Enhancing pedagogical content knowledge in a collaborative school-based professional development program for inquiry-based science teaching

A new General Studies (GS) curriculum integrating science and social studies was implemented in Hong Kong in 2004. The science component is to be taught through inquiry (CDC, 2002). However, research has identified the inadequacy of teachers’ content knowledge as one of the major issues facing primary science education in Hong Kong (So, Cheng, & Tsang 1998). Such inadequacy makes it difficult for primary teachers to adopt more interactive approaches to teaching science (Abell & Roth, 1992; Childs & McNicholl, 2007; Newton & Newton, 2001; Sanders, Borko, & Lockard, 1993).

Teaching science through inquiry requires that teachers master not only the substantive, but also the syntactical structure of the discipline (Schwab, 1962). The latter comprises the processes essential for inquiry into scientific phenomena. Thus, teachers need to develop their own understanding of scientific inquiry before they can lead students to understand and apply these processes. Both these two types of knowledge constitute the subject matter knowledge (SMK) which is required by science teachers as described by Shulman (1987). Apart from this, Schulam also identified another form of teachers’ knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge (PCK), , which “represents the blending of content and pedagogy into an understanding of how particular topics, problems, or issues are organized, represented, and adapted to the diverse interests and abilities of learners, and presented for instruction” (p. 8). Researchers have argued that such knowledge is contextual and specific to particular topics (Cochran et al., 1993; Shulman, 1987; Van Driel et al., 1998). Magnusson, et al. (1999) described PCK for science teaching as embodying five components: orientation to teaching science, knowledge of students’ understanding of science, the science curriculum, assessment, and instructional strategies in the context of scientific inquiry. It involves an understanding of the contribution of inquiry-based instruction to learning science, students’ scientific reasoning, and the ways to guide them to construct substantive scientific ideas through formulating appropriate learning objectives and designing relevant inquiry-based activities and assessment tasks. According to Keys and Bryan (2000), inquiry-based instruction demands in-depth pedagogical content knowledge. As far as science teaching is concerned, inquiry-based teaching should aim not only at enhancing substantive knowledge, but also syntactical knowledge. This implies that PCK involves the blending of scientific content knowledge, the concepts of inquiry, and pedagogical skills to develop this knowledge and these concepts in students, while taking into account students’ abilities and interests. This attention to these students’ attributes is particularly noteworthy in light of the finding that children appear to be capable of much richer scientific thought than previously envisaged (Metz, 1995; Tytler and Peterson, 2004), although students’ alternative conceptions of particular topics still abound (Driver, et al., 1985; Osborne and Freyberg, 1985).