Examining Variability in Elementary Science Teachers’ Pedagogical Content Knowledge About Phase Change: Implications for Teacher Development and Assessment

To support science teachers in learning how to engage in ambitious teaching practices, teacher educators, professional development facilitators, and researchers need to develop a nuanced understanding of the pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) that science teachers access and use in their daily work. Despite the consensus on the importance of science teachers’ topic-specific professional knowledge, the nature of this knowledge remains largely underspecified in teacher education, which makes it difficult to pinpoint how to effectively develop their PCK and limits the development of assessment tools to measure science teachers’ PCK. The purpose of this study was to articulate and organize the topic-specific PCK that science teachers draw upon when teaching about one high-leverage content area within matter and its interactions: phase change. In this study, we focused on two components of teachers’ personal PCK that have been shown in the literature to be critical to the work of teaching elementary science when they: (1) elicit and interpret students’ ideas and (2) select, critique, and generate instructional strategies. Findings from this study show how elementary science teachers’ personal PCK in one content area can vary across PCK components (student ideas and instructional strategies), which further underscores the importance of understanding and assessing the topic-specific nature of this knowledge. Implications and considerations for developing elementary science teachers’ personal PCK and for measuring their PCK across content topics, grade levels, and teaching contexts are discussed.