation
where it is the content that shapes the pedagogy. Each PaP-eR helps to illuminate
the decisions that underpin the teacher’s actions that are intended to help learners
better understand the science content.
Resource Folios are organised so as to make explicit the tacit and elusive nature
of science teacher knowledge about teaching science. Hence they offer the poten-
tial of helping student-teachers to see into that which comprises the essence of
PCK in action, and so may help address the subtleties of quality teaching that can
otherwise defy analysis (Roth, 1998). Thus, the purpose of the research discussed
in this paper is to explore the use of the idea of PCK (as represented through
Resource Folios) in pre-service science teacher education by examining the follow-
ing question:
How does knowing about PCK as a construct (and about CoRes and PaP-eRs as a way
of concretizing that construct) influence teacher thinking about teaching science, and
about one’s development as a science teacher?

As noted earlier, this question is explored from the perspectives of a science teacher
educator and his student-teachers in order to better understand:
(a) the science teacher educator’s thinking about how introducing PCK to his
student-teachers influenced their development as science teachers;
(b) student-teachers’ perceptions of any links between PCK (as a construct) and
their observations of experienced teachers’ practice;
(c) the influences of ideas about PCK on student-teachers’ approaches to planning
for their teaching;
(d) the influences of ideas about PCK on student-teachers’ views about engaging
science students in learning; and
(e) how student-teachers’ developing ideas about PCK shaped their views about
learning about science teaching.

Research Design
This study offers insights into a case (Robson, 2002) of how a teacher educator taught
his science student-teachers, using PCK as a heuristic device, to help them better
grasp what it might mean to develop knowledge and practice of teaching science. The
participants in this study were Jack (pseudonym), a science teacher educator (at a
university separate from the authors), and his student-teachers, comprising five who
were in their final year of a Bachelor of Education degree, and 22 who were doing a
one-year Post-Graduate Diploma in Education (a one-year ‘add-on’ programme to
1306 J. Loughran et al.

their undergraduate degree so they could qualify as teachers). We refer below to these
students as the ‘BEds’ and ‘GradDips’, respectively.
The study resulted through a chance encounter with Jack, an experienced teacher
educator, exceptionally well regarded by science teachers in his region, who had
been concerned about his student-teachers’ learning about science teaching for some
time. Jack had decided independently to implement the PCK approach described
earlier with his student-teachers. Because Jack was developing his approach as he
taught, there was an obvious need for a flexible research design that could be respon-
sive to appropriate opportunities for data collection (Robson, 2002). Although the
study included two different student groups, there was no intention to explore differ-
ences between these groups but rather to extend opportunities to understand the
effect of Jack’s changes in his teaching and the influence of these changes on his
students’ learning.
Jack chose to use the PCK approach (described above) because he felt it offered
new possibilities for explicitly helping student-teachers develop an understanding of
better ways of thinking about practice and professional learning (Loughran, Berry,
Mulhall, & Woolnough, 2006). He explained:
… the CoRe & PaP-eRs approach to representing PCK … was interesting to me because
it was conceptually based. That attracted me because in my science teacher education
classes I try to get student teachers to think in terms of key [science] concepts … [but]
I know that it is hard for student teachers to make the shift to thinking about big ideas
from a typical syllabus outline. As a teacher educator you never really feel as though they
are committed to using a conceptual structure in their science teaching. (Loughran,
Berry, Mulhall, & Woolnough, 2006, p. 70)

Jack had more than 5 years experience as a teacher educator and had taught science
for some 20 years in high schools. He began using his new approach in Semester 1,
with his BEds, and continued with this approach in Semester 2 of the same year
when he taught the GradDips. His new teaching approach involved his student-
teachers writing an essay on PCK; reading and discussing Resource Folios that
portrayed content-specific PCK of expert science teachers; developing their own
CoRes on a science topic that they either would be teaching or had taught while on
school practicum; and constructing PaP-eRs as a result of reflecting on their teach-
ing experiences during their practicum.
As noted above, our research attempted to understand what influences the
concept of PCK (and its representations through CoRes and PaP-eRs) had on these
student-teachers’ thinking about, and practice of, science teaching. These influences
were explored from the perspective of both the teacher educator and the student-
teachers themselves.
Table 1 summarises the data collected, and the codes used to represent these data
in the analysis below. There were two group interviews with the BEds, both with
three student-teachers in each group. Even though the class size was small, distance
and time-related difficulties (e.g., some student-teachers needed to return from
practicum a large distance from the university or return home early at semester’s
conclusion) meant that it was not feasible to conduct individual interviews without
 Exploring PCK in Science Teacher Education 1307

