PCK for dummies / PCK para bobos

EDITORIAL
Educ. quím., 24(núm. extraord. 2), 462-465, 2013. © Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, ISSN 0187-893-X
Publicado en línea el 30 de septiembre de 2013, ISSNE 1870-8404
PCK for dummies
Andoni Garritz*
ABSTRACT
The propaganda related with the title of this editorial work says: “With more than 250 million
books in print and more than 1,800 titles, For Dummies is the most widely recognized and
highly regarded reference series in the world. Since 1991, For Dummies has helped millions
make everything easier”. And that is what I want with the topic of Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK), to make it easier to understand it. We resume the recent definition of PCK in this
abstract: PCK is a “personal attribute of a teacher, considered both a knowledge base and an
action. It is the knowledge of, reasoning behind, planning for, and enactment of teaching a
particular topic in a particular way for a particular reason to particular students for enhanced
student outcomes”. Those four times that “particular” is mentioned remark on how specific
PCK can be.
KEYWORDS: Pedagogical Content Knowledge, for Dummies
Resumen (CPC para bobos)
La propaganda relacionada con el título de esta editorial
nos dice: “Con más de 250 millones de libros impresos y
más de 1,800 títulos, For Dummies es la serie más ampliamente reconocida y altamente contemplada en el mundo.
Desde 1991, For Dummies ha ayudado a millones a hacer
todo más sencillo”. Y eso es lo que deseo que suceda con el
tópico del Conocimiento Pedagógico del Contenido (CPC),
hacer simple su entendimiento.
Resumimos en este apartado una reciente definición del
mismo como: “Se puede pensar en el CPC como un atributo
personal del profesor, considerado en dos aspectos: el conocimiento básico de un tema y cómo lo enseña en acción.
Este conocimiento es producto del razonamiento, la planeación para enseñarlo y la forma de enseñar un particular
tema, en una forma particular, por razones particulares
también, para lograr incrementar el aprendizaje como resultado en un grupo particular de alumnos”. Esas cuatro
veces que se menciona la palabra “particular” comenta sobre lo específico que puede ser el CPC.
Palabras clave: Conocimiento Pedagógico del Contenido, para bobos
Introduction
For Dummies pretend that proven experts present even the
most complex subjects in plain English. Whether that means
directions on how to hook up a home network, carve a turkey, knit your first scarf, or understand the construct of Pedagogical Content Knowledge, as it is the case with this
*Edificio “F2” (ex-Biomédicas), cubículo de la Revista Educación Química.
Facultad de Química, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Ciudad
Universitaria 04510 México, D. F. México.
462
EDITORIAL
editorial. In this way, Dummies are helped to turn one “I
can’t” into “I can.”
In 1987, new technologies were popping up all over the
place. But computer manuals were dull and difficult to understand. A frustrated customer in a computer store, who
knew nothing about computers, was looking for a simple,
basic book about the difficult DOS operating system. “Something,” he suggested, “like DOS for dummies.” The editorial
company John Wiley & sons knew that man’s frustration
was shared by many other computer users, and set out to do
something about it. Thus, the For Dummies phenomenon began. In November 1991, DOS For Dummies by Dan Gookin
was initially met with skepticism — most bookstore chains
didn’t want to carry the book at all — claiming that the title
insulted their customers and readers in general. But it was
responded to the critics by calling the title a “term of endearment” that readers would immediately relate to and
identify with. After convincing the bookstores to give us a
chance, consumers agreed, as evidences the selling.
The importance of teachers
It is important to remember that teachers are one of the
main variables in the teaching/learning of science, primarily with students, but also with syllabus, textbooks, laboratories (Mellado, 1998), and now information and communication technologies. Present strategies used in the classroom
currently recommend the teacher to be a mediator, a counselor, for his/her students to acquire knowledge meaningfully.
The teacher should organize and structure the program
contents, select the representations to be used, choose the
central ideas of the lectured topic, so that students — when
introduced into a variety of strategies and processes — can
generate and process information that ultimately are conducive to learning; that is, allowing their cognitive experience to
EDUCACIÓN QUÍMICA • NOVIEMBRE DE 2013
further develop their ability to learn. The teacher should aim
to achieve a goal of academic success for each one of their
students and help them to find a full school meaning.
Teacher performance in the classroom is one of the most
important factors in students’ academic achievement, which
in the short and medium term results in better life and job
opportunities for them; this performance has become increasingly professionalized (Park and Oliver, 2008), and social transformations and the complex characteristics of
teaching, require more preparation and pedagogical expertise to significantly impact their education.
Research on the conceptions and practice of teachers is one
of the main topics of the research agenda in science education (Tobin, Tippens, and Gallard, 1994; Tobin, 1998; Mellado
et al., 2006, Porlán et al., 2010; 2011). And since the presentation of the concept of Pedagogical Content Knowledge by
Shulman (1986; 1987) it has been a topic not only for the
research on teaching but also for teachers to enhance their
performance (Hume and Berry, 2011; Bertram and Loughran,
2012; Williams, 2012).
