EDU 555

CURRICULUM AND
INSTRUCTION
ARTICLE REVIEW
Understanding Biology Teachers Pedagogical Content
Knowledge for Teaching The Nature of Organism

NAME
STUDENT ID
GROUP
DATE OF SUBMISSION
PREPARED FOR

:RAHIMAH BINTI ABD SHUKOR

: 2013254162
: ED2474A
: 7th APRIL 2015
: MR. MUHAMAD FURKAN BIN
MAT SALLEH

This article review is about Understanding Biology Teachers Pedagogical Content

Knowledge for Teaching The Nature of Organism by Suriya Chapoo, Kongsak Thathong
and Lilia Halim (2014). From this article, I can summarize that pedagogical content
knowledge of biology teachers are very important in teaching the organisms nature.
Pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) is blending of pedagogy and content into an
understanding of how particular problems, topics and issues are represented, organized or
adapted to the various abilities and interests of learning and presented for instructions
(Shulman, 1987, as cited in Chapoo et al., 2014). The good, experienced and effective
teachers have the ability to make over subject matter into forms that can be easily understood
by students (Chapoo et al., 2014). The teachers has their own content knowledge and ways on
how they can give and transfer their own knowledge to the students. The teachers
understandings and practice of PCK is based on constructivism for teaching and learning
science.
The main objective of this article is to know the nature of a biology teachers
pedagogical content knowledge. This article is used to determine at how mentor science
teachers conceptualized their own PCK that can affect their practice of teaching. The PCK
can be demonstrated through teaching in the classroom, writing a content representation
(CoRe) and discussion during the interview. The content of CoRe redirect of PCK as
identified by Magnusson et al. (1999, as cited in Chapoo et al., 2014). Magnusson et al.
(1999, as cited in Chapoo et al., 2014), said that pedagogical content knowledge for science
teaching consisting five components. They are orientation to teaching science, knowledge of
students understanding of science, knowledge of instructional strategies, knowledge of
science curriculum and knowledge of assessment of science.
From the components of pedagogical content knowledge for science teaching, I know
that the pedagogical content knowledge is very wide. Firstly, from the first component that is
orientation to teaching science, the biology teacher should know the purposes for teaching
science are very wide. The students should understand on what their teachers teaches and
they can conduct experiments by science process skills and also used the knowledge in their
daily lives. Other than that, when the PCK of the biology teacher is strong, their student can
discuss what they learn through inquiry activities with other students. Second component of
pedagogical content knowledge for teaching science is knowledge of students understanding
of science. Based on biology teacher understanding, the students understanding of science is
taken through the scientific process. The student can know the concepts in learning through
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experimentation and constructing scientific knowledge by practice the scientific skills. The
biology teacher with good pedagogical content knowledge is able to choose appropriate
teaching methods for their students. They can make variations for the learning activities that
can motivate the learning of the students.
The next component is knowledge of instructional strategies. The biology teachers
should know that students have different needs and students prior knowledge was very
important for their teaching. The teachers can stimulated the curiosity of student by using
discussing, interacting with real things and questioning. Knowledge of science curriculum is
the next component that the science curricular that school has produced is based on standard
curricular. Based on the national science curriculum combined with community and schools
contacts, the school-based science curriculum is developed. Last component is biology
teacher should know the knowledge of assessment of science. There are various types of
assessment like multiple choice test written journals and member checking.
Biology teachers pedagogical content knowledge is very important for the biology
teachers to improve the process of teaching and learning. In my opinion, I am really strong
agreed with this statement. This is because when biology teachers pedagogical content
knowledge is good, they can motivate student to be active student in learning and grab the
knowledge. The pedagogical content knowledge help the teachers to create the constructivist
in classrooms which means helps the students to learn science through an inquiry approach.
Constructivism is the process of construct of knowledge in learning process. When I do the
review for this article, I found that it is really related with subject of curriculum and
instructions. When the biology teachers apply their pedagogical content knowledge towards
the students, we can see that there are various different PCK among the teachers. The
effective and experienced teachers have strong PCK compare to other teachers and they can
transform the subject matter like syllabus into more interesting knowledge and easily for the
students to understand.
In curriculum development, the teacher is the medium between the curriculum and the
students. The good biology teachers pedagogical content knowledge can introduce the
constructivist learning. The constructivist learning focus on student centered that in
classroom, there are two ways communications between the teacher and the students. During
the learning process, the students can ask the questions, give their opinions and give their
own ideas to improve their learning. This can help them to strengthen their understandings in
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studies. In the classroom, usually there are some misconceptions among the student to
understand the topics. For example in the science experiment about the needed of oxygen in
animals, there are two same sizes of the beakers. In the first beaker that contains water, we
put only a fish while in the second beaker that also contains water, we put a fish and a layer
of oil. After one hour, the fish in the first beaker was still life and the fish in other beaker was
died. Some of the students said that the fish in the second beaker died because of the layer of
oil. But actually the fish died because of the absence of oxygen in beaker that block by the
oil. We can see that there is misconception so the teacher that has pedagogical content
knowledge must explain to them so that they understand.
Then from perspective of curriculum and assessment, there two types of assessment.
Firstly is formative assessment and the second is summative evaluation. The biology
teachers pedagogical content knowledge was applied during both assessments. The formative
evaluation is on-going process that occurs throughout teaching activities and learning. It is a
program improvement that will assess students at the beginning until the end of the teaching
class. The summative assessment is the assessment that done at the completion of a class or
program and concerned about the overall effectiveness of the learning in the classroom. Other
than that, the good biology teachers with strong pedagogical content knowledge must variety
teaching skills because there are three types of learning styles among the students. They are
visual, audio and kinesthetic. So the teachers need to apply variety teaching skills so that the
students can learn and understanding the studies efficiently.
As a conclusion, all the biology teachers have their own pedagogical content
knowledge for teaching The Nature of Organism. The teacher must do the practice so that
they can become the good and effective biology teachers that content strong pedagogical
content knowledge. The biology teachers with good pedagogical content knowledge have
improved themselves from time to time and become more confident to trigger various aspects
of pedagogical content knowledge likes orientation to teach science, knowledge of students
understanding of science, knowledge of instructional strategies, knowledge of science
curriculum and knowledge of assessment of science.
References
Chapoo, S., Thathong, K., & Halim, L. (2014). Understanding biology teachers' pedagogical
content knowledge for teaching "the nature of organism". Procedia - Social and
Behavioral Sciences, 116, 464-471.
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