Table 1. Details of data collection

Participant(s) Data source Data code Timing of data collection

BEd student-teachers Document text (e.g., student- Dt End of Semester 1

teacher developed CoRe)
Group interviews
First interview (120 min) fgiBEd1 Middle of Semester 1,
following practicum
Second interview (120 min) fgiBEd2 End of Semester 1
GradDip student-teachers Whole class tutorial discussion fgdGDip Second to last week of
(120 min) Semester 2
Jack (teacher educator) Interviews
First interview (90 min) TEd1 End of Semester 1
Second interview (60 min) TEd2 Week 3 of Semester 2

being burdensome to the teacher educator who kindly organised them. These semi-
structured group interviews (which were audio-taped and transcribed) aimed to
probe participants’ experiences of working with Resource Folios, and explored their
views about the value and use of CoRes, PaP-eRs, and PCK for both developing and
practising teachers (see Appendix A for examples of interview questions). During
these interviews, all participants were encouraged to respond to each interview ques-
tion; all spoke freely, with no participant dominating the discussion. In addition,
these participants’ CoRes, PaP-eRs, lesson plans, and class assignments, which are
collectively referred to as document texts (Table 1), were also collected so that a
different perspective on their views, issues, and ideas about PCK could be accessed;
these also offered a form of cross-checking in terms of analysis (further elaborated
below).
In the case of the GradDips, one of us was a participant/observer in a whole-class
discussion facilitated by Jack, the teacher educator, during a normal tutorial in the
second to last week of their teacher education programme. Jack and various
student-teachers presented CoRes or PaP-eRs on different topics that they were
developing individually for critique and comment by those present. Field notes and
an audio-tape of the session were later used to generate a summary of the discus-
sions that took place during this session. While giving insight into student-teachers’
thinking, this session also provided an opportunity to observe Jack teaching. Jack
had not previously developed a CoRe, and recognised that developing and present-
ing one of his own might help him better understand issues that his students faced
as they developed theirs; he planned to ‘submit’ his final version to the class for
their assessment when they submitted theirs to him. The classroom dynamics were
relaxed and friendly, with students readily volunteering to present CoRes/PaP-eRs
they were developing and at least one-half of the class actually contributing to the
discussion about the presented CoRes/PaP-eRs at some time during the tutorial.
The interviews with the BEds indicated that Jack used similar approaches in their
classes.
1308 J. Loughran et al.

The teacher educator was interviewed twice (audio-taped and later transcribed in
full). These unstructured interviews explored Jack’s perceptions of how his student-
teachers engaged with the notion of PCK through the processes and practices that he
had put into place in his teaching, differences he perceived between these student-
teachers and those he had taught previously (without using the PCK approach),
issues involved in using this new approach, and whether and how his views of teach-
ing science teachers had changed.
Data were first analysed by applying codes based on the research questions noted
earlier. Through coding, themes and patterns of connections were highlighted and
member checks on these were conducted to strengthen the trustworthiness of appli-
cation and interpretation of codes (Robson, 2002). All three authors read the data
and were involved in the analysis: one developed the initial coding (see Appendix B
for codes), and this was refined through discussion with the other two authors until
consensus about appropriate categories was reached. Throughout this process an
audit trail was developed and maintained.
Clearly, in analysis of data derived from conversations in group interviews and
discussions, varying perspectives and experiences arise that can influence interpreta-
tions of meaning. Nevertheless, there was consistency across time and participants in
the nature of the broad-ranging conversations about PCK that led to a common
coding application and interpretation, and so consistency was attained within the
study. Pseudonyms have been used for all participants, and quotes are indicative of
the general response of participants to the particular issue under consideration.

Results
For clarity of expression, we portray linearly student-teachers’ understandings from
initial contact with the notion of PCK through to their perceptions of its value and
probable impact on their future practice. Obviously there was some recursion in the
raw data arising from the group interviews/discussions for hearing confirming,
disconfirming, and alternative views on similar matters, and the inevitable ongoing
reflection on the process itself is likely to have influenced participants’ learning
about PCK. However, the following data illustrate the main ideas and responses of
the study’s participants in relation to Jack’s PCK teaching approach. The results are
presented according to themes drawn from the research questions that help to
‘unpack’ this story of teaching and learning about science teaching through an
explicit focus on PCK.

