Pedagogical Content Knowledge in Geography Education

Abstract

The most important intellectual component of a teaching profession is a distinct body of specialized knowledge. This specialized knowledge is defined as pedagogical content knowledge (PCK), the discipline-specific pedagogical knowledge necessary to teach in a distinct content area. PCK is one of the seven interconnected components of Lee Shulman’s conception of the knowledge base for teaching: content knowledge (CK); general pedagogical knowledge (PK); curriculum knowledge; PCK; knowledge of learners and their characteristics; knowledge of educational contexts; and knowledge of educational ends, purposes, and values. PCK represents the blending of content and pedagogy into an understanding of how particular content is organized, represented, and adapted to the diverse interests and abilities of students and presented for instruction. PCK identifies teachers’ unique expertise and distinguishes content specialists from professional teachers. Since the advent of the concept, PCK has been widely used and received special attention among teacher educators and education researchers. It has been one of the most influential concepts in teacher education and teacher education research because it constitutes the distinctive body of knowledge that every teacher should develop. Researchers, especially in science and mathematics education, have actively investigated the nature and characteristics of PCK and developed PCK models that can lead to effective teaching of science and mathematics. While PCK has not been as widely used in geography education research as in other subject areas, geography educators and education researchers agree that PCK is an essential quality of a geography teacher, so they have examined it. Teacher knowledge has long been an important topic in geography education research and examined from various perspectives including the curriculum-making and the capabilities approaches. This article provides an overview of the literature on PCK for geography teaching, which I define here as GeoPCK. Citations included represent selected empirical research that sheds light on the nature, components, and strategies to develop GeoPCK. The last two sections provide brief overviews of the two closely related concepts to PCK—technological pedagogical and content knowledge (TPCK or TPACK) and pedagogical reasoning and action (PR&A)—reflecting the increasing interest in geography teachers’ knowledge for the use of geospatial technologies (GST); for student-centered, curriculum-based, and inquiry-oriented education; and for the recognition of the significance of understanding how teachers’ knowledge base is enacted, refined, and reconstructed in and through their own practice.