09 - PCK - Developing Pedagogical Content Knowledge - Bostock

Developing Pedagogical Content Knowledge in Higher Education
John Bostock: Edge Hill University, UK

This presentation focuses on colleagues who have engaged in PGCTHE programmes who consistently state a desire to have subject-focused instruction within their teaching and learning development and includes a synthesis of research data and theorisations in order to relate notions of developing Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) specifically. Firstly, it is shown how, as programme and module leader of a PGCTHE, one typically works with teachers representing a great variety of professional and academic disciplines. The groups are composed of senior university academics, teacher educators from other sectors, and even PhD students with varied research backgrounds; indeed, a group where lively, multidisciplinary discourse can be an everyday activity. Secondly, debates on multi- and trans-disciplinary work are often about the differences and commonalties of academics on PGCTHE programmes; in short, about their respective identities. These identities are framed by the original education these teachers have received and by the institutional/ departmental contexts in which they operate.

The presentation explores how such identities include a strong conviction of subject departments as seats of highly specialised knowledge in which colleagues in ‘communities of practice’ can engage in developmental dialogues which preserve and enhance that knowledge. It considers the lack of opportunity for lecturers to engage in pedagogical discussion around such specialised knowledge which is viewed as essential in professional development. It further stresses a holistic approach to preparing HE teachers, arguing that the essential skills and knowledge are premised on using specialised knowledge to interpret and translate that knowledge into pedagogical practices. The cross-professional perspective also stresses the importance of three concepts for understanding pedagogies of practice, namely representation, decomposition and approximation. The second is salient and presented here as the essential skill of the breaking down of specialised knowledge into its constituent parts for the purposes of teaching and learning.

Finally, a personal perspective is offered which renders the significance of the struggles with supporting lecturers’ diverse content knowledge (CK) and pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) as particularly problematic. Moreover, the opportunities to explore Content Knowledge (CK) and develop PCK in HE remain under-researched. Any practical solution is overshadowed by its subtlety and its complexity where certain academics continue to claim differing pedagogical practices according to discipline.