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Creating awareness of environmental sustainability issues through formal education may be an effective way to help citizens deal with these issues. Teachers, however, have not been sufficiently trained on how to teach with sustainability concerns in mind. For this study, a purposively selected group of six chemistry teachers was exposed to an online professional development intervention (PDI) whose content draws on collective pedagogical content knowledge (cPCK) about the extraction of metals and mining as related to environmental sustainability. This paper reports on a study that explores the transfer of knowledge from cPCK to personal PCK (pPCK), and from pPCK to enacted PCK (ePCK). Data were collected using a pre- and post-PDI questionnaire, interviews and a lesson plan template. These tools were used to capture the teachers' pPCK and ePCK. During the analysis of the data, a validated PCK rubric and a master content representation created by experts were used. The PCK components of knowledge of curricular saliency, student thinking and conceptual teaching strategies constituted the lens through which the researchers investigated the chemistry teachers' PCK. The findings of this study revealed that the intervention enhanced the quality of the teachers' ePCK about extraction of metals, by informing their pPCK. It also showed that despite being exposed to the same intervention, the PCK of all the teachers did not develop to the same extent. Four of the six participants showed a positive gain in the quality of their PCK across all three components, while the other two only showed a positive gain on two of the three components. The differences in PCK development within the context of chemistry teaching were attributed to the presence of amplifiers and filters. The study contributes to both theory and practice, highlighting the need for research-informed continuous professional development of teachers in education for sustainability and suggesting ways to infuse sustainability into their teaching of chemistry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Topic-specific pedagogical content knowledge (TSPCK) enables teachers to transform pedagogically difficult content for specific science topics into forms more easily understood by learners. In science teaching, there is evidence pointing to poor learner performance in key chemistry topics such as stoichiometry. This paper reports on the changes in pre-service teachers' (PSTs) planned TSPCK in stoichiometry. This follows after the practicum that explicitly targeted the development of planned TSPCK for stoichiometry in the methodology class for physical sciences. The study followed a mixed-methods research design and case study as a research strategy. The participants were 10 PSTs in their final year of study for a Bachelor of Education. Quantitative and qualitative data were collected as a set of tests on TSPCK, applied both pre- and post-practicum, using TSPCK tools developed and validated in an earlier study. In both cases, data were analysed using the Rasch method. The distribution of both person and item measures was valid for measuring PSTs' planned TSPCK. In each test, they fell within the conventional fit statistical range of −2 to +2. All of the reliability indices had values ≥ 0.6 and hence were considered to be acceptable. The findings in this study indicated a measured improvement in the quality of TSPCK among the PSTs. In addition, PSTs experienced TSPCK components used in planning to teach stoichiometry at different levels of difficulty. This paper recommends further research exploring how such practicum programmes facilitate changes in PSTs' planned TSPCK and what agencies contribute to these changes in planned TSPCK. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on a study that explored the subject and pedagogical content knowledge displayed by high school mathematics teachers in the Khomas education region in Namibia. The study was based on a quantitative approach using a survey design. A stratified random sampling method was used to select the participants in all the four school circuits in the region. The study population consisted of 79 Grade 12 mathematics teachers from public schools. A sample of 40 mathematics teachers took part in the study, completed a questionnaire and wrote a test. A Microsoft Excel spreadsheet was used to sort the data and produce graphs and tables. A paired t-test was also used to determine if a significant difference existed between the participants' subject content knowledge (mathematical knowledge in our context, (MCK) and pedagogical content knowledge (PCK). The findings revealed that the participants had some deficiencies on MCK topics such as quadratic equations, angles properties and numbers. They also portrayed weak PCK on fractions, simultaneous and linear equations. This shows that a significant difference exists between the teachers' MCK and PCK with tcalculated = 11.092 greater than the tcritical (between 2.712 and 2.704) at a significance level, α = 0.01 but also that the participants' MCK and PCK were moderately and positively correlated (r = 0.681, p < 0.01). This study recommends that mathematics teachers in the Khomas region be provided frequently with in-service training to strengthen their shortcomings regarding MCK and PCK (knowledge of mathematics tasks, knowledge of learners' misconceptions and difficulties, and knowledge of mathematics instructions). We also recommend further studies to determine how high school mathematics teachers' knowledge can impact learners' academic performance in other education regions in Namibia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pedagogical content knowledge is considered a valuable knowledge base for all science teachers. Thus, promoting its development in all pre-service teacher programmes including a short 1 year Physical Science postgraduate certificate in education (PGCE) course is desirable. This paper focuses on the comparison of topic-specific pedagogical content knowledge (TSPCK) at a level of planning to teach between PGCE pre-service teachers (n = 8) and final (fourth) year traditional BEd pre-service teachers (n = 16). Both groups were exposed to an intervention targeting the development of TSPCK in Physical Science topics taught in South Africa's national secondary school curriculum. Data collected from both groups comprised pre–post intervention TSPCK tests and content representations tool for chemical equilibrium. The data analysis entailed the use of a criterion-based rubric for shifts in the quality of planned TSPCK and the content representations were analysed through an in-depth qualitative analysis. The findings revealed an improvement in the PGCE pre-service teachers' planned TSPCK to the same extent as for the BEd pre-service teachers. The PGCE pre-service teachers did not indicate being at an initial advantage in their TSPCK because of their strong content knowledge, but they showed a faster growth path in developing TSPCK. Recommendations made include the promotion of TSPCK discussion in the PGCE programme and a possible re-positioning of such discussions in the BEd programme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has recently been suggested that pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) has a concept-specific nature, beyond the topic-specific level of PCK. This paper reports a case study of three pre-service teachers' reported PCK about three fundamental concepts within the topic of electrostatics, namely electrostatic force, electric field and electric field strength. The aim of the study was to compare the quality of the PCK of each of the individual participants across these fundamental concepts. Data was collected using a content representation tool and a lesson planning form prescribed by the participants' teacher training institution. A topic-specific PCK model was adopted as the framework for this study. The model asserts that the content of a particular topic is transformed for instruction through five components, namely learners' prior knowledge, curricular saliency, what is difficult to teach, representations including analogies and conceptual teaching strategies. Guided by the model, we designed a rubric to assess the concept-specific PCK of the participants on a four-point scale. The results of the study indicated that the PCK of the participants varied across the fundamental concepts of electrostatics, with each participant reporting better PCK for a different concept. The results of the study imply that describing PCK at concept level is appropriate and recommend that PCK should be strengthened at concept level during teacher training to ensure that it develops across all of the concepts within a topic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]