Introducing PCK to Student-Teachers

Upon entering teacher education, student-teachers are inevitably concerned to
determine quickly how to teach. Consequently, just as Lederman and Gess-Newsome
(1999) discovered, they tend to focus on themselves and what they feel they need to
do (or have) in order to teach. This focus tends to overshadow issues about the actual
subject matter, its relationship to how teaching might be constructed, or student
 Exploring PCK in Science Teacher Education 1309

learning. Therefore, a teacher educator might think it challenging to introduce begin-

ning teachers to ideas about PCK. So what would motivate a teacher educator to
complicate an already difficult process? What is the vision of teacher education
through a PCK lens that might attract a science teacher educator?
My intention was for [my student-teachers] to really start focussing on developing
teaching and learning around a conceptual base … [because] in science we deal with
fundamental ideas [that are introduced] over the 6 years of [secondary] education, but
I wanted them to think in terms of how you would make that a coherent and developing
experience [for their students] in developing deeper and deeper understandings of those
concepts. (Jack, TEd2)

In many teacher preparation programmes, a common assignment is the development

of a unit of work and some form of construction and analysis of lesson plans. In
adopting a PCK focus for teaching about teaching science, Jack felt that the units of
work his student-teachers had developed (using the frame of a CoRe) were ‘better’
than those he had seen from previous student-teacher cohorts. He considered his
student-teachers’ lesson plans to have a ‘stronger conceptual base’ but he noted also
a sense of confidence that his students seemed to have developed (‘the way they held
themselves’), which made him think they had gained something different by
approaching learning about practice through a focus on PCK.
In his interviews, Jack returned several times to his observations of a BEd student-
teacher (Brenda) during her practicum. While teaching an astronomy unit, Brenda
gave her students grains of sand to represent planets. Students then walked the
required (very large) distances to indicate the scale of separation between them in
the solar system. Jack believed that Brenda had the confidence to pursue this activity
because it would achieve something better, in terms of student learning, than the
more usual activities of cutting out models of planets, and so on. He felt that
Brenda’s approach was a consequence of the influence of her developing PCK on
her practice. Although she was not in a position to hear her class’s comments about
the activity (which, Jack reported, indicated that they understood the point of the
exercise), nevertheless she was confident that the lesson had gone well and been
worthwhile.
Jack summed up his ideas about using CoRes and PaP-eRs in pre-service teacher
education by explaining:
[A CoRes and PaP-eRs] approach is a bit like ‘reverse engineering’. You [i.e., we
researchers] have … done a lot of work in trying to analyse what expert teachers [have
said about good teaching1], and it’s … appealed to me that you’ve … dared to trust
teachers that they are actually doing some good stuff … So if it [i.e., CoRes and PaP-
eRs] is a fair analysis, then surely its usefulness is to have an effect back in the teaching
profession … You can’t turn teaching into a recipe but you can give some ammunition
… to [help student-teachers] survive. (TEd2)

Jack felt that beginning teachers needed a ‘skeleton’ such as that provided by CoRes
and PaP-eRs for working with the curriculum. Understandably, teacher educators
advise student-teachers to think about notes to be given, practical activities, ques-
tions to be asked, and timing, when planning science lessons. The allure of thinking
1310 J. Loughran et al.

about teaching and learning science from a conceptual base through a focus on
PCK encouraged Jack to reconsider and restructure his teaching approach in ways
that challenged such traditional methods of helping student-teachers learn to teach.
Jack could see new possibilities for how teacher educators could scaffold the devel-
opment and consciousness of student-teachers’ PCK in ways that could build their
confidence to pursue alternative ideas, or to seek different expectations for their
teaching.
Jack felt that using CoRes and PaP-eRs had had an effect on his BEds, although it
was difficult for him to articulate exactly how. Notably, however, he considered:
It’s made it easier to have more complex conversations with them about teaching … and
about whether those strategies [they used in their practicum] really made sense in terms
of what concepts they were trying to get across. (TEd1)

