Learning from Rookie Mistakes: Critical Incidents in Developing Pedagogical Content Knowledge for Teaching Science to Teachers

While there is a growing literature focused on doctoral preparation for teaching about science teaching, rarely have recommendations extended to preparation for teaching science content to teachers. We three doctoral students employ self-study as a research methodology to investigate our developing pedagogical content knowledge for teaching science to teachers during a mentored internship in an elementary teacher professional development program. With our mentor, we examine critical incidents in the experience that supported new insights about teaching teachers and about ways in which beginning teacher educators need to develop their existing pedagogical content knowledge for teaching science to students in order to teach science effectively to teachers. We emphasize ways in which doctoral internships can support this learning and how our respective cultures shaped our interactions with and perceptions of teachers as learners

Developing PCK for Teaching Teachers through a Mentored Internship in Teacher Professional Development

Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK), according to Shulman (1987), is what makes possible the transformation of disciplinary content into forms that are accessible and attainable by students. This includes knowledge of how particular subject matter topics, problems, and issues can be organized, represented, and adapted to the diverse interests and abilities of learners and presented for instruction (Magnusson, Krajcik, & Borko, 1999). Recently, researchers have argued that a parallel form of PCK exists for science teacher educators (Abell et al., 2009). Nonetheless, little is known about the process through which teacher educators develop their PCK, and more specifically, how doctoral programs can support prospective teacher educators in this regard. The aim of this study was to understand how a mentored internship experience within a teacher professional development program contributes to the development of doctoral students’ PCK for teaching teachers. Through self study, three graduate students and their faculty mentor documented the development of their PCK throughout the mentorship

Developing PCK for Teaching Teachers through a Mentored Internship in Teacher Professional Development

This conference paper was presented at the annual meeting of the Association for Science Teacher Education in Minneapolis, MN, in January 2011.Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK), according to Shulman (1987), is what makes possible the transformation of disciplinary content into forms that are accessible and attainable by students. This includes knowledge of how particular subject matter topics, problems, and issues can be organized, represented, and adapted to the diverse interests and abilities of learners and presented for instruction (Magnusson, Krajcik, & Borko, 1999). Recently, researchers have argued that a parallel form of PCK exists for science teacher educators (Abell et al., 2009). Nonetheless, little is known about the process through which teacher educators develop their PCK, and more specifically, how doctoral programs can support prospective teacher educators in this regard. The aim of this study was to understand how a mentored internship experience within a teacher professional development program contributes to the development of doctoral students' PCK for teaching teachers. Through self‐study, three graduate students and their faculty mentor documented the development of their PCK throughout the mentorship

Understanding the development of a 6th grade science classroom practice of argumentation : synthesizing cognitive and sociocultural perspectives

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.] Recent science standards have underlined the importance of engaging students in scientific practices for learning science ideas as well as develop understandings about the ways in which scientific knowledge is constructed. As such, scientific argumentation, one of the central practices of science, has gained interest among science educators. Looking across the studies focusing on incorporating scientific argumentation into science classroom, two prominent approaches, cognitive and sociocultural, stand out regarding the incorporation of scientific argumentation into science classrooms. While cognitive perspective focuses on characterizing the nature of student competence in argumentation and understanding the individual student development of argumentation competence, sociocultural perspective seeks to understand the ways in which student competence can be facilitated by the contextual features of a classroom community. By bringing these two distinct but complementary perspectives together in this dissertation study, we proposed four manuscripts to understand the development of a 6th grade science classroom argumentation practice. The results of this dissertation study suggested that individual student's development of argumentation competence was mediated by the classroom norms around discourse. The implications for future research and curriculum design are discussed.Includes biblographical reference

Learning from Rookie Mistakes: Critical Incidents in Developing Pedagogical Content Knowledge for Teaching Science to Teachers

While there is a growing literature focused on doctoral preparation for teaching about science teaching, rarely have recommendations extended to preparation for teaching science content to teachers. We three doctoral students employ self-study as a research methodology to investigate our developing pedagogical content knowledge for teaching science to teachers during a mentored internship in an elementary teacher professional development program. With our mentor, we examine critical incidents in the experience that supported new insights about teaching teachers and about ways in which beginning teacher educators need to develop their existing pedagogical content knowledge for teaching science to students in order to teach science effectively to teachers. We emphasize ways in which doctoral internships can support this learning and how our respective cultures shaped our interactions with and perceptions of teachers as learners