Revisiting pedagogical content knowledge: the pedagogy of content/the content of pedagogy

This paper revisits the prevalent concept of pedagogical content knowledge and examines how (and when) each of its components works with/on/against the other in the production of meaning and experience in the educative process. Its purpose is not simply to suggest that content and pedagogy need to come together to provide for powerful teaching-such an argument has already been forcefully made by those writing about pedagogical content knowledge in the last two decades-but, rather, to suggest that content and pedagogy are already interrelated and that powerful teaching (and powerful means for learning to teach) are an outcome of recognizing that interrelationship. Using the literature from critical pedagogy and cultural studies, this paper argues that teacher education's focus on pedagogical content knowledge should move beyond the idea of teaching students how to pedagogize pedagogically free content to helping them recognize the inherently pedagogical nature of content and its implications for (and in) teaching. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.