In addition, the student-teachers had developed behaviours through their work on

PCK that Jack considered were part of ‘the secret business of teachers’ (i.e., teacher
knowledge traditionally not shared with neophytes). For example, Brenda was now
able to sift through activities on a given topic and identify those that were important
for learning, while both Brenda and Lesley were able to develop a ‘story’ and ‘flow’
in their teaching. Jack commented:
This reformulating … your actual scientific knowledge is … a big thing … I’m not sure
if all teachers even do it but … I try to explain [to student-teachers], ‘If I teach some-
thing like physics, it’s like I can see the whole—it’s all there … I can feel the map that
I’m going through.’ … A question comes up, and because you know where you are in
the map, and you know the way to get to other bits, you can say, ‘Ah, that question
relates to what we did in semester one last year, or this relates to that,’ and that’s not a
trivial thing to build up over time. (TEd2)

Jack clearly believed that the behaviours he was seeing in his student-teachers were
different to those he had come to expect from his previous teaching about science
experiences. However, he thought that it was possible that the ideas about PCK
(CoRes and PaP-eRs) might be more meaningful and useful to his BEds than to the
(one-year end-on) GradDips, whom he had not yet taught at the time of his remark,
because the latter had much less teaching experience. As noted above, while he could
not fully articulate how, he believed that the BEds’ thinking and actions in teaching
science suggested their developing PCK was qualitatively different from other
cohorts that he had taught. But how does an emphasis on PCK influence the practi-
cum experiences of student-teachers, especially as they need to work with experi-
enced teachers who do not generally use such an abstract concept when talking about
teaching?

‘Seeing’ PCK
As noted earlier, teachers’ knowledge of practice is often tacit, which influences not
only what they talk about but also the manner in which they talk about their teach-
ing. The BEds were conscious that although PCK might be reflected in teachers’
 Exploring PCK in Science Teacher Education 1311

practice, it did not necessarily follow that teachers were able to articulate or use it as
an approach to mentoring student-teachers and developing their professional knowl-
edge of science teaching and learning. Part of the problem was that experienced
teachers were not familiar with PCK as a construct. As Eve noted,
… [my supervising teacher] does know what he’s doing—he does all of this [PCK] stuff …
but he doesn’t even realise that he has [PCK], he just does it and … it’s just second
nature, and like … he knows, ‘When I get to this topic, when I get to this point, they’re
not going to get this and this is how I get around it.’ He just knows it. (fgiBEd1; Eve’s
emphases)

The BEds’ discussions about experienced teachers’ PCK and the way practising
teachers might respond to PCK as a construct were, at times, quite animated, as they
were prompted by others’ ideas to respond with similar experiences. However, as the
transcripts (Eve above, Kaye and Lesley below) demonstrate, the student-teachers,
having been sensitised to the idea of PCK, could clearly see elements of PCK in expe-
rienced teachers’ practice but, because of the tacit nature of these experienced teach-
ers’ understanding of their own practice, they did not necessarily see it that way
themselves. Certainly, understanding PCK as a construct was something that changed
what the student-teachers could see in their mentors’ practice even if they did not
choose to use the language of PCK publicly when discussing teaching with them:
Kaye: I try not to use [the expression ‘PCK’] very much [when talking to teachers]
… I try to avoid the lingo as much as I can just because … I tried to sit down
for 5 minutes and [show teachers some ideas about PCK]. I couldn’t get their
attention … whereas if they were coming to me and bringing me information
about their teaching or content or something, they were more than happy [to
talk] … They see their role more as … giving you [i.e., student-teachers]
information.
Eve: They’ve been doing it for so long [and say], ‘This is what works, this is what
doesn’t, this is what I’m gonna do.’
Lesley: I think there is also a little bit of fear … as well. Even though they’re already
doing [i.e., teaching using] PCK … (fgiBEd1)

Through their familiarity with the notion of PCK, the BEds’ way of talking about
science teaching and learning seemed somehow different from that of their more
experienced future colleagues. As noted by Jack earlier, their confidence in talking
about science teaching and learning hinted that they were looking beyond simply
gathering up ‘activities that work’ (Appleton, 2006), a common strategy employed
by student-teachers. In many ways, these student-teachers, by being sensitive to
what PCK might mean for their practice, were developing more sophisticated ways
of thinking about and conceptualising their understanding of teaching science. As
implied in Lesley and Eve’s transcript below, the connection between content and
pedagogy that is PCK attracts their attention in ways that they do not see being used
as such a purposeful guide to thinking and talking about science teaching by their
supervising teachers. In thinking about their teaching in terms of what PCK can
mean for constructing their practice, Lesley and Eve are helped to move beyond
simply seeking a bunch of good activities.
1312 J. Loughran et al.

