Exploring Chemistry Teachers’ General Pedagogical Knowledge through Teachers’ Self-reflection

Abstract

A characterization of the teaching of three chemistry professors was carried out using a case study with a phenomenographic approach to explore chemistry teachers’ general pedagogical knowledge (GPK) through teachers’ self-reflection. A video stimulated recall technique was used to identify and examine teachers’ thoughts and decisions, as well as the reasons for driving their behavior. The results showed that these teachers concentrated most of their GPK in eight categories, three of them reported in the literature with the highest frequencies. This could indicate that GPK emerged in different facets depending on the institutional context, and therefore, their teaching experience. This study also identifies three new categories of GPK not reported before: Applying learned concepts and abilities, student-student interaction, and assessment. Therefore, a new perspective on pedagogical content knowledge research is open that will lead us to future research.

Keywords

• general pedagogical knowledge
• teacher knowledge
• teacher education
• chemistry teaching