PCK Definition Forum Post

☑️ Tasks

• Formulate your own definition of pedagogical content knowledge.
• Give examples from your discipline of content knowledge, pedagogical knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge.
• Discuss your definition within the frameworks presented by Tsui (reading 12), i.e. "teacher knowledge" as:
  1. Reflective practice
  2. Situated knowledge
  3. Content knowledge

🧠 PCK Definition

Just because one is an expert in their discipline does not mean that they can automatically teach the discipline (Bransford, Brown, & Pellegrino, 2000, p. 44). Being an expert means it is likely that much time has passed since they were a novice, so they tend to forget the novice’s perspective. What is required of Computer Science teachers is pedagogical content knowledge which combines the knowledge and skills of an expert software developer with the knowledge and skills of an expert teacher.

• Pedagogical Knowledge: Utilizing the instructional strategy of a "jigsaw" to split up a large piece of content into chunks such that groups of students can become experts of one chunk and learn the other chunks from their peers.
• Content Knowledge: Being able to consume and understand a large codebase.
• Pedagogical Content Knowledge: Presenting the students with a large codebase and splitting it up into different sections based on some category (ex. a Model View Controller architecture).
  1. Get assigned a number from 1-3, and depending on your number, read either the model (1), view (2), or controller (3) files of the codebase.
  2. In groups of 3, where all members of the group share the same number, discuss what you read and what the purpose of the files seem to be.
  3. In groups of 3, where no two members of the group share the same number, share your findings from the files you read with the group. Once everyone has shared, collaborate to determine the relationships between the model, view, and controller files.
     1. Draw a UML class diagram to map out the relationships.
     2. Which files seem to reference other files?
     3. What purpose do those references serve?

🧑🏾‍🏫 Teacher Knowledge

1. Reflective Practice: Suppose a lesson does not go as well as you may have wanted it to. Instead of throwing your hands up in the air and chalking it up to this semester's unique mix of students, one should take the time to reflect on what happened in the lesson. By purposefully thinking about the situation, one can identify potential pedagogical areas that need to be addressed. Once an area has been identified, one can determine if it falls into the pedagogical/content/technological domains and conduct research to improve one's knowledge in the area. Then, an experiment can be conducted using a new strategy to test if the research proved fruitful. Rinse and repeat!

2. Situated Knowledge: The context around who/what/where/when/why/how we teach is sometimes as important as the content we are teaching itself. Considering things like the demographic of our students, the working conditions of the computer labs, the college's facilities and resources, and the semester (Fall or Winter), and the time when the actual class takes place can help us greatly when teaching (Tsui, 2003, p. 4).

   • For example, if I know that a particular student is having financial issues then I can point them to our Financial Services office to speak with an advisor about potential loans or bursaries. Such a thing might seem inconsequential to my course's content, yet it does play a significant role in that particular student's learning.

3. Content Knowledge: We can have all of the self-reflection and situated knowledge we want, but without knowledge of the discipline and course material, there would be no course. The content knowledge is what the learning objectives of the course are directly referencing and what the assessments and instructional strategies of the course should be based around. The content knowledge is, frankly, for what we were initially hired.

📚 References

1. (Bransford, Brown, & Pellegrino, 2000)
2. (Tsui, 2003)