Assessing Pedagogical Content Knowledge of Future Elementary Teachers

We reformed a course for future elementary teachers to infuse pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) into the fabric of a physics course. The modified course is structured around an instructional model called the pedagogical learning bicycle (PLB) that intertwines the construction of content knowledge (CK) with pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) using metacognitive reflection as a bridge between learning content and pedagogy. To assess the impact of the course experiences on their PCK, the future teachers were asked to work in groups to create lesson plans that incorporated their understanding of elementary children's ideas of science and strategies to address these ideas. As a measure of PCK, we scored the lesson plans on the ways in which the students incorporated these ideas in their lesson. We describe the results of our study and discuss its implications for instruction.