The Change in Pre-service Chemistry Teachers' Pedagogical Content Knowledge through Mentoring

Abstract

The purposes of this study were to analyze the PCK of pre-service chemistry teachers and to know the changes of in PCK before and after the educational practice. For this study, four pre-service teachers majoring in chemistry education were selected as proteges and one professor of chemistry education department participated as a mentor. For the analysis of pre-service teachers' PCK, proteges' instructions, mentoring process, and semi-constructed interviews were collected. According to the results, most of the elements of the PCK were lack of proteges' instructions before the mentoring, because they didn't know the necessary practical knowledge for instructions. They also didn't know how they could apply their knowledge to the instructions. However, most of the pre-service teachers developed their PCK through the mentoring. This study shows that pre-service teacher's PCK could develop effectively by well-formed programs of mentoring before and after the educational practice in college education for pre-service teachers.