New Perspectives in Science Education

Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) is an essential knowledge for pre-service teachers during the field experiences because it highly impacts on their classroom practices. Thus, this study aimed to explore the chemistry pre-service teachers’ PCK in chemical instruction course whether they were ready to their practicum and field work experiences in schools. The participants of this study were nine pre-service teachers, who were randomly selected from the 4th year pre-service chemistry teachers (N=25) of a university situated in Bangkok. The data were qualitatively collected and triangulated through observations, interviews, and documental analysis of lesson plans from their Microteaching. The results indicated that 1) the pre-service teachers focused on guided inquiry orientation and activity-driven orientation. 2) only two of them understood knowledge of science curriculum correctly, other two misunderstood, while the others did not have the knowledge 3) the participants neither focused on exploring students' prior knowledge nor considered which content was challenge for their students. 4) all participants used guided inquiry as a teaching strategy, but still had some misunderstanding. 5) the participants used only worksheet to evaluate their students’ science learning ability; a variety of methods used for assessing students’ learning should be included. In conclusion, the results showed that the pre-service teachers had limited knowledge in science curriculum, students’ science understanding, instructional strategies, and science assessment that are the main components of PCK. The pre-service teachers, hence, not only need to improve pre-service science teachers curriculum, but also need to scaffold techniques during their practicum.

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