REVISITING THE KNOWLEDGE BASE AND SCIENCE TEACHERS’ PEDAGOGICAL CONTENT KNOWLEDGE

The literature, especially in science teaching has appointed a professional knowledge base for teaching, which defines and characterise the teaching profession. Among these, the Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) represents the knowledge that teachers use in the educational process and distinguishes a teacher of a given discipline from an expert of that discipline and has been considered a fruitful model for research on science teachers and for support curricula and proposals for initial and continuing training. On the other hand, there is little literature in Portuguese and, judging its importance in the international scene and the problems with translations of some terms, an overview of the literature on science education presenting the components of the knowledge base and PCK, the models set for its access and its documentation is justified. The paper also presents a critical analysis of the proposed models.

Knowledge base for teachers; Pedagogical content knowledge; Science education