How important is pre-service teachers' pedagogical content knowledge?

While content knowledge is a fundamental requirement for all teachers in order to

practice their career, pedagogy is considered as the method of teaching and presenting a certain
knowledge area, making it comprehensible to learners. However, there are observation of cases
which teachers know what their content and how to present the theoretical knowledge, it would
not guarantee that students can fully and correctly interpret their explanation (National
Mathematics Advisory Panel , 2008). Pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) is an amalgam of
content and pedagogy, which is unique to each teacher of how they present their professional
understanding (Schulman, 1986). This essay will reflect the important of this teaching
knowledge for pre-service teachers, and why it is a good approach in teaching test-based courses
such as the Higher School Certificate (HSC) test in New South Wales, Australia.
Pedagogical content knowledge is a big terminology which related to an educator’s
knowledge foundation, including teaching methodology, content knowledge, instructional
approach, students’ cognitive and learning style, and curriculum (Kilic, 2009). PCK focuses on
students’ misconception during the teaching and learning process, and how teachers would adjust
their explanation and approaches of instruction to accommodate students’ needs. In some
contemporary development of the conceptualisation of PCK in mathematics teaching, scholars
divide PCK into three smaller types of knowledge: knowledge of students’ understanding of
mathematical knowledge, knowledge of instructional strategies for mathematics and knowledge
of curriculum for mathematics (Hill & Ball, 2008; Lannin, et al., 2013).
Pedagogy content knowledge can be an ambiguous term it is difficult to distinguish the
differences between content knowledge, pedagogy, and pedagogical content knowledge. When
Shulman introduced the conceptualisation of PCK in 1985, he promoted it as an individual part
of teaching knowledge in the transformative model, which is separated from pedagogy, subject
matter or classroom context. (Schulman, 1986). Therefore, in his framework, PCK is factual
knowledge that can be acquire independently and outside of classroom context. Moreover,
educators and researchers who follow the integrative model believe that there are lack of
theoretical grounding to acknowledge PCK as a distinct category in teacher knowledge base
(Ball, Thames, & Phelps, 2008). They argue that PCK is a more hands-on practice, which can be
obtained through experiences and realistic situations happen inside the classrooms (Petrou &
Goulding, 2011). In subject such as Mathematics and Science, it is also difficult to distinguish
between content knowledge and PCK. Marshman & Porter (2013) suggested that it is not
possible to measure pre-service teacher’s PCK performance as their teaching ability is often
judged based on their mathematical content knowledge, and not on their PCK.
In some arguments, even though many scholars support the importance of PCK, they
criticised that the transformative model has limited the concept of PCK to cover only
instructional and representative strategy in dealing with student’s misconception. Practitioners of
transformative model believe that there should be a unity in how certain misconception of a
subject matter should be discussed or dealt with, and create normative approaches for specific
cases (Van Driel & Berry, 2012). By individualising PCK, Schulman has prejudiced what can be
defined as good teaching practice of a particular subject (Van Driel & Berry, 2012), and taken
away its flexibility to integrate with different cultures, contexts and teaching standards (Depaepe,
Verschaffel, & Kelchtermans, 2013). They opposed that other categories such as curriculum
knowledge (Grossman, 1990), belief (Friederichsen, Van Driel, & Abell, 2010) and emotions
(Zembylas, 2007) should also be included in PCK’s conceptualisation.
Pedagogical content knowledge is a term which indicates the intersection of teachers’
understanding of content and teaching methodology. However, if pre-service teachers only view
PCK as an integration of content and pedagogy, they would not able to address all requirement
needed for effective teaching in real classroom content (Kilic, 2009). When planning a lesson,
teachers need to focus not only on the concepts and definition, but also the method of
representation and giving instruction based on students’ background knowledge understanding
(Ball D. , 2000). The areas which PCK covers are vary depending on the teachers’ perception of
PCK, but it would usually include the conceptual and procedure of subject matter, pedagogy,
students’ cognitive and learning styles, instructional approach, and students’ background
knowledge. Pedagogical constructivist believe that students are the centre of the classroom, and
teaching procedure should follow their learning process, and not vice versa.
In mathematical context, there are two main activities in a traditional classroom:
theoretical explaining and application of theories in solving math problems. However, modern
education emphasizes more on the association between issues and example use (Chick, 2007).
Students not only need to show the solution of a problem, but also be able to explain and reason
why they uses certain rules/formula, or why they think such formula is applicable for the
problem. For example, students should be able to work out compound interest in Financial
Mathematics topic, by integrating simple interest formula; or being able to prove why any
number, except 0, whose index is 0 is always equal to 1 in Indices topic. More importantly,
teachers should know which content to challenge students, and how to response to, or, when to
ignore students’ ideas. This reflects in various changes of Mathematics Syllabus in New South
Wales in the last decade and most recently in 2018. Teachers act as a guiding assistant and
instead of taking classroom direction, they would guide, offer hints, and promote logical thinking
so students can argue and solve new problem based on their existing knowledge (Lampert,
1990).

