Page 81 - Getting the Picture Modeling and Simulation in Secondary Computer Science Education

Chapter 4
Investigating Computer Science Teachers’ Initial Pedagogical Content Knowledge on Modeling and Simulation
In this chapter, we describe our second study focusing on the CS teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) on modeling and simulation. We interviewed ten CS teachers and analyzed their PCK, distinguishing its four components — knowledge of (M1) goals and objectives, (M2) students’ understanding, (M3) instructional strategies and (M4) assessment — and investigated potential differential features of their PCK in order to typify teachers’ individual PCK. We charted the teachers’ PCK in terms of these four components and found differential features related to knowledge of goals and objectives and related to knowledge of assessment, dividing these teachers into four distinct groups. However, these differential features do not lead to distinct types of PCK, thus not providing a typification that would allow to match each teacher’s PCK to a distinct type of PCK. Our findings will be used to explore the future development of teachers’ PCK and they will contribute to the development of teaching materials, assessment instruments and teacher training courses on modeling.
This chapter is based on the paper Grgurina, N., Barendsen, E., Suhre, C., van Veen, K., & Zwaneveld, B. (2017). Investigating informatics teachers’ initial pedagogical content knowledge on modeling and simulation. In International Conference on Informatics in Schools: Situation, Evolution, and Perspectives (pp. 65-76). Springer, Cham.