Engineering teachers' pedagogical content knowledge

Abstract

The aim of the study was to discover the essential characteristics of engineering teachers' pedagogical content knowledge by studying teachers' conceptions of their students' ideas of moment. To compare the conceptions maintained by teachers with those of their students, the most common difficulties experienced by first-year engineering students in understanding the moments of forces were looked at. The data on students' conceptions were collected by means of a questionnaire. In addition, four experienced teachers were given the same questionnaire as the students and then were asked to write what they expected the students' answers to be. The students' answers and the teachers' conceptions of their students' potential answers were compared. It was found that although the teachers originally appeared to be familiar with their students' conceptions, they were rather astonished by the general pattern of the students' thinking. It is planned that the information gathered about the teachers' pedagogical content knowledge will eventually be used to improve engineering teacher training.

Acknowledgements

I should like to thank Dr Stuart Rowlands for providing data from his thesis and also my colleague Dr Heikki Saari for a number of valuable discussions.