EDU. 05.2 Unit 1 : INTRODUCTION TO PEDAGOGIC CONTENT KNOWLEDGE

 

Unit 1 : INTRODUCTION TO PEDAGOGIC CONTENT KNOWLEDGE

Pedagogue is derived from two Greek words pais paidos (boy) and agogos (guide) which together means teacher. Pedagogue is the one who guides the child. Pedagogy is the science of teaching.

 

PEDAGOGIC ANALYSIS

●       Systematic breakup of      the curriculum from the perspective of the teacher for transacting it effectively and easily.

●       Teacher considers the needs, capacity, interests and probable difficulties of the learner It includes:

•  Content analysis

•  Determination of Objectives

•  Listing of prerequisites

•  Preparing pre-diagnostic test

•  Preparation and processing of inputs

 

SCOPE AND MERITS OF PEDAGOGIC ANALYSIS

 

•  It forms an integral part of the curriculum in all teacher education programmes.

 

•  It helps the teacher to set educational goals in accordance with the needs and abilities of the learner.

 

•  It helps the teacher in pooling the resources required for effective instruction.

 

•   It provides the teacher an insight into the curricular materials and enables him/her to plan for realizing the output.

 

•  The teacher can take steps to motivate the students and develop interest among them.

 

OBJECTIVES OF PEDAGOGICAL ANALYSIS

 

➢  To identify needs, interests and attitudes of the learner

➢  To analyze the curriculum into meaningful components.

➢    To identify appropriate content to be transacted and anticipate instructional objectives appropriate to each component of the content

➢  To identify the prerequisites needed for assimilating the curricular materials

➢  To enumerate the inputs that might be required for effective curriculum transaction

➢  To design stage appropriate, content appropriate and objective based learning experiences

 

PEDAGOGICAL CONTENT KNOWLEDGE (PCK)

 

●       Content Knowledge ( CK) is the knowledge about the actual subject matter that is to be learned or taught while Pedagogical knowledge (PK) is a set of skills that the teacher must develop in order to manage and organize teaching and learning activities for intended learning outcomes.

●       Pedagogical content knowledge is knowledge about how to combine pedagogy and content effectively (Shulman, 1986). This is knowledge about how to make a subject understandable to learners.

●       Archambault and Crippen (2009) report that PCK includes knowledge of what makes a subject difficult or easy to learn, as well as knowledge of common misconceptions and likely preconceptions students bring with them to the classroom.

 

 

OBJECTIVE BASED INSTRUCTION

 

●       Objective Based Instruction (OBI) or Outcome-based education (OBE) is an educational theory that bases each part of an educational system around goals (outcomes).

●       By the end of the educational experience each student should have achieved the goal.

●       There is no specified style of teaching or assessment in OBE; instead classes, opportunities, and assessments should all help students achieve the specified outcomes.Objective-based Instruction

●       It may be defined as ‘a desired change in behaviour in a person that we try to bring about through education.’these changes (modification/growth) have the basic characteristics of direction, nature (quality) and extend.

 

BLOOM’S TAXONOMY

 

 

Benjamin Bloom developed the Taxonomy of Cognitive Objectives in the 1950s by qualitatively expressing different types of thinking. It is a set of three hierarchical models used to classify educational learning objectives into levels of complexity and specificity. The models organize learning objectives into three different domains: Cognitive, Affective and Sensory/Psychomotor.

In Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy (2001), there are six levels of cognitive learning.

 

 Taxonomy of Instructional Objectives ( Benjamin S Bloom)

 

 

Cognitive   Intellectual capability Knowledge (think)	Affective   Feelings, emotions, behaviour Attitude (feel)	Psychomotor   Manual or physical Skills (do)
1. Remember/ Knowledge	1. Receiving (awareness)	1. Imitation (copy)
2. Understanding/ Comprehension	2. Responding (react)	2. Manipulation (follow instructions)
3.  Application	3. Valuing ( understand and act)	.    3. Develop Precision
4.  Analysis	4.Organizing (personal value system )	4. Articulation (combine, integrate related skills)
5.  Synthesis	5. Characterizing ( adopt behaviour)	5. Naturalization (automate, become expert)
6.    Evaluation

 

Bloom's Taxonomy uses a multi-tiered scale to express the level of expertise required to achieve each measurable student outcome.

