Pedagogical Content Knowledge

Standards-Aligned Instructional Supports to Promote Computer Science Teachers' Pedagogical Content Knowledge

The rapid expansion of K-12 CS education has made it critical to support CS teachers, many of whom are new to teaching CS, with the necessary resources and training to strengthen their understanding of CS concepts and how to effectively teach CS. CS teachers are often tasked with teaching different curricula using different programming languages in different grades or during different school years, and tend to receive different professional development (PD) for each curriculum they are required to teach.

Author/Presenter
Satabdi Basu

Daisy Rutstein

Carol Tate

Arif Rachmatullah

Hui Yang

Lead Organization(s)
Year
2022
Short Description

This position paper advocates supporting CS teacher professional learning by supplementing existing curriculum-specific teacher PD with standards-aligned PD that focuses on teachers' conceptual understanding of CS standards and ability to adapt instruction based on student understanding of concepts underlying the CS standards.

Professional Noticing as Student-Centered: Pre-service Teachers’ Attending to Students’ Mathematics in 360 Video

Teachers’ professional noticing has been described as transitioning from descriptions of general pedagogy to analysis of students’ mathematical procedures and conceptual reasoning. Such a shift is described as a transition towards more student-centered noticing. In the present study, we used screen recordings of pre-service teachers’ (PSTs) 360 video viewing to examine the relationship between where and what PSTs’ looked at and what they attended to in writing.

Author/Presenter
Karl W. Kosko

Maryam Zolfaghari

Jennifer L. Heisler

Lead Organization(s)
Year
2022
Short Description

Teachers’ professional noticing has been described as transitioning from descriptions of general pedagogy to analysis of students’ mathematical procedures and conceptual reasoning. Such a shift is described as a transition towards more student-centered noticing. In the present study, we used screen recordings of pre-service teachers’ (PSTs) 360 video viewing to examine the relationship between where and what PSTs’ looked at and what they attended to in writing.

Preservice Teachers’ Focus in 360 Videos: Understanding the Role of Presence, Ambisonic Audio, and Camera Placement

Immersive 360 videos are increasingly being used in pre-service teachers (PST) education. There is preliminary evidence that this technology may benefit future educators’ focus and attention to classroom settings and events. However, more analytical efforts are needed to better understand its potential impact on reported focus of attention (RFA) among future educators. This article addresses this gap by presenting the findings of a study on 360 videos that involved 92 PSTs.

Author/Presenter

Lead Organization(s)
Year
2022
Short Description

Immersive 360 videos are increasingly being used in pre-service teachers (PST) education. There is preliminary evidence that this technology may benefit future educators’ focus and attention to classroom settings and events. However, more analytical efforts are needed to better understand its potential impact on reported focus of attention (RFA) among future educators. This article addresses this gap by presenting the findings of a study on 360 videos that involved 92 PSTs.

Using the COVID-19 Pandemic to Create a Vision for XR-based Teacher Education Field Experiences

If there was a bright side to the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly related to education, it was the massive and rapid introduction of educational technologies to scaffold teaching and learning. Most notably, within teacher education, this included extended reality (XR) technologies to supplement or replace face-to-face field experiences. With the pandemic turning endemic, and with preK-12 schools returning to traditional modalities, there is a danger that the successes of virtual field experiences may be lost.

Author/Presenter

Richard E. Ferdig

Karl W. Kosko

Enrico Gandolfi

Lead Organization(s)
Year
2022
Short Description

This article presents a vision for 2025 to implement low cost and effective extended reality (XR) technologies to supplement teacher education field experiences, regardless of if and when another global or local crisis occurs (e.g., pandemic, war, weather). In doing so, empirical and theoretical research is presented that argues for teacher educators to seek out and employ more immersive representations of practice that take advantage of the perceptual capacity of XR.

Unpacking Response Process Issues Encountered When Developing a Mathematics Teachers’ Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) Assessment

It is essential for items in assessments of mathematics’ teacher knowledge to evoke the desired response processes – to be interpreted and responded to by teachers as intended by item developers. In this study, we sought to unpack evidence that middle school mathematics teachers were not consistently interacting as intended with constructed response (i.e. open-ended) items designed to assess their pedagogical content knowledge (PCK).

Author/Presenter

Martha L. Epstein

Hamza Malik

Kun Wang

Chandra H. Orrill

Year
2023
Short Description

It is essential for items in assessments of mathematics’ teacher knowledge to evoke the desired response processes – to be interpreted and responded to by teachers as intended by item developers. In this study, we sought to unpack evidence that middle school mathematics teachers were not consistently interacting as intended with constructed response (i.e. open-ended) items designed to assess their pedagogical content knowledge (PCK).

Instructional Pathways to Considering Social Dimensions Within Socioscientific Issues

The Socioscientific Issues Teaching and Learning (SSI-TL) framework is a guide for developing an instructional approach to learning experiences focused on socioscientific issues (SSI). Despite the potential benefits of SSI learning, teachers often struggle to implement this approach in their classrooms (Sadler et al., 2006; Saunders & Rennie, 2013), and one of the most prominent reasons for this struggle is science teacher concerns and hesitation associated with incorporating social dimensions of the issues into their instruction (Friedrichsen et al., 2021).

