Enhancing Teacher Candidates' PCK Through a Workshop: A Preliminary Study

Background/Purpose: Pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) is the most important knowledge base for teachers. To improve PCK, specialized content knowledge (SCK) should be provided to teacher candidates because SCK is directly related to PCK. However, little is known about the direct relationship between SCK and PCK. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of a SCK workshop on teacher candidates’ PCK in middle school floor hockey unit.

Method: A total of 18 teacher candidates from secondary methods/practicum course were recruited for this study. The teacher candidates were randomly divided by two different groups (i.e., control group and experimental group). Three trained observers scored each candidates’ two different teaching episodes (i.e., before and after the workshop) using the previously validated 10-item PCK measurement tool, which includes verbal representations, visual representations, task appropriateness, and the maturity of the task. The experimental group received both a workshop based on the Play Practice model (Launder, 2001) and multiple practice teaching opportunities for a total of 10 hours after their first floor hockey teaching episode whereas the control group received only multiple practice teaching opportunities without any workshop. Both groups also developed their own concept maps twice (i.e., before and after the workshop) about how to teach middle school floor hockey unit. The concept maps were scored by the researchers using structural scoring method (Novak & Gowin, 1984) which is widely used in concept map assessment. The Pearson’s correlation coefficient was used to establish convergent validity between the PCK measurement tool and the concept map assessment.

Analysis/Results: A 2 X 2 (Group X Time) analysis of variance (ANOVA) with repeated measures were utilized and a significant interaction was found between group and time (Wilks’ ramda = .48, F (1, 7) = 7.68, p < .05). The ANOVA with repeated measures also revealed that teacher candidates’ PCK measurement scores significantly improved from pre-test (M = 29.54, SD = 3.17) to post-test (M = 40.95, SD = 3.37) in experimental group (p = .05). The scores of the PCK measurement tool were strongly related to the scores of the concept map assessment in both pre- and post-test (r = .82 and .86, respectively, p= .001).

Conclusions: Results confirm that the SCK workshop can improve teacher candidates’ PCK. The PCK measurement tool can be used to accurately measure PCK as a direct observational tool. Further research with large sample is warranted to explain the effects of the SCK workshop.