ABSTRACT
Teachers content knowledge (CK) and its transformation for teaching have been a major concern in education research for some time. This chapter examines the effect of Teach for America (TFA) show that these new science teachers face multiple challenges when embarking on their careers, challenges that are considered in this chapter in the South African context. These challenges include how novice unqualified graduate teachers (NUGTs) relate to the content knowledge (CK) they are to teach, the transformation of such CK for teaching and aligning teaching approaches to beliefs. This chapter looks at case studies of 16 novice teachers recruited by a nongovernmental organization. All the participants held university degrees, had done chemistry for a minimum of one year during the course of their degree, but had no formal teaching qualifications. The Topic Specific Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TSPCK) scores of the participants in this study were low in relation to their CK scores.
