CHAPTER TWO

PEDAGOGICAL CONTENT KNOWLEDGE

Within the category of pedagogical content knowledge I include, for the most regularly taught
topics in one’s subject area, the most useful forms of representation of those ideas, the most
powerful analogies, illustrations, examples, explanations, and demonstrations – in a word, the ways
of representing and formulating the subject that makes it comprehensible for others. Since there are
no single most powerful forms of representation, the teacher must have at hand a veritable
armamentarium of alternative forms of representation, some of which derive from research whereas
others originate in the wisdom of practice. 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. If those preconceptions are misconceptions, which
they so often are, teachers need knowledge of the strategies most likely to be fruitful in reorganizing
the understanding of learners, because those learners are unlikely to appear before them as blank
slates. (Shulman, 1986, pp. 9 - 10)
Pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) is an academic construct that represents an intriguing idea. It is an
idea rooted in the belief that teaching requires considerably more than delivering subject content knowledge
to students, and that student learning is considerably more than absorbing information for later accurate
regurgitation. PCK is the knowledge that teachers develop over time, and through experience, about how to
teach particular content in particular ways in order to lead to enhanced student understanding. However,
PCK is not a single entity that is the same for all teachers of a given subject area; it is a particular expertise
with individual idiosyncrasies and important differences that are influenced by (at least) the teaching
context, content, and experience. It may be the same (or similar) for some teachers and different for others,
but it is, nevertheless, a corner stone of teachers’ professional knowledge and expertise.
It stands to reason that in order to recognize and value the development of their own PCK, teachers
need to have a rich conceptual understanding of the particular subject content that they teach. This rich
conceptual understanding, combined with expertise in developing, using and adapting teaching
procedures, strategies and approaches for use in particular classes, is purposefully linked to create the
amalgam of knowledge of content and pedagogy that Shulman (1986, 1987) described as PCK.
Recognizing one’s own PCK is perhaps most evident when teaching outside an established area of
subject expertise. No matter how capable a teacher might be when teaching his or her specialist subject,
both skills and ability are immediately challenged (and typically found wanting) when teaching content
with which there is little familiarity. When teaching outside one’s area of subject expertise, despite having
a well developed knowledge of teaching procedures (e.g. Venn diagrams, concept maps, interpretive
discussion, etc.) or strong specialist content knowledge (e.g. specialist of physics or biology or chemistry,
etc.) a teacher’s skill of combining such knowledge of content and pedagogy in meaningful ways for
particular reasons is no longer so readily apparent. Issues associated with difficult aspects of the topic,
students’ alternative conceptions, important big ideas, conceptual hooks, triggers for learning and so on,
are not well known or understood by the teacher when rich understandings of subject content is lacking,
and it is in elements of professional practice such as these that PCK stands out as different and distinct
from knowledge of pedagogy, or knowledge of content alone.
Because the development of teaching approaches that respond to a deep knowledge of the content is
something that is built up and developed over time, it is possible that the knowledge of pedagogy and
knowledge of content may blur, making recognition of PCK difficult. But, when teaching outside one’s area
of subject expertise, the distinction may begin to stand out more readily because PCK cannot simply be
“imported” from one subject area to another. Therefore, being able to see into science teachers’ practice in
ways that goes beyond knowledge of teaching procedures and content and into the amalgam that is PCK is
important, if the expertise of exemplary science teaching is to be highlighted and better valued.

WINDOWS INTO PEDAGOGICAL CONTENT KNOWLEDGE

It may be possible to see into how a teacher’s PCK develops by paying careful attention to how a
knowledge of pedagogy and knowledge of content combine to shape the amalgam. Central to this
development and foundational to PCK is that a teacher’s use of particular teaching procedures with
particular content is for a particular reason. PCK is not simply using a teaching procedure because it
“works” and it is not just breaking down knowledge of content into manageable “chunks”; it is the
combination of the rich knowledge of pedagogy and content together, each shaping and interacting with
the other so that what is taught, and how it is constructed is purposefully created to ensure that that

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CHAPTER 2

particular content is better understood by students in a given context, because of the way the teaching has
been organised, planned, analysed and presented. The following section develops this idea further as
knowledge of pedagogy and content are unpacked and analysed in an attempt to illustrate how insights
into the nature and development of PCK might be better recognized and understood.

Venn diagrams
A Venn diagram is a teaching procedure “borrowed” from mathematics (for detailed explanation, see White
& Gunstone, 1992). It is a way of illustrating relationships between things (people, organisms, events, etc.)
and, as such, is an excellent teaching procedure for probing students’ understanding of concepts, definitions
and the relationships between members of different sub-sets of a universal set. Venn diagrams can be seen as
a generic teaching procedure; however, when used in particular ways, at appropriate times, with particular
subject matter content, PCK becomes apparent (as the following attempts to illustrate).
At one level, Venn diagrams as a teaching procedure can be applied as a generic approach to testing
meaning of such things as definitions (see Figure 2.1 below). The simple Venn diagram in Figure 2.1
demonstrates the relationship between herbivores, carnivores, and omnivores in terms of the commonly
stated definition of each. This Venn diagram (Figure 2.1) demonstrates that herbivores and carnivores
have different characteristics from one another, and that a carnivore is not a herbivore, and vice versa.
However, an organism that displays the features of both is classified as an omnivore (i.e. eats both meat
and plants). Therefore, when teachers use Venn diagrams they may do so because, drawing on their
knowledge of pedagogy, they recognize how helpful they are as a teaching procedure for bringing out
salient features important to understanding particular aspects of specific content knowledge.

Figure 2.1: Venn diagram

Moving beyond the teaching procedure alone though, when a teacher’s rich conceptual understanding of
the subject content is the driving force behind the choice of the elements for students to use in drawing a
Venn diagram, may well be indicative of PCK. As an important indicator of exemplary practice, PCK
begins to emerge because the manner in which the content knowledge is being developed, questioned,
manipulated, and tested is the driving force for the way the content and pedagogy are both shaped, and
interact, in practice. Therefore, a teacher’s purposeful use of Venn diagrams for developing students’
understanding of differences between, and implications of, learning, in ways designed to develop richer
conceptual understanding of the content beyond the basic facts, is strongly suggestive of the amalgam of
content and pedagogy that is PCK.
Arguably, the type of reasoning underpinning the construction of practice (outlined above) is PCK if a
teacher deliberately chooses Venn diagrams to explore terms and/or categories within a content area to
challenge students’ understanding and is dramatically different from simply applying a teaching
procedure because it “works”. In such a case, the teacher’s content knowledge is important in shaping not
only what terms are selected, but also, and equally important, which terms are not used. Further to this, an
understanding of some of the difficulties and points of confusion that students experience with the content
may well be important in the selection of the terms, when to use Venn diagrams, and how to help students
move beyond knowledge as facts, in order to pursue the development of understanding. Moving beyond
the simple example illustrated in Figure 2.1, consider the Venn diagram in Figure 2.2.
In this case, a Biology teacher’s PCK may well be evident because the choice of these two terms
(plants and animals) for students to use highlights a common difficulty inherent in the topic of
classification. This seemingly straightforward Venn diagram takes on new significance when considered
in conjunction with Figure 2.3 (what the teacher intends the students to construct).

Figure 2.2: A student’s initial response to the task of using ‘Plants’ and ‘Animals’ in a Venn diagram