Lesley: From observations on my internship I have noted that many teachers already
teach in a primitive PCK perspective with their high degree of content knowl-
edge, teaching skill and ability to link the both with such ease. However, it is a
rare event that a teacher will actually think clearly about why they are choos-
ing particular activities over others or even simply why they are conducting
their teaching practice in the manner in which they do; [they do it] intuitively
… by having the awareness that PCK based planning provides I [hope I] will
better prepare myself and allow my teaching to be effective for student under-
standing. After practising such teaching procedures I have come to under-
stand the benefits of such a practice. (Dt)
Eve: Relating to my subject matter knowledge, which I initially believed to be the
strongest knowledge area I possessed … I have noted that my university stud-
ies, in science, have been improperly focussed and difficult to connect to a
secondary science classroom. I have found it necessary to do extensive read-
ing on topics, even those I have studied in depth, in order to be able to link it
to student learning. (Dt)

These student-teachers’ comments clearly illustrate how their thinking about their
science teaching involves attempting to bring their content knowledge and general
pedagogy together in a form that is designed to enhance not only their understand-
ing of their knowledge of teaching, but also their students’ learning. This aspect is
demonstrated further in both the BEds and GradDips approaches to planning.

Planning Teaching
In the GradDips group, the usefulness of CoRes in lesson planning was stressed in
ways that suggested their focus was on some of the underlying issues associated with
the content (influenced by the prompts in the CoRe) that caused them to think more
deeply about how they constructed their teaching and why:
Mick: The way I think of the CoRes … [they’re] more to help you go through the
process of planning … As you go down this list [of prompts in the left hand
column of the CoRe], it actually helps you think about whether the ideas that
you had originally [are] actually important to what you’re teaching …
Paul: Yes, I check just to make sure there are no holes … if [when responding to the
CoRe’s prompts] you can’t actually think of a reason [for teaching a big idea]
then maybe … you need to put in some time to thinking why are you [teach-
ing] this [idea]. (fgdGDip1)

During their first group interview, the BEds also talked about the use of the CoRe
and PCK in their lesson planning. As the following transcript illustrates, their
approach to planning suggests that they saw a need to make their knowledge of prac-
tice explicit and that planning for teaching using a CoRe as a framework helped
them to do just that. Interestingly, they also highlighted how in their planning for
teaching they were cognisant of a need to be responsive to students’ learning. In so
doing, they suggested that simply implementing activities that worked was not in
itself sufficient. They were concerned not only with how their activities might work,
but also why. Therefore they appeared to be beginning to think about how their
teaching might influence students’ understanding of science. For them, this shift had
 Exploring PCK in Science Teacher Education 1313

much to do with the way they were framing their teaching, and that was as a conse-
quence of concretising PCK through the use of a CoRe:
Eve: I think it’s a different way of looking at planning rather than just straight up
lesson plans … because [through the CoRe I’ve developed] I’ve already sort
of thought about how I want the kids to think and how I want them to learn.
… [P]roper teachers—I think they already ask themselves a lot of these ques-
tions [although] they probably don’t know it … and for student teachers it’s
good to sort of say, ‘Oh yeah, I’ve got to think about this’. So I think as a
planning tool the CoRe is really good … I would find the activities and not
really think about how it was going to come across and where the difficulties
would lie so [before I knew about PCK] … [but now] it’s kind of like, ‘Oh
yeah, I didn’t actually think about that beforehand.’ So, yeah, [back then] it
was kind of like, ‘Find resources, find resources!’ (fgi, BEd1)
Kaye: I think it’s really important to understand the different types of knowledge
that we do have …. The fact that we do have ideas about content, we do have
ideas about teaching, but how it all comes together in a package that kids
understand is more important … I have to spend hours trying to plan some-
thing … because I just haven’t got the experience … I just can’t always make
the connections between, OK, this is the content, this is a strategy and how
am I going to put it together to … help these kids understand? So I think
that’s why we learned about PCK! (fgi, BEd1)

It seems these student-teachers are developing a framework for thinking about, and
strategically planning, their teaching in terms of the content being taught and
student learning: importantly, they are aware of this development. However, they
also hint at the place of experience (e.g., Kaye) in influencing that development and
how they have moved forward in their thinking about what matters when developing
a repertoire of teaching activities (e.g., Eve).