Teacher’ understanding of PCK does not necessary mean they can successfully recognise
apply in to practical teaching and learning activity. Without practical teaching experiences, it
would be very difficult for pre-service mathematics teacher and educators to recognise when
there is an opportunity to apply PCK appropriately during class time (Marshman & Porter,
2013). For this reason, experienced teachers suggest that it is essential for pre-service teachers to
look at specific examples of students’ misconception, and examine the pedagogical implications
of what can be done with those examples.
In their framework of PCK, Phan & Baker (2006) classified PCK into 3 sections, in
which they consider mathematical content and pedagogy are inseparable. It includes teaching
strategies, explanations, possible student misconceptions, and knowledge of resources and
curriculum. The framework also listed evidences of how pre-service teachers (PST) might
misunderstand the concept mathematical pedagogical content knowledge. Arguably, they suggest
an example of such misunderstanding, in which pre-service teachers plan a lesson based solely
on Syllabus’ learning outcomes. PST’s lesson plan often does not mention the exercise-solving
procedure, and rarely give enough time to response to students’ answers or discuss with students
why their understanding might be incorrect. In addition, even when PSTs recognise students’
misunderstanding, they cannot figure out what lead students to the mistakes, and how to change
students’ already-formed-belief in the subject matter (Chick, 2007).
For pre-service teachers, PCK is vital because together with their personal perception, it
would help significantly shape teachers’ teaching style. Providing that PSTs have deep and
throughout understanding of mathematic content knowledge, PCK would be in application when
they organise their content order, such as which part of knowledge should be taught first,
instructional approach prior to problem-solving procedure, how to give appropriate prompts
during the working progress, and discussion and reasoning methods for students’ understanding
or misconception after students have shown their mathematical solution. In Kilic (2009)’s
qualitative research, she identified 4 features of the nature and the development of pre-service
teachers’ PCK: teachers’ knowledge of subject matter influenced the quality of their performance
of PCK, practicum (professional practice) would give PST chances to identify certain issues with
teaching and learning mathematics (students’ perception and classroom context), and most
importantly, PSTs often overestimate their degree of understanding for different PCK’s aspects.
The order of giving examples are one of the basic practice of PCK implication. In
addition, PSTs should know the right amount of examples given to students in certain topic, with
the difficulty of the exercise increase gradually based on students’ background knowledge and
feedback from previous examples. As mentioned above, the focus of teaching Mathematics has
shift from following procedure to understanding of concepts. Therefore, teachers need to plan
their task to focus on problem solving and reasoning, using the language of the proficiencies
from the curriculum (Sullivan & Clarke, 2103). For example, in Year 11 and Year 12 Calculus
Syllabus, instead of giving a set of rule for differentiation procedure, teachers should start the
lesson by introducing a motion experiments. Students record the changing in objects’
temperature or speech over time, and work out the graph and equation of the motion curve.
Chick & Beswick (2013) also point out PST’s misconception on the giving instructions
using PCK approach. Though it is important for teachers to understanding why their students
give the wrong answer, it is more essential that teachers do not tell students the right solution as
their first response. Following PCK framework, teachers should start by pointing out students’
correct steps, and use inquiry-based approach in giving further suggestion to do next steps.
Rather “telling” students “what to do”, PSTs should built their own instructional approach on
giving student appropriate leading questions, such as the application of 5-question approach
(Ley, Attard, & Holmes, 2018), using instructional question (Lam, Hoong, Dindyal, & Seng,
2010), applying backward-question design to write open-ended tasks, or presentation of
appropriate work samples (Kalyuga, Ayres, & & Sweller, 2001). It is important for PSTs to
know when to stop giving hints and let students continue solving the exercise independently.
PCK assists the representation of lesson content. Therefore, when there are changes in the
curriculum and syllabus, the PCK implications need to be updated, altered and adapted to the
new content. HSC examination questions over the past 15 years have changed in the direction
which students can no longer rely on being able to perform procedure or applying formula in
solving questions. For example, in Calculus, the traditional question would ask students to
differentiate from a given equation, or find the equation of the tangent line to a curve at a certain
point. Students can gain point from correctly apply the differentiation rules, and no higher-order
thinking is required for this type of question. However, over the last decade, HSC format has
changed its question style, having high expectation for students to demonstrate their mathematic
problem-solving skills in real life setting. Mathematic modelling appears more frequently in
Syllabus content and HSC questions. Figure 1 shows both the traditional approach and modern
question in one question in a HSC question, with the weighting more attributed on the second
question.

Figure 1 HSC Mathematics Standard question 9 (2010, p.15)

Mathematical knowledge and questions associate with real life situations are also used
significantly is HSC. Therefore, it is important that teachers, especially PST, should follow PCK
as it emphasize on development of students’ conceptual understanding based on their
background knowledge and experiences. Teaching and learning activity would become the
progress of discovering new concepts through challenging, reasoning and modelling previously
learnt content. The question in Figure 2 demonstrate how HSC math question use real life
context in designing question. In order to solve the question, students need to apply their
knowledge of integral, and connect its application in this situation.

Figure 2 HSC math extension1 question (2018, p.8)

 In NESA’ advices for students attempting HSC mathematics example, they mentioned
that students’ ability to communicate and reason mathematically is assessed in the test, and it is
necessary to show the mathematical reasoning/ calculation in the answer sheet (NESA, 2018).
NESA suggests that by communicating their reasoning, even when students’ final answer is
wrong, they might still be able to get award with mark. For this reason, the writer suggests that
pedagogical content knowledge would be a good framework in teaching HSC courses where
students need to be able to explain context of content knowledge before constructing standard
formula for the solution. As PSTs are usually lack of practical experiences, understanding PCK
framework and its application would help young teachers to form their unique teaching style
from experienced educational mentors/ scholars. However, PSTs should be cautious not to rely
solely on specific instructional models for particular content matter; and be flexible in applying
the PCK in their teaching practice.

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