The importance of teachers’ PCK
Shulman (1986; 1987) defined PCK as the way of representing and formulating the subject content to make it more understandable to others, and he said it was the knowledge
that goes beyond the subject matter per se and reaches the
dimension of subject matter knowledge for teaching. PCK is
different from general pedagogical knowledge for teaching,
which includes generic principles of organization and management in the classroom, and knowledge of the general
theories and methods of teaching.
PCK enables the teacher to answer questions like: “What
analogies, metaphors, examples, laboratory demonstrations, simulations, are the most effective ways to communicate the appropriate understandings or attitudes of this
topic to students with particular background?” (Shulman &
Sykes, 1986, p. 9), that is, the effort made by the teacher to
understand and make understand a particular topic. It also
includes comprehension of what facilitates or hinders
learning that specific content, and the conceptions and preconceptions that students of different ages and backgrounds
have access to learning the topics most frequently taught in
the lessons.
As Wolfgang Klafki (1958) anticipated in his book, one
can summarize that PCK includes all of the representations
mentioned in the following questions posed for the teacher’s class preparation (see Klafki 1995 for an English written
reference):
• What basic phenomenon or fundamental principle, what
law, criterion, problem, method, technique or attitude
can be grasped by dealing with this content?
• What significance does the content in question or the experience, knowledge, ability or skill to be acquired through
this topic already possess in the minds of the children in
my class?
NOVIEMBRE DE 2013 • EDUCACIÓN QUÍMICA
• What facts, phenomena, situations, experiments, controversies, etc. in other words what intuitions are appropriate
to induce the child to ask questions directed at the essence and structure of the content in question?
• What pictures, hints, situations, observations, accounts,
experiments, models are appropriate in helping children
to answer, as independently as possible, their questions
directed at the essentials of the matter?
Shulman (1987, p. 8) said about PCK: “It represents the blending of content and pedagogy into an understanding of how
particular topics, problems, or issues are organized, represented, and adapted to the diverse interests and abilities of
learners, and presented for instruction”. He expanded the
notion of basic knowledge that the teacher should have.
There is a treatise on PCK written by Julie Gess-Newsome and Norman Lederman (1999), an interesting book
that joins the description of several visions of PCK, the ways
of assessing and measuring the construct and the impact on
science teacher education programs. After that book, there
have appeared several papers and book’s chapters on this
concept as that of de Jong, Veal, and van Driel (2002), a review of the work written about PCK in the chemistry education context; Hashweh (2005), a paper conceiving a reconstruction or new conceptualization of PCK as teacher
pedagogical constructions; Abell (2007), a throughout review written for the Handbook of Research on Science Education; Miller (2007), a review considering the history, the
categories of teacher knowledge, the assumptions, and
methodologies for investigating PCK; Park and Oliver
(2008), a paper considering six explicit elements of PCK,
one of them of the affective type; Sandra Abell (2008) one of
the papers from a special issue of the International Journal
of Science Education on PCK, in which she defends the actuality of research about PCK; and Kind (2009), the last review on the construct. The ways of capturing PCK has been
developed by Loughran, Berry and Mulhall (2012). The instruments provided by these authors provide a vision of
how teachers approach the teaching of certain subject to a
specific group of students, it provides the reasons linking
how, why and what of teaching that content. It includes the
role of beliefs and contextual factors in the understanding
and practice of teachers. The author of this editorial published two papers on the foundations of PCK and the PCK
on the particulate structure of matter in this Journal (Garritz and Trinidad, 2004; 2006) and with Padilla et al. (2008)
another one on the topic of «amount of substance», among
others, including a chapter that is going to appear (Garritz,
2014).
Now it is considered that PCK is important not only for
researchers but also for teachers in service or in the training
period, as several authors have recently demonstrated
(Hume & Berry, 2011; 2013; Bertram & Loughran, 2012; Williams, 2012; Williams, et al., 2012).
In a recent meeting (The PCK Summit) in Colorado
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463
Springs, USA, in October 2012, a set of experts on PCK were
discussing about definitions, applications and interpretations of this construct, and the following description was
proposed by one of the groups under discussion: PCK is a
“personal attribute of a teacher, considered both a knowledge base and an action. It is the knowledge of, reasoning
behind, planning for, and enactment of teaching a particular
topic in a particular way for a particular reason to particular
students for enhanced student outcomes” (Gess-Newsome
and Carlson, 2013).”
Corollary
Asking ourselves on the PCK necessary to face up to a particular topic, group of students, reasons for, and way of
teaching, we enter in a productive exercise, where we have
to think on: our teaching objectives; the knowledge of alternative conceptions of students; their learning difficulties;
our own teaching difficulties, what is the appropriate sequencing of topics, the correct use of analogies and examples, ways to address the central ideas, experiments, projects and problems during the class; and the ingenious ways
of evaluating student progress and understanding. To think
on these things will do complete our preparation of the
class.
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