Creating Engagement in Science Learning

These student-teachers readily identified major differences in their thinking about
teaching when confronted by a topic they had not taught before. They noted that in
these situations they typically took a transmissive approach, ‘delivering’ content to
students—that caused them to feel dissatisfied, yet they did so because they felt they
did not possess an understanding of the content knowledge and teaching strategies
in the same way as they did for topics they had previously taught, or for content with
which they were more familiar.
This issue was raised in different ways, but was most clearly articulated when
participants were discussing their understanding of what it meant to them to try to
engage students in learning:
I think there’s two types of engagement. You can engage students with activities because
they’re fun or you engage their understanding, and by using lots of activities you might
be engaging them so they’re having fun but whether they’re engaged to understand is a
different thing. So I think PCK … helps me to always go, ‘Are they understanding this,
or are they getting the concepts that they’re bringing, or are they joining all the dots?’—
sort of like a concept map … I can’t necessarily see that their understanding is forming
1314 J. Loughran et al.

because they’re just doing activities. … [S]o yeah, for me it’s not just activities but just
the … whole picture of their understanding and their development, and where they’re
getting stuck. (Kaye, fgi, BEd1)
… in regards to doing activities I wasn’t just looking just for activities. I was looking for,
like you might have 20 activities for a certain topic or something, but the CoRe taught
me to pick out ones that would really help them with their understanding … It’s actually
not to fill in time. (Lesley, fgi, BEd1; Lesley’s emphases)

Again, these student-teachers’ concern to move beyond activities that work is inter-
esting; particularly given that it appears to be influenced by their understanding of
PCK as a heuristic device. There is recognition of the difference between being
engaged in learning content and having ‘fun’ during a teaching activity. The atten-
tion they draw to the notion of engagement is interesting for two reasons. First,
student-teachers’ needs are more often about how they perceive they are managing
the task of teaching rather than how their students are actually learning (Kagan,
1992), so to make a shift from a teacher-centred to a student-centred teaching
approach can be challenging. The fact that these student-teachers are pursuing a
student-centred approach illustrates an important shift in their perspective on teach-
ing. Second, being able to see beyond an activity itself and into the learning suggests
that these student-teachers are grappling with issues that go to the heart of the rela-
tionship between teaching and learning in particular content; which is the essence of
PCK. By being concerned that their students are engaged in learning there is the
suggestion that they are looking more deeply into their classroom experiences, such
that they are considering not so much the superficial ‘busyness’ of classrooms but
rather are seeking to better align teaching and learning as a result of understanding
the complexities of this relationship in relation to the particular science content. As
noted above then, it appears that these student-teachers may be beginning to
explore the influence of PCK on their developing knowledge of practice through
paying careful attention to their students’ learning.

Learning about Science Teaching

In the whole-class discussion that took place during a GradDip tutorial, Jack and
individual student-teachers presented and discussed CoRes and PaP-eRs that were
in various stages of development. Issues about the nature of CoRes and PaP-eRs
were raised and unpacked during this session. During the discussion, new under-
standings about PCK and CoRes and PaP-eRs seemed to emerge as individuals
noted interesting examples of changes in how they thought about their experiences
through these constructs. For example, some began to recognise possibilities within
teaching situations that caused them to think differently about their classroom inter-
actions. It appeared they were beginning to view their experiences through a PCK
lens that impacted their thinking about their knowledge of practice, and enabled
them to see stronger links between students’ learning and the content being taught.
One of the GradDips, Bram, talked about a PaP-eR related to teaching about
waves that he was developing, although he appeared a little uncertain about the full
 Exploring PCK in Science Teacher Education 1315