Author/Presenter

Rebecca Rawson Lesnefsky

Troy Sadler

Li Ke

Pat Friedrichsen

Year
2023
Short Description

The Socioscientific Issues Teaching and Learning (SSI-TL) framework is a guide for developing an instructional approach to learning experiences focused on socioscientific issues (SSI). Despite the potential benefits of SSI learning, teachers often struggle to implement this approach in their classrooms, and one of the most prominent reasons for this struggle is science teacher concerns and hesitation associated with incorporating social dimensions of the issues into their instruction. The purpose of this article is to provide science teacher educators with tools to help teachers better manage the integration of the social dimensions of SSI in issues-based teaching.

Instructional Pathways to Considering Social Dimensions Within Socioscientific Issues

The Socioscientific Issues Teaching and Learning (SSI-TL) framework is a guide for developing an instructional approach to learning experiences focused on socioscientific issues (SSI). Despite the potential benefits of SSI learning, teachers often struggle to implement this approach in their classrooms (Sadler et al., 2006; Saunders & Rennie, 2013), and one of the most prominent reasons for this struggle is science teacher concerns and hesitation associated with incorporating social dimensions of the issues into their instruction (Friedrichsen et al., 2021).

Author/Presenter

Rebecca Rawson Lesnefsky

Troy Sadler

Li Ke

Pat Friedrichsen

Year
2023
Short Description

The Socioscientific Issues Teaching and Learning (SSI-TL) framework is a guide for developing an instructional approach to learning experiences focused on socioscientific issues (SSI). Despite the potential benefits of SSI learning, teachers often struggle to implement this approach in their classrooms, and one of the most prominent reasons for this struggle is science teacher concerns and hesitation associated with incorporating social dimensions of the issues into their instruction. The purpose of this article is to provide science teacher educators with tools to help teachers better manage the integration of the social dimensions of SSI in issues-based teaching.

Profiles of Teachers’ Expertise in Professional Noticing of Children’s Mathematical Thinking

This study contributes to the growing body of research that highlights the usefulness of professional noticing of children’s mathematical thinking for understanding the complexity and variability in teaching expertise. We explored the noticing expertise of 72 upper elementary school teachers engaged in multi-year professional development focused on children’s fraction thinking.

Author/Presenter

Victoria R. Jacobs

Susan B. Empson

Naomi A. Jessup

Amy Dunning

D’Anna Pynes

Gladys Krause

Todd M. Franke

Year
2022
Short Description

This study contributes to the growing body of research that highlights the usefulness of professional noticing of children’s mathematical thinking for understanding the complexity and variability in teaching expertise. We explored the noticing expertise of 72 upper elementary school teachers engaged in multi-year professional development focused on children’s fraction thinking. Our assessment addressed the three component skills of professional noticing of children’s mathematical thinking: (a) attending to children’s strategy details, (b) interpreting children’s understandings, and (c) deciding how to respond on the basis of children’s understandings.

Transforming Science Learning Framework: Translating an Equity Commitment into Action through Co-Design

In this study, we present a conceptual tool for guiding teachers’ principled pedagogical actions toward equitable instruction, referred to as the Transforming Science Learning (TSL) framework. The TSL framework was developed to address the challenges of enacting an ideological commitment in local contexts–promoting equity and justice through culturally relevant pedagogy (CRP) in K-12 science classrooms. TSL consists of five design principles that articulate the goals (the ‘why” of practice), instead of prescribing pedagogical activities (the “what” of practice).

Author/Presenter

Hosun Kang

Jasmine McBeath Nation

Year
2022
Short Description

In this study, we present a conceptual tool for guiding teachers’ principled pedagogical actions toward equitable instruction, referred to as the Transforming Science Learning (TSL) framework. The TSL framework was developed to address the challenges of enacting an ideological commitment in local contexts–promoting equity and justice through culturally relevant pedagogy (CRP) in K-12 science classrooms.

Conceptual Profile of Substance: Representing Heterogeneity of Thinking in Chemistry Classrooms

Teachers face challenges when building the concept of substance with students because tensions of meanings emerge from students’ daily life and canonical ideas developed in classrooms. A powerful tool to address learning, pedagogical, and research challenges is the conceptual profile theory. According to this theory, people employ various ways of conceptualizing the world to signify experiences. Conceptual profiles are models of the heterogeneity of modes of thinking and speaking about a given scientific concept which are used in a variety of contexts.

Author/Presenter

Hannah Sevian

Eduardo F. Mortimer 

Year
2020
Short Description

Teachers face challenges when building the concept of substance with students because tensions of meanings emerge from students’ daily life and canonical ideas developed in classrooms. A powerful tool to address learning, pedagogical, and research challenges is the conceptual profile theory. According to this theory, people employ various ways of conceptualizing the world to signify experiences. Conceptual profiles are models of the heterogeneity of modes of thinking and speaking about a given scientific concept which are used in a variety of contexts. To better understand the heterogeneity of thinking/speaking about substance, the present study aimed to answer: (1) What are the zones that constitute the conceptual profile of substance?; and (2) What ways of thinking and speaking about substance do teachers and students exhibit when engaged in a classroom formative assessment activity?