New Perspectives in Science Education

Pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) is a specialized form of teacher knowledge required to teach specific content (Shulman, 1987). Many science teacher education programs aim at developing PCK of pre-service science teachers. The extant literature on pedagogical content knowledge indicates that it is difficult to develop PCK during short time available during teacher education courses, especially without actual experience of science teaching. The researchers in the area also identified the need to develop activities for pre-service science teachers to help them develop their science PCK.

This paper presents formative assessment tools that can help develop topic-specific pedagogical content knowledge of pre-service science teachers. These formative assessment tools are developed as a result of interpreting experiences of secondary school science teachers of teaching topics related to force and motion. A narrative research methodology was adopted to study experiences of the participant secondary school science teachers of teaching topics related to force and motion. An “analysis of narratives” (Polkinghorne, 1995) approach was performed to interpret and modify the specific experiences of the participant teachers of teaching force and motion ideas into the form of formative assessment tools.

These tools are recommended to be used to engage pre-service science teachers in discussions about the pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) required to teach the topics related to force and motion at high school level, and hence develop their topic-specific science PCK. These tools can also be used to evaluate topic-specific science PCK of high school science teachers.