New Perspectives in Science Education

Ever more the affective domain of the teachers is seen a crucial element in the science teacher training. This “knowledge”, integrated with personal and social history of teachers and their beliefs and cognitive representations, configure the great spectrum of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK). PCK supports decisions and actions in the classroom teachers.

The present study analyzes the emotions explicitly declared by two high school teachers, in a longitudinal study on the development of PCK in the case of electric field teaching. The array of positive and negative emotions is an indicator of the similarities or differences between the various components that make up the PCK of each teacher, and these influence all decisions, teachers do in their classroom. The most contentious issues in emotional terms happen, when teachers teach on superposition principle of electric force and field and on electrostatic-electrokinetic relationship.

The entire data analysis was an iterative and systematic process than included an inductive processes. In the speech teachers emerged emotions during the development of PCK relate to: i) sources of the PCK; ii) expectations on student learning and the relationship with them, iii) uses of individual instructional strategies and the results of their curriculum designs, iv) knowledge on electric field; v) the relationship teachers-school, teachers-context, teachers-coworkers. The coding was carried out following the method of content analysis using the software Nvivo-10.