ABSTRACT
This chapter contributes to a reconceptualisation of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) through exploring what is entailed in teachers' understanding of content within the framework of the institutional curriculum, with a central concern for the development of human powers (capacities or abilities, ways of thinking, understanding worlds). The rise of PCK is inextricably connected with the attempt to professionalise teaching in the United States in the 1980s. As a response to the growing criticism over the quality of American schooling, teacher educators argued for professionalising teaching as a means to raise the standards of teachers and teacher education. The place of the institutional curriculum in relation to teachers’ professional understanding of content can be expounded by way of a curriculum-making framework articulated by Doyle and Westbury from the perspective of schooling as an institution. In classroom teachers are entrusted with a high level of professional autonomy to interpret the state curriculum framework.
