Pedagogical Content Knowledge in teacher education

More than 25 years ago, Lee Shulman introduced the concept of Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) to describe the knowledge that teachers use to transform particular subject matter for student learning , taking into account possible (mis) conceptions and learning difficulties. Shulman ( 1987 ) identified PCK as one of seven categories of teachers’ knowledge defining it as “that special amalgam of content and pedagogy that is uniquely the province of teachers, their own special form of professional understanding” (p. 8). The other categories of teachers’ knowledge included: (a) subject matter knowledge ; (b) general pedagogical knowledge; (c) curriculum knowledge; (d) knowledge of learners and their characteristics; (e) knowledge of educational contexts; and, (f) knowledge of educational ends, purposes, and values, and their philosophical and historical grounds. In Shulman’s conception of PCK , two components lie at its heart, namely knowledge of useful forms of representing and formulating specific subject matter (e.g., through schemes and analogies ), and knowledge of students’ conceptions, misconceptions and learning difficulties regarding that same subject matter.