Educators’ subject matter expertise in university settings is often highly valued, regardless of their expertise in teaching that subject matter. Lee Shulman (1987) aptly argues that possessing a deep understanding of content and general pedagogy is not sufficient for effective teaching. What truly matters is the fusion of content and pedagogy into a comprehensive understanding of how specific content, problems, or issues are structured, communicated, and adapted to cater to diverse learners’ interests and capabilities. This unique blend, termed Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) by Shulman, is considered an essential educator knowledge for effective teaching. 

PCK has garnered substantial attention, primarily in the context of primary and secondary education since its inception over three decades ago. Since first published, Shulman’s paper generated more than 31,000 citations. Yet, some essential questions linger in the context of university education, for example, what does PCK look like in action for university educators? Does PCK represent the professional knowledge that university educators need to possess to provide high-quality teaching? What challenges are there in applying PCK to different academic disciplines within the university setting? While I may not have the answers to these questions, I am genuinely intrigued to explore them further.

Educators’ professional knowledge 

What does an educator need to know and be able to do? Research into teaching suggests that educators need to dissect the subject matter they teach into its constituent parts (van Driel & Berry, 2019). They need to understand how students engage with the content, identify their learning challenges, and employ effective strategies to ensure deep understanding. It’s about appreciating how students navigate the complexities of the subject, and deciding which teaching methods best aid their understanding of specific concepts. Educators make these kinds of decisions when bridging content with students’ contexts, while fostering environments conducive to their learning and the development of subject matter proficiency.

It’s about appreciating how students navigate the complexities of the subject, and deciding which teaching methods best aid their understanding of specific concepts.

However, a lot of professional knowledge that educators develop over time about how to teach their subject, is rather complex (van Driel & Berry, 2019). It’s often intertwined with the individual, the context of teaching, and the environment in which it occurs. Often, for a lot of expert educators, it becomes routinised and tacit, so that they know, automatically, what they’re doing. They’re not necessarily aware of the ways they facilitate learning once they reach a certain level of routine. It’s integrated with various kinds of knowledge and is, in part, shaped by one’s beliefs and perspectives on teaching and learning. 

PCK as a professional knowledge 

PCK encompasses two fundamental elements: knowledge of representations of subject matter and knowledge of specific student conceptions and learning challenges. Taking chemistry as an example, models and modelling are important representations of subject matter. For a chemistry educator, PCK concerns how they transform their subject matter knowledge into forms and representations (e.g., chemical models) that are meaningful and comprehensible to students at a level that matches their development (Hume, Cooper, & Borowski, 2019).

Importantly, PCK evolves over time, through experience, and it isn’t a one-size-fits-all knowledge. PCK can’t be simply imported from one subject to another. So, great PCK for a particular topic within anatomy doesn’t necessarily translate into other topics, even within anatomy. And it certainly doesn’t translate into being a great engineering educator. Each field has its nuances, and PCK needs to be cultivated within the specific subject matter.

Developing and capturing PCK 

One effective method for developing and capturing PCK is the Content Representation (CoRe) tool (Bertram & Loughran 2012). This tool engages educators in reflecting on a specific content topic, asking them to identify the central concepts associated with that topic. Once identified, educators provide written responses to a series of prompts including, what students should learn about each big idea, why that idea is important to know, what students typically struggle to conceptualise related to the idea, specific teaching strategies designed to promote students’ learning about the idea and ways of assessing student understanding of the idea (Shultz et al, 2018). Used in this way, the CoRe offers both a method for eliciting PCK and a tool for capturing PCK as educators document and reflect on their teaching goals and practices. When used with a group of educators, the CoRe provides a sharing platform for practice wisdom about how to teach particular content and a process for building collective professional knowledge. Thus, CoRe can potentially simultaneously collect sophisticated PCK from expert educators, accelerate PCK development among novice educators and promote collective professional practice knowledge within a community of educators. 

Yet, it’s crucial to recognise that once a CoRe is produced, it doesn’t mean that that’s the only or the best or correct representation of teaching that content. It’s a dynamic framework that evolves over time. It doesn’t encapsulate every facet of teaching a topic but serves as a scaffold, guiding educators both individually and collectively. When educators come together to share their CoRes, it becomes a platform for building collective professional knowledge.

Our multidisciplinary research team (including Amanda Berry, Laura Gutierrez-Bucheli, Susie Ho, Thomas Hiscox, Dragan Ilic, Michelle Lazarus, Nicoleta Maynard, Caroline Wright, and Paul White) explores how educators can demonstrate their PCK and enhance their teaching expertise using the CoRe tool.

We support educators to develop PCK-infused teaching plans for their chosen topics using CoRe, refining these plans collectively. This approach fosters interactions between educators and researchers, enriching the understanding and articulation of PCK. 

I invite you to share your thoughts in the comments section. Also consider sharing your thoughts on the following questions:

• Do you agree that different kinds of content ideas require different pedagogical approaches? Why/why not? Can you give examples?
  
• How do you know if students actually understood the idea that was taught? What did they do or say (or what did they not do or say anymore) that shows they understood the idea? 

And also, feel free to reach out if you like to join us exploring PCK in university settings – I can’t wait to hear from you.

References

Bertram, A., & Loughran, J. (2012). Science teachers’ views on CoRes and PaP-eRs as a framework for articulating and developing pedagogical content knowledge. Research in Science Education, 42, 1027-1047. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11165-011-9227-4 

Hume, A., Cooper, R., & Borowski, A. (Eds.). (2019). Repositioning pedagogical content knowledge in teachers’ knowledge for teaching science. Singapore: Springer Singapore.

Shulman, L. (1987). Knowledge and teaching: Foundations of the new reform. Harvard educational review, 57(1), 1-23.

Van Driel, J. H., & Berry, A. (2010). Pedagogical content knowledge. In International encyclopedia of education (pp. 656-661). Academic Press. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-1179-6_176-1