Abstract
The article focuses on an educational tool called Concept Cartoons and its possible use in professional preparation of future primary school teachers. In particular, it presents the method of how Concept Cartoons can be employed as a tool for diagnosing subject matter knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge in mathematics. The first part of the contribution introduces the concept of teachers' knowledge that is used in the article, and the Concept Cartoon tool. It describes the original Concept Cartoons method for classroom use at primary and secondary school levels that was established by Keogh and Naylor, and then it introduces our work on diagnostic Concept Cartoons method, including a commented summary of our recent research on qualitative diagnosis of subject matter knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge in mathematics. The second part of the contribution introduces another step in the methodology, a mixed approach to the issue that enables to enrich the qualitative results with quantitative characteristics. The mixed method is illustrated through a small empirical study that shows how exactly the quantitative enrichment might be provided.
Highlights
The article focuses on an educational tool called Concept Cartoons and its possible use in professional preparation of future primary school teachers
We present Concept Cartoons innovatively as a tool for diagnosing subject matter content knowledge (SMK) and pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) of future primary school teachers
We may frame it formally and state its research question as “How may a mixed method approach inform the results of a qualitative Concept Cartoons method for diagnosing subject matter knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge in mathematics?”
Summary
In our study we proceed from the concept of teachers’ knowledge in the sense of Shulman (1986), i.e. from the terms of subject matter content knowledge (SMK) and pedagogical content knowledge (PCK). There is a general consensus that SMK and PCK play a key role in the classroom. They have a significant effect on student mathematics achievement, even in case of primary school classroom and very elementary mathematics content (Hill, Rowan & Ball, 2005). Mutual relation between SMK and PCK is strongly intertwined: PCK is the one that is more correlated with instructional quality and student progress, and SMK is usually regarded as a necessary but not sufficient prerequisite for the development of PCK (Depaepe, Verschaffel & Kelchtermans, 2013; Depaepe et al, 2015; Kleickmann et al, 2013). The transformation from SMK to PCK is not a unidirectional process, it can be achieved within a suitable learning environment (Kinach, 2002)
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