REVIEW OF LITERATURE
2.10 Domains of Teacher Knowledge – ‘Knowledge base for Teaching’
2.10.3 Pedagogical Content Knowledge for Life/Biological Sciences
60 conceptualization of the teaching role; a process to ensure that all teachers share a common view of what the new curriculum entails; administrative support, and instructional guidance.
Development of teachers’ curricular knowledge should therefore be an integral part of teachers’ professional development, especially during reform.
In his definition of curricular knowledge, Shulman included not only the knowledge of topics, but also the knowledge of the variety of instructional materials available. Various scholars believe that it is the lack of understanding of primary principles of the curriculum that prevents effective use of curriculum materials by teachers (Lieberman & Miller, 2001;
Singer, Krajcik, Marx, & Clay-Chambers 2000; Wiggins & McTighe, 1998). Therefore, professional development should incorporate time for instructional planning, discussion, and consideration of underlying principles of curriculum to be more effective in supporting implementation of innovations (Penuel, Fishman, Yamaguchi, & Gallagher, 2007: 931).
It is generally expected that curriculum reform will bring about new changes in teaching strategies, approaches and techniques, (Vacirca, 2008). At the outset, teachers need awareness of the philosophies of the new curriculum before implementation (Stein, McRobbie, & Ginns, 1999). In turn, teachers require knowledge of new curriculum so as to change their philosophy (Brady & Kennedy, as cited in Barnes, 2005). This has to occur through teacher development, failing which, the implementation of new curriculum becomes unfeasible (Givens, as cited in Barnes, 2005).
61 representing and formulating the subject that make it comprehensible to others….
Pedagogical content knowledge also includes an understanding of what makes the learning of specific topics easy or difficult: the conceptions and preconceptions that students of different ages and backgrounds bring with them to the learning of those most frequently taught topics and lessons”, (p.9) .
In a subsequent editorial, Shulman (1987: 8) rearticulated PCK as a ‘special amalgam of content and pedagogy that is uniquely the province of teachers, their own special form of professional understanding’. In this way, Shulman emphasized teachers’ combination of content knowledge with pedagogical knowledge as central to teaching. Likewise Loughran, Berry and Mulhall (2012) assert that PCK does not simply involve use of a teaching procedure because it works but it is about integrating knowledge of pedagogy with content together, so that the content is better understood by learners. As expressed by Loughran et al.
(2012), for the development of PCK, teachers need to possess good conceptual understanding of the subject content. According to Loughran et al., (2012: 7) a teacher who uses strategies such as illustrations, examples, explanations, concept maps to explore concepts within a specific topic to challenge students’ thinking, demonstrates PCK. Use of such strategies during teaching helps learners understand concepts better, bringing to the fore any possible misunderstandings and difficulties (Loughran et al., 2012).
In line with the principles of PCK, the South African Life Sciences curriculum explicitly lays down what the learners need to achieve by learning the Life Sciences concepts. The curriculum document specifies that in the process of making meaning and achieving understanding of concepts and ideas in Life Sciences, learners must:
• build a conceptual framework of science ideas;
• organise or reorganise knowledge to derive new meaning;
• write summaries;
• develop flow charts, diagrams and mind maps; and
• recognise patterns and trends (DBE, 2011c:14).
The curriculum document further sets down other kinds of skills that the learners must attain in the process of learning Life Sciences. These include the ability to:
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• analyse information/data;
• recognise relationships between existing knowledge and new ideas;
• critically evaluate scientific information;
• identify assumptions; and
• categorise information, (DBE, 2011c: 14).
The assumption here is that teachers have acquired the desired PCK to facilitate these kinds of skills during their teaching. In reality though, some of the teachers (if not many) may be lacking not only in their PCK, but also hold a superficial conceptual understanding of many of the concepts to facilitate the kind of learning envisaged in the curriculum documents. As pointed out previously, teachers also need to have the necessary knowledge and strategies to teach process skills through the teaching of science investigations.
Based on earlier research by Lederman, Gess-Newsome and Latz (1994), it was believed that both prospective or novice science teachers generally possess little to no PCK. Along the same line of argument, Smith and Neale (1989) claimed that teacher training programs regularly did not exert any significant effect on science teachers’ PCK. On the contrary, based on an earlier study to examine the influence of an intensive workshop on fostering PCK growth among science teachers, Clermont, Krajcik, and Borko (1993) reported a significant improvement as a result of the workshop. Similarly, Van Driel, Verloop, and de Vos (1998), made a case that both in-service and pre-service training programs have potential to result in changes in the teachers’ conceptions of teaching and learning science.
Literature presents PCK in science as including teacher's knowledge of science learners, curriculum, instructional strategies, and assessment (Abell, 2007; Magnusson, Krajcik, &
Borko, 1999). Whilst teachers generally possess these kinds of knowledge for teaching science and various teaching strategies, the introduction of a new curriculum automatically shapes the evolution of new strategies in teachers’ pedagogical knowledge. When the new outcomes-based education was introduced in countries like South Africa and Australia, shifting traditional way of presenting science facts to a constructivist-based pedagogy to better develop learners’ understanding of science concepts and phenomena, teachers were faced with considerable challenges (Appleton, 2008: 530). According to Appleton (2008),
63 during curriculum change science teachers’ PCK needs a lot of attention which may hopefully be attained through teacher learning in various PD models and programmes.