Developing and Assessing Preservice Primary Science Teachers’ Pedagogical Content Knowledge Through CoRes (Content Representations)

• In Event: Gaining CoRe Insight: Examining the Uses of Content Representations for Pedagogical Content Knowledge Development in Science Teaching

Abstract

Objective
The purpose of this project is to use Content Representations (CoRes) (Loughran et al., 2006) as a tool for primary science student teachers to reflect on and formatively assess their development of Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) over the course of a semester. The question that frames the study is “How were the CoRes used to stimulate formative interactions and support student teachers´ development of PCK?”

Theoretical Perspective
The question as to what makes PCK important and how it might be recognized, developed and further assessed is contentious, as what we actually know about the complexities of teacher knowledge continues to be explored. However, research on formative assessment (Black & Wiliam, 1998 a, b) regarding primary preservice teachers’ learning to teach science is still surprisingly limited. Hence, exploring tools for formative interaction with preservice teachers offers new insights into understanding novice PCK development.

Methods
This project is based on the use of CoRes in order to stimulate formative interaction between student teacher peers and teacher educators in a Swedish program of primary teacher education. The use of CoRes is intended to help student teachers recognize ‘big ideas’ for science topics, mapped against pedagogical prompts including: what students should learn about each big idea; why it is important for students to know these ideas; students’ possible difficulties with learning the ideas. As such, working with CoRes is a way to help preservice science teachers to conceptualize and actively develop their professional knowledge of practice.

Data Sources
In the beginning of the semester 24 primary science student teachers were introduced to the CoRe as a tool to help them prepare for their teaching in a Science Learning Centre. Student teachers were asked to think about what they considered to be the ‘big ideas’ associated with teaching the given topic for primary students based on their knowledge of content and students’ understandings. Then, following each lesson, the pre-service teachers in groups of six participated in a stimulated recall session where teaching sequences from each of the pairs were discussed. All sessions were audio-recorded for further analysis.

Results
The data demonstrate how the CoRe methodology created real possibilities for self-reflection and self-assessment in that the different prompts moved the student teachers forward in their thinking about their own learning. The way the student teachers reflected on their teaching in the Science Learning Centre indicated that the formative interaction provided the student teachers with important information about their own identified learning needs about teaching.

Scholarly Significance of the Work
The message inherent in this project is the potential to positively focus on formative interactions in developing and assessing science student teachers’ professional learning and PCK development in ways that they personally value. By helping student teachers identify (i.e. through CoRes) the complexity of teaching and further reason with them about how to adjust their approach to the task, student teachers become aware of what they need to do to improve their teaching and learning practices.

Author

• Pernilla Nilsson, Halmstad University