Page 95 - Getting the Picture Modeling and Simulation in Secondary Computer Science Education

Investigating CS Teachers’ Initial PCK on Modeling and Simulation
focus on conceptual versus motivational and practical objectives (M1) and their emphasis on product-based versus process-based assessment (M4) leading to four distinct groups of teachers. However, none of these differential features leads to an overall typification of the teachers’ PCK.
4.5 Discussion
Reflections on findings. As a possible explanation for the variations found
in the teachers’ PCK, we explore the relation with the teachers’ background. Not
surprisingly, we saw that teachers 1, 2, 4 and 9, who all have a background in CS,
displayed rich knowledge of modeling. Teachers 1 and 4 — both young teachers
— had limited idea about what to expect from their students beyond the general 4 remarks about students needing to plan before acting and lack of perseverance.
On the other hand, teachers 2 and 9 exhibited rich knowledge of students’ understanding and related their extensive knowledge of instructional strategies
to it. Teachers 6, 7, 8, and 10 possess rich and well-connected PCK. Finally, we
saw that teachers 3 and 5, despite their limited content knowledge, were able to
relate their general knowledge of their students to their teaching strategies. The
knowledge of their students’ understanding and difficulties was the strongest
component of their PCK. Other components of their PCK were weaker and so
were the relations among these components too.
Regarding the instructional strategies, the teaching approach described here is in line with prevailing CS teaching practices in the Netherlands (Schmidt, 2007). The extent of knowledge of topic-specific strategies (Magnusson et al., 1999) varies across teachers and seems to be related to their subject matter knowledge and teaching experience. The findings about young teachers 1 and 4 are in line with the results by Lee et al. (2007) who found that “a strong science background does not guarantee a proficient level of PCK.” The more experienced teachers sometimes behave like novices too, — e.g., teacher 5 — while in others, their extensive PCK seems to sustain them in the non-familiar area of modeling, in line with results of Sanders et al. (1993) who found in a similar situation that rich PCK for general science topic seems to sustain teachers “in whatever content they are teaching”.
We observed two characteristics allowing us to distinguish among teachers that were observed by Rahimi et al. (2016) as well — in the knowledge of goals and objectives (M1), with preference for either conceptual objectives or broader
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