PCK for introductory mechanics pre-service teachers in a conceptual lab

Abstract

The Physics School Experiments Laboratory (PSE-lab) lab at the University of Vienna aims to enhance pre-service teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge (PCK). In this pa-per we present a design-based research (DBR)-project which we use to develop and evaluate the mechanics section of this lab course. Attendees of the PSE-lab are pre-service physics teachers in the 4th semester of their studies for a Bachelor of Education. Within this lab course pre-service physics teachers learn introductory mechanics with a non-traditional teaching-learning sequence, starting with two-dimensional dynamics. The present project keeps track of pre-service teachers’ conceptions and explores their growth in terms of PCK during four units, 90 minutes each, of PSE-lab. The hypothesis is that, while following the new content structure for introductory mechanics, pre-service teachers will develop a deeper understanding of Newton’s laws on the one hand and on the other hand they will gain insights on how to implement such a structure into their own future teaching. Qualitative analysis of pre-service teachers’ in-terviews is used to characterize pathways of PCK-development. Despite this short intervention of six hours we have seen clear evidence in pre-service teachers’ early PCK development.