ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the feasibility of fast-tracking the development of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) at pre-service levels, where both the understanding of content knowledge (CK) and its teachability are considered minimal or still developing. It defines the construct distinctively and explores its development in pre-service teachers who are generally perceived as still developing their content knowledge and classroom practice. Topic Specific PCK (TSPCK) as a theoretical construct is defined as the capacity to transform a specific topic through the following five components: student's prior knowledge including misconceptions, curricular saliency, what makes a topic easy or difficult to understand, representations including analogies, and conceptual teaching strategies. Furthermore, classroom practices have been identified as places of development for the teacher as they reflect on what made a specific topic difficult for a specific group of students.
