Pedagogical Factors Affecting the Translation of Pedagogical Content Knowledge About Electrostatics into Practice

ABSTRACT

Teaching practice internships provide opportunities for pre-service teachers (PSTs) to enact their knowledge in real classroom settings. This paper investigated PSTs’ pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) about electrostatics, its translation into practice and factors that affect the translation. The refined consensus model (RCM) of PCK served as theoretical framework. Guided by the RCM, two manifestations of enacted PCK (ePCK) focusing on lesson planning (ePCK_P) and teaching (ePCK_T) were investigated. Data reflecting ePCK_P was collected using content representations (CoRe) tools and lesson planning forms. Data reflecting the ePCK_T was explored using classroom observations. The components of the grand PCK rubric served as the analytical framework. These are teacher knowledge and skills related to (i) curricular saliency, (ii) learners’ understanding of concepts, and (iii) conceptual teaching strategies including representations. These components were used to analyze the manifestations of ePCK before they were compared. Components that revealed variations between ePCK_P and ePCK_T were used to formulate interview questions to elicit the pedagogical factors that affected the translation of the PCK into practice. The results revealed multiple instances where there were misalignments between ePCK_P and ePCK_T. The misalignments were ascribed to the following pedagogical factors: interactions with learners, the involvement of mentor teachers, reflections, management of time for teaching concepts, and teacher efficacy. The results have implications for PST education and mentorship during teaching practice internships.

KEYWORDS:

• Electrostatics
• knowledge and practice
• pedagogical content knowledge
• pedagogical factors
• pre-service teacher education

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Ethical statement

This research was approved by the ethics committee of the University of Pretoria and the Gauteng department of education. Reference number: SM 18/04/01.

Additional information

Funding

This work was funded by the National Research Foundation (NRF) of South Africa, Grant number [TTK180411319423].