It has recently been suggested that pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) has a concept-specific nature, beyond the topic-specific level of PCK. This paper reports a case study of three pre-service teachers’ reported PCK about three fundamental concepts within the topic of electrostatics, namely electrostatic force, electric field and electric field strength. The aim of the study was to compare the quality of the PCK of each of the individual participants across these fundamental concepts. Data was collected using a content representation tool and a lesson planning form prescribed by the participants’ teacher training institution. A topic-specific PCK model was adopted as the framework for this study. The model asserts that the content of a particular topic is transformed for instruction through five components, namely learners’ prior knowledge, curricular saliency, what is difficult to teach, representations including analogies and conceptual teaching strategies. Guided by the model, we designed a rubric to assess the concept-specific PCK of the participants on a four-point scale. The results of the study indicated that the PCK of the participants varied across the fundamental concepts of electrostatics, with each participant reporting better PCK for a different concept. The results of the study imply that describing PCK at concept level is appropriate and recommend that PCK should be strengthened at concept level during teacher training to ensure that it develops across all of the concepts within a topic.

中文翻译：

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比较静电学基本概念中的教学内容知识：以三名职前教师为例

最近有人提出，教学内容知识（PCK）具有特定于概念的性质，而不是特定于主题的PCK级别。本文以三名职前教师的PCK案例研究为例，涉及静电学领域的三个基本概念，即静电力，电场和电场强度。该研究的目的是在这些基本概念上比较每个参与者的PCK的质量。使用内容表示工具和参与者的教师培训机构规定的课程计划表收集数据。本研究采用主题特定的PCK模型作为框架。该模型断言，特定主题的内容通过五个组成部分转换为教学内容，即学习者的先验知识，课程显着性，难以教授的内容，包括类比和概念性教学策略的表示形式。在模型的指导下，我们设计了一个原则，以四点量表评估参与者的特定概念PCK。研究结果表明，参与者的PCK在静电学的各个基本概念上各不相同，每个参与者对于不同的概念报告的PCK都更好。研究结果表明，在概念层次上描述PCK是适当的，并建议在教师培训期间应在概念层次上加强PCK，以确保PCK在主题内的所有概念中得到发展。我们设计了一个指标，以四点量表评估参与者的特定概念PCK。研究结果表明，参与者的PCK在静电学的各个基本概念上各不相同，每个参与者对于不同的概念报告的PCK都更好。研究结果表明，在概念层次上描述PCK是适当的，并建议在教师培训期间应在概念层次上加强PCK，以确保PCK在主题内的所有概念中得到发展。我们设计了一个指标，以四点量表评估参与者的特定概念PCK。研究结果表明，参与者的PCK在静电学的各个基本概念上各不相同，每个参与者对于不同的概念报告的PCK都更好。研究结果表明，在概念层次上描述PCK是适当的，并建议在教师培训期间应在概念层次上加强PCK，以确保PCK在主题内的所有概念中得到发展。