 

PROCESS SKILLS AND THINKING SKILLS (CRITICAL AND PROBLEM SOLVING)

 

Process Skills

 

●       The process skills are ways of thinking about and interacting with materials and phenomena that can lead to an understanding of new scientific ideas and concepts.

●       By using these skills, students can gather information, test their ideas, and con- struct scientific explanations of the world

 

Various process skills are :

 

•  Observing

•  Raising questions

•  Measurement and calculation

•  Generalising & decision making

•  Hypothesizing & controlling variables

•  Predicting and inferring

•  Finding patterns and relationships

•  Communicating effective

 

The various processes listed above can be classified into 5 categories as given below:

•  Collection of data

•  Evaluation of data

•  Application of generalization to new situations

•  Analysis of data

•  Synthesis of data

 

Thinking Skills

 

●       Thinking is a combination of knowledge, skills, processes and attitudes. Knowledge is involved, because thinking requires an object. One must think about something. The more knowledge one has in any area the more effectively one can think about it.

●       The simplest thinking skills are learning facts and recall, while higher order skills include analysis, synthesis, problem solving, and evaluation.

 

Core skills of Thinking

 

1)    Perception of a problem or issue

2)    Ability to gather relevant information

3)    Competence in organizing data

4) Analysis of data patterns, inferences and sources of errors

5)    Communication of the results

  

Skills associated with effective thinking include;

 

●       Observing

●       Identifying patterns, relationships, cause and effect relationships, assumptions, reasoning errors, logical fallacies etc.

●        Establishing relationship and classifying

●       Comparing and contrasting

●       Inferring and interpreting

●       Summarising

●       Analysing, synthesising and generalising Hypothesising and imagining

●       Distinguishing relevant data from irrelevant ones

●       Combining independent elements to create new patterns of thought

 

Ways of Developing Thinking Skills

 

❖   Encourage to ask unusual questions

❖   Provide activities to promote creativity

❖   Encourage experimentation and discovery learning

❖   Organize brainstorming sessions

❖   Motivate creative talents

❖   Adopt multi methodology approach in the classroom

❖   Encourage problem-based learning

❖   Teacher himself/herself must display his/her creative potentialities

❖   Avoid excessive discipline in the classroom and text book oriented teaching

 

Critical Thinking

 

●       "the process of actively and skilfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluating information to reach an answer or conclusion.

●       Critical thinking skills includes observation, interpretation, analysis, inference, evaluation, explanation, and metacognition.

 

According to Reynolds (2011), an individual or group engaged in a strong way of critical thinking gives due consideration to establish for instance:

 

●       Evidence through observation

●       Context skills to isolate the problem from context [clarification needed]

●       Relevant criteria for making the judgment well

●       Applicable theoretical constructs for understanding the problem and the question at hand

Critical thinking employs not only logic but broad intellectual criteria such as clarity, credibility, accuracy, precision, relevance, depth, breadth, significance, and fairness.

 

Developing Critical thinking among school children.

 

●       John Dewey is one of many educational leaders who recognized that a curriculum aimed at building thinking skills would benefit the individual learner, the community, and the entire democracy.

 

●       Critical thinking is significant in the learning process of internalization, in the construction of basic ideas, principles, and theories inherent in content.

 

●       And critical thinking is significant in the learning process of application, whereby those ideas, principles, and theories are implemented effectively as they become relevant in learners' lives. Good teachers cultivate critical thinking (intellectually engaged thinking) at every stage of learning, including initial learning.

Creative Thinking

 

Creative thinking means that the predictions and/or inferences for the individual are new, original, ingenious, unusual. The creative thinker is one who explores new areas and makes new observations, new predictions and new inferences.

 

 

Problem solving

 

 

 

●       Problem solving is an instructional method or technique whereby the teacher and pupils attempt in a conscious, planned and purposeful effort to arrive at some explanation or solution to some educationally significant difficulty.

●       According to Gates, “a problem exists for an individual when he has definite goal he cannot reach by the behaviour pattern which he already has available.”

●       Wesley thinks that “the problem method may become a seminar method.” Problem solving is not merely a method of teaching. It is more a method of organization of subject matter in such a way that it can be dealt with thorough study of problems. However this concept of problem solving does not seem to be suitable at the school stage.

 

 

Significance of Problem Solving

 

●       The basic purpose of education is to enable the child to adapt himself to life in society which is full of problems. To be successful, one must be adequately equipped with proper reasoning and reflecting power. Not only life in society, there are problems and puzzling situations which are normal feature of a child’s every day life in school also. These problems grow in complexity as he grows older and older. Therefore, it is very important that problem solving must be encouraged in school life.

