Pedagogical Content Knowledge

Lee Shulman (1984) came up with this term and argued that it was one of the particular characteristics of teaching.

Teachers need to be knowledgeable about what they teach (content) and how to teach (pedagogy), but they also need to develop knowledge of specific ways of making that content accessible to learners – So how do we teach what we teach?

PCK comprises a cycle of several activities that a teacher should complete for good teaching: comprehension, transformation, instruction, evaluation, reflection, and new comprehension.

I would say that PCK as an idea is useful but in my own experience content knowledge has not always been a necessity. It is good practice to be an expert at the subject you teach so pupils have confidence in you as a teacher, although there is something very human about not knowing everything which learners will relate to. Questions on a subject matter in which you might not know the answer to are an opportunity to collaborate and do some investigational work whilst relating to your students to develop the student teacher rapport. It gives the message that its OK to make mistakes because no one is perfect – an important lesson for life. Obviously, this should not be a habit but once in a while can be beneficial.

Rather than having a deep set knowledge of everything, your teaching planning can have a very effective role. Once you form a relationship with your students and gain an insight into their strengths and weaknesses you can anticipate concepts that they will find confusing, and therefore incorporate simplified ways of explanation into your lesson plans. Another importance of having teaching knowledge rather than content knowledge is that, after experience, reflection becomes a subconscious habit allowing you to think about what went wrong, what worked well and investigate ways to improve which will then, again, be reflected in future lesson and curriculum planning.