Exploring in-service trainee teacher expertise and practice: Developing pedagogical content knowledge

Abstract

This paper is based on a qualitative, longitudinal study of in-service teacher trainee cohorts in two UK institutions of Higher Education preparing to teach Law, Construction, Nursing, Hairdressing, Police and Fire service training in the Post-Compulsory Education and Training (PCET) sector. The programme is entitled Professional Teaching and Training so the aim was to explore whether it fully meets their professional requirements in generic teaching skills and, in particular, subject-specific skills. The research suggests that the participants require more subject related pedagogy within generic teacher education. By exploring the challenges of how to bridge this gap and promote more meaningful and professionally focused teacher education, there can be a more robust understanding and conceptualisation of the relationship between subject knowledge and generic pedagogy. It is proposed that a thorough understanding of the interdependent relationship of content knowledge (CK) and pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) can enable an innovative reconceptualisation of teacher education driven by subjektdidaktik and linked to possibilities for implementation in newly developed programmes.