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Asia-Pacific
Forum on Science Learning and Teaching, Volume 6, Issue 2, Article 7
(Dec., 2005) Tin -Lam TOH On in-service Mathematics teachers' content knowledge on kinematics
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Asia-Pacific
Forum on Science Learning and Teaching, Volume 6, Issue 2, Article 7
(Dec., 2005) Tin -Lam TOH On in-service Mathematics teachers' content knowledge on kinematics
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Teachers' Pedagogical Content Knowledge
Teachers need to have a sufficiently good subject content knowledge of their teaching subject in order to be aware of the problems of pupils' misconceptions and "to use a number of different strategies and how to coordinate between strategies depending on the teaching context"(Abd Rahman N, 2004). This is one among the most important attributes of a good classroom teacher.
Usiskin (2001) called this knowledge that a practicing teacher needs to have as the pedagogical content knowledge. He classified the pedagogical content knowledge that a teacher needs to have under three broad categories: (1) generalized knowledge from what is required in the syllabus, (2) concept analysis and (3) problem analysis. These three categories of knowledge are of course above the direct content knowledge of the examination syllabus.
To put it in Usiskin's perspective: until the advent of the new Additional Mathematics syllabus, the knowledge of kinematics concepts of two-dimensional motion for teachers teaching 'O' Level Mathematics came under category (1): the generalized knowledge from what is required in the syllabus (that is, one-dimension kinematics problems) while knowledge of kinematics concepts in one-dimensional motion pertains to the direct subject content knowledge of the examination syllabus. This is because in the typical Mathematics examination questions, students were only tested questions of particles moving in one-dimension (in fact, only computational skills were required).
After the introduction of the topic Relative Velocity into the syllabus, the kinematics knowledge of two-dimensional motion can no longer be perceived as generalized knowledge from what is required in the syllabus; with the introduction of this topic; this knowledge becomes the direct subject content knowledge of the examination syllabus, that is, directly needed to prepare the students to answer the examination questions. Furthermore, Mathematics teachers, being professional educationists, are expected to be able to minimize any cognitive conflicts among students when the same concept is covered across both the Science and Mathematics subjects. In other words, they must be able to see the relationship between the differences and similarities of the same concepts that are presented across different disciplines.
Copyright (C) 2005 HKIEd APFSLT. Volume 6, Issue 2, Article 7 (Dec., 2005). All Rights Reserved
