New Perspectives in Science Education

The exiting literature on pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) suggests that documented topic-specific science PCK of experienced science teachers can assist in development of pedagogical content knowledge of pre-service science teachers. This paper presents an effort to understand and record topic-specific pedagogical content knowledge of a high school science teacher.

A narrative inquiry was conducted to gain access to the pedagogical content knowledge of Jason, a high school science teacher, who had accumulated two years of experience of teaching high school physics. Oral narrative data was collected about his experiences of teaching topics related to force and motion through a series of interviews, conducted as collegial conversations. The “narrative analysis” approach was used to configure a narrative account of Jason from the data collected (Polkinghorne, 1995) to illustrate their pedagogical content knowledge of the above topics.

The narrative account of Jason was evidence for his deep understanding of the topics related to force and motion and a distinctive learning progression that he used for teaching these topic so that his students can develop a better understanding of the topics related to force and motion. The composition of his topic-specific pedagogical content knowledge consisted of nine distinct teacher knowledge aspects identified in the literature on PCK, and each knowledge aspect contained relevant examples and practical solutions to the pedagogical problems. The pedagogical content knowledge of Jason of teaching topics related to force and motion is sourced into his multiple diverse experiences of teaching these topics.