Exploring the Progression in Preservice Chemistry Teachers’ Pedagogical Content Knowledge Representations: The Case of “Behavior of Gases”

Abstract

This multiple case study investigated how two preservice chemistry teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) representations of behavior of gases progressed in the context of a semester-long chemistry teaching methods course. The change in the participants’ PCK components was interpreted with respect to the theoretical PCK learning progression trajectory criteria established in the literature. The data were collected using the PCK capturing approach, called Content Representations, or “CoRes” (twice), and two interviews with each preservice teacher during the semester. The results indicated that neither preservice teacher initially held an extensive repertoire of representations for all components of PCK in their knowledge base. However, these preservice teachers noticeably increased their number of representations over the course of the semester. The components of PCK did not progress to the same extent for each participant. Likewise, the constituent elements of each PCK component indicated relatively dissimilar features across the participants. Implications for science teacher education and the methodological contributions of the study to educational research are discussed.