Pre Service Teachers’ Development of Pedagogic Content Knowledge: A Multifaceted Case Study

One important aspect of research with regards to teacher’s knowledge is explaining in detail how student teachers develop their pedagogic content knowledge. Pedagogic content knowledge is multidimensional, such research needs to be able to represent a rich picture of how pre-service teachers develop this knowledge during a teacher education programme. Therefore, research into teachers’ pedagogic content knowledge requires not only multiple instruments for its exploration but also multi-method triangulation of data analysis. In this way not only are perspectives of pedagogic content knowledge explored but the practicality of focusing on and studying pedagogic content knowledge can also be estimated by corroborating the data to represent a rich picture of pedagogic content knowledge. Thus, this paper illustrates the so-called multifaceted case study that was conducted at a university Department of Educational Studies in England. Quantitative and qualitative data that resulted from the study were analysed and interpreted to measure whether the instruments and research design are adequate for constructing the judgment of the nature of pedagogic content knowledge among student teachers.