What do we know and where do we go? Formative assessment in developing student teachers’ professional learning of teaching science

There is little doubt that the complexity of teaching brings into sharp focus the need for more extensive research into the relationship between the different elements that constitute teacher knowledge, and how these are developed and further assessed during pre-service teacher education. In order to teach science in ways that promote students’ understanding, Shulman (1986, 1987) claimed that teachers needed pedagogical content knowledge (PCK), a special kind of knowledge that teachers have about how to teach particular content to particular pupils. Since Shulman introduced his notion of PCK, there has been an on-going discussion about different approaches towards teaching and teacher education with a particular focus on identifying and capturing the concept, and much of that discussion has been particularly strong in the field of science (PCK, e.g. Abell, 2008; Loughran, Berry, & Mulhall, 2006; Loughran, Mulhall, & Berry, 2004; Nilsson, 2008; Nilsson & Loughran, 2011; Van Driel, Verloop, & de Vos, 1998). As such, PCK has proved to be

important in drawing attention not only to what student teachers need to learn, but also to what science teacher education needs to offer in order to ‘effectively’ facilitate that learning.