The Teacher Representations of Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) in Biology Classroom

Abstract

This is qualitative-quantitative research, where the main concern is to investigate pedagogical content knowledge representation of Biology Teachers and determine the effect and/or subsequent relationships with the student conceptual understanding. The study focuses on six biology teachers and a total of 222 students in their respective classes. The study utilizes classroom discourses analysis, interpretative case study method, bracketing method, and concept analysis for the qualitative part; the quantitative part uses a non-parametric statistical tool, Kendall’s Tau Coefficient test on the relationship of Teacher’s representation and students’ conceptual understanding, and paired t-test for differences of pre- and post-instruction of concepts. The data collection entailed seven (7) months immersion: one month for preliminary phase for the researcher to gain teachers’ and students’ confidence and the succeeding six (6) months for the main observation and data collection for the research. The study reveals some patterns of teachers’ activities inside a biology classroom, particularly in planning the lesson, motivation, assessing students, teachers’ schema in representing content knowledge (Declarative and Procedural) inside the biology classroom. The effects and/or relationships of teachers’ representation to students’ conceptual understanding indicated that teachers’ representation of content knowledge does affect the individual students’ conceptual understanding by increasing complexity of their knowledge structure as well as spread of scores in the class.