Investigation of Pedagogical Content Knowledge of a Science Teacher Based on the Metacognitive Awareness of Her Students

Abstract

In this study, it was aimed to determine the pedagogical content knowledge of a science teacher based on the metacognitive cognitive awareness of her students and to decide in-class activities related to this awareness. The study was carried out using case study, which is one of the qualitative research approaches with twenty-six 6th grade students and a science teacher who is working in a public school determined through purposeful sampling in 2015-2016 academic year. Sperling, Howard, and Murphy (2002) suggested that students should be able to identify pedagogical knowledge based on their metacognitive awareness. The Metacognitive Awareness Scale for Children adapted for Turkish (UBFO-C), which was developed to measure the metacognitive cognitive skills of the classes was applied by Karakelle and Sarac (2007). Then, semi-structured interviews with a science teacher were conducted and course presentations were observed through unstructured observations. When the data were analyzed, it was concluded that the students had average level of cognitive awareness and the teacher preferred the activities that could easily be understood by everyone while performing the in-class activities. However, it is suggested that the teacher used activities randomly due to her lack knowledge about applications. This resulted in the lack of pedagogical knowledge of the science teacher.