Developing and Using STEM Pedagogical Content Knowledge Across Career Stages

Introduction

Since the 1980s, teacher educators and researchers have conceptualized and researched teachers' pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) as an amalgamation of content and pedagogical knowledge.

PCK describes teacher knowledge of content and how students learn it – essential knowledge for improving teaching practices and student learning (Desimone & Garet, 2015). The focus in this chapter on PCK as an organizing principle for teacher learning should be viewed as an integrated, developmental approach to teaching.

It is especially important to recognize that a deep PCK approach begins before teacher preparation and continues throughout teachers' careers, but is not knowledge to be mastered, then practiced. Rather, the approach acknowledges the time, effort, and ways of thinking needed to become an expert teacher, mentor, specialist, and administrator, and that different teaching methods require different PCK. This chapter brings research together and applies it to create a teacher development continuum for integrating teaching of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) subjects.

As research on PCK has progressed, research on student learning in STEM has also progressed to emphasize integrating STEM subjects and learning through inquiry, which allow a more robust, integrated approach from the students (Marshall et al., 2011; Minner et al., 2010). But teachers often have difficulty imagining how to implement integration and inquiry teaching in their classrooms (Crawford, 2007). The PCK needed to teach through inquiry is complex and dependent on teachers' understanding of the nature of the science they are teaching (Van Dijk, 2014). Moreover, as teachers learn to teach through inquiry, they need to continue integrating it with other goals of education such as social emotional learning (SEL) and equity. When integrated coherently with these goals, PCK supports powerful teaching and learning (Van Ingen et al., 2018).

Approaching teacher development through PCK is meant to develop, try, test, and improve content and pedagogy in an integrative, developmental way over time. Teacher candidates may have difficulty understanding that content and pedagogical skills are a dynamic continuum building their skills through the stages of preparation, placement, establishment, and movement into mentorship and, perhaps, administration. As professionals, they should be encouraged and supported to see their preparation and careers as a continuum of learning (Liu, 2015). A time-dynamic explicit PCK-as-core approach can help them see that mastery takes time and intentionality.

This chapter describes research on the nature of PCK, including that needed to teach through inquiry and STEM integration. It describes an ideal developmental approach based on current research. In this way, at any stage of their careers teachers and administrators can see their place in the continuum and identify ways they can improve. It is not intended prescriptively, nor as a deep analysis of research, but as a realistic approach that supports teachers' continual and intentional growth.

Background

In his 1985 Presidential Address at the Annual American Educational Research Association meeting, Lee Shulman launched the current era of interest in PCK, describing it as a transformation of content and pedagogical knowledge (Shulman, 1986). The education community has since described, categorized, and assessed teachers' PCK in multiple ways, demonstrating how developing PCK increases teaching effectiveness (Baumert & Kunter, 2013; Keller et al., 2017). Researchers created observation protocols (Gardner & Gess-Newsome, 2011; Nava et al., 2019) and tests (Krauss et al., 2008; Manizade & Mason, 2011) to measure the relationship of teachers' PCK to their students' learning. These measurement methods emerged from two different, but related, PCK conceptualizations: as evidenced in teaching decisions and actions, and as evidenced by test item responses.