purpose of a PaP-eR. Bram noted that he had started to think about particularly
successful teaching experiences from his practicum, in preparing his PaP-eR. He
described the activity ‘that worked best’ as being a homework task that involved his
students in experimenting with infra-red remote controls. Their various discoveries
were such that he was able to make very effective links to ideas about wave proper-
ties. Preparing a PaP-eR based on this experience seemed to have prompted Bram to
start thinking about why the activity was successful.
Listening to the class discussion of Bram’s PaP-eR prompted Mike to claim he
now understood what PaP-eRs meant in terms of PCK. He had taught astronomy to
Year 12 (final year of high school) and, after asking students to make some models
of the planets and the sun (a reasonably standard activity in this unit), he asked them
to go outside and work out to the same scale their (relative) distance in the solar
system. Using his new found understanding of what PaP-eRs are intended to
portray, he felt that two incidents provided PCK-related insights into this experi-
ence. The first was a student remark: ‘So all the stars in the sky—they are just other
suns’ (fgdGDip). The student’s comment led Mike to understand the importance of
the astronomy activity differently, recognising that it had led to this student’s realisa-
tion about an aspect of the content that had been troubling her, something that was
not obvious to Mike at the time.
A second insight that Mike linked to his developing understanding of PaP-eRs
concerned another student’s question: ‘What’s in between all these planets?’ (fgdG-
Dip). Mike now recognised (not having done so at the time) that this student had
finally grasped the notion that there was ‘huge empty space between planets’. In
both of these simple but powerful examples, Mike’s linking of the value of a particu-
lar activity to the learning of particular aspects of content, and his awareness of this
link, suggests a way of thinking about teaching science that is rudimentary to devel-
oping one’s PCK—the purposeful alignment of content and pedagogy to enhance
student understanding and the pedagogical reasoning that matters in terms of why
an activity is done in a topic at a particular time.
Other examples of such purposeful linking of content and pedagogy suggest that
these student-teachers’ thinking about, and understanding of, PCK influenced how
they were developing their knowledge of practice. For instance, May described a
PaP-eR she was preparing about her experience of working with a student who
thought there was no difference between the cell division processes of meiosis and
mitosis. May’s response to the student had been to break the ideas down in order to
clarify the differences:
I got to him look at Metaphase 1 [and asked], ‘What do you see … what are the chromo-
somes doing? What’s lining up, and then what is going to separate?’ … He said, ‘OK, the
homologous pairs are lining up and that’s what’s going to separate.’ … Then I said,
‘Alright, have a look at Metaphase II, is it different?’ Compared to Metaphase I, he could
see that the pairs weren’t lining up, just the double stranded chromosomes lining up which
then separate … And … so it was breaking … down [the comparisons], discussing it with
him, getting him to find what the differences [at the various stages] were [that helped
him], and … I went from [having] a student who wasn’t engaging in the lesson to [one]
at the end [of the lesson] saying, ‘Thankyou, I really understand that now.’ (fgdGDip)
1316 J. Loughran et al.

Thus, May seemed to learn through her experience something about teaching mito-
sis and meiosis—that students need to have pointed out what they should focus on if
they are to genuinely distinguish between the significant characteristics of apparently
similar processes; that it cannot be assumed that students immediately see these
differences. Importantly, preparing her PaP-eR seemed to help May explicitly recog-
nise the need to think about issues in aligning content and explanation so that the
intended student learning occurs.

Overview
The teacher education literature shows that student-teachers most commonly face a
difficult and sometimes daunting task in learning to teach, and that their self and
impact concerns (Fuller, 1969; Fuller & Bown, 1975) often drive their need to
quickly and efficiently gather up a range of tips and tricks about how to do teaching.
In this study, unpacking the explicit use of PCK (using a CoRes and PaP-eRs
conceptualisation) as a construct for enhancing the learning about teaching science
in a pre-service science teacher preparation programme has raised a number of inter-
esting issues in relation to the more common learning to teach experience.
The use of PCK (as initiated by Jack) offers another way of thinking about learn-
ing to teach science that appears to have helped these student-teacher participants
go beyond the more traditional gathering up of a range of ‘tips and tricks’ about how
to teach, and encouraged them to begin to delve into deeper understandings of prac-
tice based on better linking of teaching and learning purposes. Further to this, the
particular approach to PCK implemented by Jack shows how these student-teachers’
planning for teaching was considered by their teacher educator to be qualitatively
different to his previous experiences of student-teachers’ thinking about planning for
teaching because they seemed to be more intent on making links between teaching
and learning as opposed to simply delivering the prescribed content. Also, through
approaching learning to teach science through this particular ‘PCK lens’, these
student-teacher participants appeared to see into the teaching of their more experi-
enced colleagues in ways that enhanced their ability to better access the tacit aspects
of practice that are so commonly elusive. Finally, in considering the development of
their understandings of their own professional knowledge of practice, these partici-
pants appear to have adopted a language (based on the prompts in the CoRe) and a
stance toward the integration of theory and practice in positive ways, which suggests
that they already see teaching and learning about science to be complex and prob-
lematic as opposed to rule-driven and propositionally based.

