Chemical bonding is a crucial topic. It's also a challenge, especially for new teachers. Pedagogical links begin very early in many courses and are linked to many later theories. This problem must be addressed with appropriate teaching tools, often in different contexts. This presents significant challenges for student teachers.
A recent chemical Education Research and Practice (CERP) article provides a literature review of what teachers need to know to teach chemical bonding. Several Dutch teacher educators provided additional evidence about their content knowledge (PCK) around the topic.
Why is PCK so important?
PCK is the combination of content and pedagogical knowledge needed to teach a particular topic. Teachers develop it with experience. Developing a PCK (ePCK) is the specific knowledge and skills that teachers use to achieve specific student outcomes. Personal PCK (pPCK) is an individual's knowledge and expertise in a subject area, derived from the accumulated personal experience and contributions of students and peers. Collective PCK (CPC) is the knowledge held by a group of people, developed in part through professional conversations.
The authors illustrate the importance of cPCK for both student teachers and teacher educators, who play a key role in the formative experience of the former. In the review, the most frequently cited components of the PCK are student understanding, instructional strategies and representations, assessment, and curriculum knowledge.
Understanding students' understanding is especially important because they often bring misunderstandings from previous learning. Knowledge of teaching strategies (such as group learning, and concept mapping) and representations (such as models, illustrations, and simulations) enable teachers to help students understand concepts and the relationships between them. Appropriate representation supports students to connect the macro and submicron levels and influences their ability to use structure-property relationships. Effective assessment requires a range of formative and summative approaches to support students' further understanding.
The importance of research and experience
The study aims to combine insights from research and experience to support teacher education. The literature review itself will be of interest to those who want more insight. Eight key insights related to eight teaching guidelines for addressing the challenge were identified. These insights include the fact that the concept of chemical bonding is essential in so many other areas that textbooks and teachers do not always use evidence-based instructional sequences.
Teachers should take into account students' difficulties in making connections when planning lessons, especially where misunderstandings may arise. The study also shows that models and representations are rigorously considered to determine their characteristics and limitations.
The study involved nine teacher educators and contains valuable insights into their broad pick. The analysis found that educators identified four guidelines: prior knowledge, strengths and limitations, applicability, and micro-macro. However, most participants did not identify the other four guidelines.
