International Journal of Science Education

Reexamining the utility and role of pedagogical content knowledge in the context of 21st century science education

Pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) was first proposed by Lee Shulman (1986) as a “special amalgam of content and pedagogy that is uniquely the province of teachers” (Shulman, 1987, p. 8). At the heart of the definition of PCK is how teachers transform their content knowledge for the purpose of teaching (Abell, 2007; Park & Oliver, 2008). Over the past three decades, PCK has received significant research attention and has proven to be a valuable construct for investigating and developing science teacher expertise that enables science teachers to make science content comprehensible and accessible to their students (Abell, 2007; van Driel et al., 2014, 2023).

Global challenges, including climate change, the rapid advancement of digital technologies such as generative artificial intelligence, mistrust in science, and the widespread dissemination of scientific misinformation, underscore the complexities students need to navigate in their daily lives in the 21st century. These shifts in the educational landscape have redefined the scientific competencies students need to thrive in an increasingly complex and uncertain future (OECD, 2020, 2023). Importantly, in the context of the 21st century, it is no longer sufficient for students to merely understand the big ideas related to science topics. Students must also be proficient in critically evaluate scientific dis/misinformation on the internet (Osborne & Allchin, 2024), apply interdisciplinary knowledge in various contexts (NGSS Lead States, 2013), and develop both cognitive and non-cognitive attributes that enable them to engage in critical discussion, informed decision-making and responsible action regarding contemporary socioscientific issues that involve more than science knowledge (Zeidler, & Sadler, 2023).

With the rapid evolution of the educational landscape and the increasing demands placed on science teachers to equip students with essential scientific competencies, several essential questions arise: What is the utility of the PCK construct in these evolving contexts? What role does PCK play in describing and developing the teacher expertise required for 21st-century science education? Such an examination is particularly urgent in times of teacher shortages, the prevalence of out-of-field teaching, and the rising demands for new science teaching approaches, where professional development efforts should prioritize aspects of teacher expertise crucial for 21st-century science education. Although several Special Issues (SIs) related to 21st-century science education have been published recently in prominent science education journals, these SIs have primarily focused on topics such as innovative approaches to future-oriented science education (White & Tytler, 2024) and issues related to science curricula (Millar et al., 2024), rather than on teacher expertise, particularly PCK.

This SI builds on the success of two previous IJSE SIs on PCK published in 2008 and 2019. While these SIs addressed important empirical studies on the relationships between PCK and other variables (Neumann et al., 2019), as well as PCK development from an international perspective (Berry et al., 2008), neither critically assessed the utility and role of the PCK construct in the evolving demands of 21st-century science education. Given the rapid changes in education needs and contexts, this SI is both timely and necessary to re-evaluate the utility of PCK and its role in addressing contemporary challenges and opportunities. It invites contributions in three areas: (1) theoretical and conceptual contributions that evaluate the utility of PCK and/or offer guidance for strengthening the PCK construct for its application in contemporary science education contexts; (2) empirical studies demonstrating how the PCK construct can be utilized to examine the science teacher expertise crucial for developing students’ scientific competencies in the 21st century in various international contexts; and (3) policy-related papers critically analyzing policy documents in different educational contexts relevant to the focus of the SI and offer policy implications.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

• Clarifications of fundamental concepts related to PCK from a philosophical perspective.
• Critical discussions on what constitutes PCK and what PCK should encompass in the contemporary science education context.
• Affordances and critiques of the Refined Consensus Model of PCK (Carlson et al., 2019) in studying the expertise of science teachers crucial for 21st-century science education.
• Examination of the role of PCK in studies of science teacher expertise required for teaching non-standard science content/issues (e.g., integrated STEM education, climate change, sustainability).
• Examination of the role of PCK in studies related to the implementation of new teaching approaches (e.g., transdisciplinary approaches, science-as-practice approaches).
• Analysis of the placement of PCK in policy documents concerning contemporary science education.

Contributions are encouraged from all levels of science education and from different countries and contexts that align with the focus of this SI.

References

Abell, S. K. (2007). Research on science teacher knowledge. In S. K. Abell & N. G. Lederman (Eds.), Handbook of Research on Science Education (pp. 1105–1149). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. 

Berry, A., Loughran, J., & van Driel, J. H. (2008). Revisiting the roots of pedagogical content knowledge. International Journal of Science Education, 30(10), 1271–1279.

Carlson, J., Daehler, K. R., Alonzo, A. C., Barendsen, E., Berry, A., Borowski, A., Carpendale, J., Chan, K. K. H, Cooper, R., Friedrichsen, P., Gess-Newsome, J., Henze-Rietveld, I., Hume, A., Kirschner, S., Liepertz, S., Loughran, J., Mavhunga, E., Neumann, K., Nilsson, P., . . . & Wilson, C. D. (2019). The refined consensus model of pedagogical content knowledge in science education. In A. Hume, R. Cooper, & A. Borowski (Eds.), Repositioning Pedagogical Content Knowledge in Teachers’ Knowledge for Teaching Science (pp. 77–94). Springer Singapore. 

Millar, V., Park, W. & Dillon, J. (2024). The science curriculum: Issues, tensions and future prospects [Special Issue]. International Journal of Science Education. 

NGSS Lead States. (2013). Next generation science standards: For states, by states. National Academies Press Washington, DC.

Neumann, K., Kind, V., & Harms, U. (2019). Probing the amalgam: The relationship between science teachers’ content, pedagogical and pedagogical content knowledge. International Journal of Science Education, 41(7), 847–861.

OECD (2020), What Students Learn Matters: Towards a 21st Century Curriculum, OECD Publishing, Paris, doi.org/10.1787/d86d4d9a-en.

OECD. (2023). PISA 2025 Science Framework (Draft). OECD Publishing. https://pisa-framework.oecd.org/science-2025/assets/docs/PISA_2025_Science_Framework.pdf 

Osborne, J., & Allchin, D. (2024). Science literacy in the twenty-first century: Informed trust and the competent outsider. International Journal of Science Education, 1–22. 

Park, S., & Oliver, J. S. (2008). Revisiting the conceptualisation of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK): PCK as a conceptual tool to understand teachers as professionals. Research in Science Education, 38, 261–284.

Shulman, L. S. (1986). Those who understand: Knowledge growth in teaching. Educational Researcher, 15(2), 4–14.

Shulman, L. S. (1987). Knowledge and teaching: Foundations of the new reform. Harvard Educational Review, 57(1), 1–22.

van Driel, J. H., Berry, A., & Meirink, J. A. (2014). Research on science teacher knowledge In N. G. Lederman & S. K. Abell (Eds.), Handbook of Research on Science Education (Vol. 2, pp. 848-870). Routledge. 

van Driel, J. H., Hume, A., & Berry, A. (2023). Research on science teacher knowledge and its development. In N. G. Lederman, D. L. Zeidler, & J. S. Lederman (Eds.), Handbook of Research on Science Education (pp. 1123–1161). Routledge.

White, A. & Tytler, R. (2024). Science education: Fit for the future [Special Issue]. Research in Science Education.

Zeidler, D. L., & Sadler, T. D. (2023). Exploring and expanding the frontiers of socioscientific issues. In N. G. Lederman, D. L. Zeidler, & J. S. Lederman (Eds.), Handbook of Research on Science Education (pp. 899–929). Routledge.