Conclusion
This paper has considered how an explicit focus on PCK in pre-service science
teacher education might influence student-teachers’ thinking about, and approaches
to, practice. At one level, it could well be that, simply by developing CoRes for
topics they were teaching during their practicum, student-teachers were being
 Exploring PCK in Science Teacher Education 1317

provided with a useful framework for preparing lessons. That is, the process of
developing a CoRe had immediate benefits that they recognised and that simulta-
neously increased their confidence about teaching (Johnston & Ahtee, 2006).
However, at a different level, this study also suggests that, by being sensitised to the
notion of PCK, these participants attempted to better align the content matter to be
taught with pedagogy so that the content might be better understood by their
students, thus developing their teaching in ways that might be described as more
meaningfully directed as a result of their better understanding and valuing of an
aspect of ‘educational theory’; that of PCK.
It seems reasonable to suggest that an important outcome of this study is that the
student-teacher participants have come to see PCK (through the CoRes and PaP-
eRs conceptualisation) not so much as an educational theory but as a way of look-
ing into how they might develop their own professional knowledge of practice. In
that way, they are applying a more sophisticated view of learning about teaching in
their own practice that appears to help them challenge the more traditional science
teaching as ‘the delivery of facts’ so common in schools. Their approach to thinking
about their science teaching also demonstrates that they are not so much being soci-
alised into teaching (Zeichner & Gore, 1990) but adopting a professionalising role
that has the potential to shape and direct their learning about teaching science in
new and powerful ways. This is perhaps best illustrated through their own conclu-
sions about their experiences of the programme and the sense they make of their
learning to teach science using PCK as a framework to guide their thinking about
practice:
Eve: [PCK] helps us … we’re doing everything that [experienced teachers] would
have done when they started out, but it’s [PCK] sort of in front of us, it’s sort
of given us a format.
Kaye: But I don’t think they went out there with PCK. They developed it. So it’s
almost like we have a chance, we have a step-up on all these people.
Eve: Yeah. They were thrown in at the deep-end and [told], ‘Go!’
Kaye: … It’s just a way of thinking—knowing that that knowledge exists, and trying
to develop it.
Lesley: Do you think that by doing this PCK, though, that we will better teachers
quicker?
Kaye: Mm. I’d like to think so but I don’t know whether that’s going to be the case.
Lesley: I think we would be, because we’re already thinking about these kinds of
things like misconceptions. I think if I was first year out [and didn’t think
about PCK in the way Jack has used it with us], I wouldn’t be even thinking
about that, I’d be more content based.
Kaye: … It doesn’t mean we have the answers … but I think we are a step ahead and
can anticipate kids struggling with something or how we can build their
understanding … (fgiBEd1)
Eve: … you … need to have … some good activities but you’ve got to have the ques-
tions and the misunderstandings … So yeah, this [PCK based around a
CoRe] allows you to sort of go beyond the activities and sort of get to their
brains so you’re not just giving them things to do … [they] want to be chal-
lenged … so you’ve got to think about that … that’s what I think. The end!
(fgiBEd1; Eve’s emphases)
1318 J. Loughran et al.

And that is surely what we would all hope for as an outcome of teacher education.
So perhaps, if carefully considered and thoughtfully employed, PCK could be a
useful construct in attempting to reach that goal.

Note
1. CoRes and PaP-eRs have been developed from extensive research with experienced science
teachers.

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Appendix A. Examples of interview questions

1. How has the work on PCK been organised for you in the course?
2. What purpose do you think it serves?
3. How does it help/not help for thinking about science teaching and learning?
4. How have you used CoRes and PaP-eRs?
5. What advantages/disadvantages do you see in terms of using/developing PCK?
6. What does thinking about PCK mean to you as a student teacher?
7. What does thinking about PCK mean for practicing teachers?
8. How do you think your experience with PCK will influence your future work as
a teacher?

Appendix B. Codes developed and used in analysis of transcripts

Field Explanation Code applied

Introducing PCK to How is PCK introduced to student- Std PCK intro

student-teachers teachers, what conceptual aspects
matter?
Seeing PCK How do student-teachers envisage Seeing PCK
what PCK is, what it looks like?
Planning to teach How is planning to teach influenced PtTeach
by notions of PCK?
Engaging in science What does it mean to be engaged in ScLngEngagement
learning learning science, how does
conceptualisation of PCK influence
that?
Learning about How is learning about science LngAbTgSc
science teaching teaching influenced by PCK?