 

●       Children are curious by nature. They want to find out answers of several questions which sometimes are baffling even to adults. Nevertheless, they must be helped to satisfy their curiosity as far possible by providing answers to their questions. This implies that we must teach them how to think and reflect so that they are able to apply this to a vast number of varied problem situations. Problem solving ability enables the child to find out appropriate solution of problems which confront him.

 

Essential Features of a Problem

 

✓    The problem should be meaningful, interesting and worthwhile for children.

✓    It should have correlation with life.

✓    It should arise out of the real needs of the students.

✓    The children must posses some background of the problem which they are going to discuss.

✓    The problem should be clearly defined.

✓    The solution of the problem should be found out by the students themselves working under the guidance and supervision of the teacher.

 

Steps in Problem Solving

 

i.  Formation and Appreciation of the problem:

The nature of the problem should be made very clear to the students. They must feel the necessity of finding out a solution for the problem.

 

ii.  Collection of Relevant Data and Information:

 

The students should be stimulated to collect data in a systematic manner. Full cooperation of the students should be secured. They may be invited to make suggestions as to how they could collect the relevant data. The teacher may suggest many points to them. He may ask them to read extra books. He may also ask them to organize a few educational trips to gather the relevant information.

 

iii.  Organization of Data:

 

The students should be asked to sift the relevant materials from the superficial one and put it in a scientific way.

 

iv.  Drawing of Conclusion:

 

Discussions should be arranged collectively and individually with each pupil. Panton suggests that the teacher’s aim should be to secure that, as far as possible, the essential thinking is done by the pupils themselves, and that their educative process produces the particular solution, formulation of generalizations at take.

 

v.  Testing conclusions:

 

No conclusion should be accepted without being properly verified. The correctness of the conclusions must be proved. We should have our minds free from every bias in the process of problem solving.

 

Teacher’s Role in Problem Solving

 

a.  Get the students to define the problem clearly

 

b.  Aid them to keep the problem in mind

 

c.  Get them to make many suggestions by encouraging them –

(i)  to analyse the situation

(ii)  to recall previously known similar cases and general rules that apply,

(iii)  to guess courageously and formulate guesses clearly.

 

d.  Get them to evaluate each suggestion carefully by encouraging them

 

(i)  to maintain a state of doubts or suspended conclusion,

(ii)  to criticise the suggestions by appeal to know facts minister experiments and scientific treatise.

 

e.  Get them to organize the material by proceeding:

(i)  to build an outline on the board,

(ii)  to

use diagram and graphs,

(iii)  to formulate concise statement of the net outcome of the discussion.

Merits of Problem Solving

•  It helps in stimulation thinking.

•  It develops reasoning power.

•  It helps to improve knowledge.

•  It helps in developing good study habits.

•  It affords opportunities for participation in social activities. Problems are solved with the joint efforts of many students. The students learn to appreciate the different points of view and thus become tolerant.

•  The students learn to be self-dependent.

•  Discussions help to develop power of expression of students.

•  The method provides opportunities to the teachers to know in detail their pupils. They learn which students are shy in nature and which are very active and accordingly they assist the students.

•  Students learn facts which are meaningful and which have been discovered by their own efforts.

•  It gives the power of critical judgment, satisfies curiosity.

 

 

Demerits of problem Solving

 

o  Generally speaking, problem solving involves mental activity only. There is less of bodily activity.

o   Small children do not posses sufficient background information and therefore they fail to participate in discussions.

o  There is a lack of suitable reference and source books for children.

o  It involves a lot of time and the teachers find it difficult to cover the prescribed syllabus.

 

 

CONTENT ANALYSIS of Course Book

 

What is content analysis?

 

Content is the subject matter of a lesson or unit. Content analysis is the process of breaking down the subject matter into terms, facts and concepts, principles, rules, process etc. It is important in pedagogical analysis.

 

Principles of Content Analysis

 

Some of the principles used while analysing the content of any subject are:

 

(1)  Principle of inclusion

(2)  Principle of summarisation

(3)  Principle of objectivity

(4)  Principle of sequential arrangement

(5)  Principle of clarity Advantages of content analysis

-  It helps the teacher to organize and systematize the teaching process.

-  It helps the teacher to have a clear insight into the nature of learning material and gradation of subject matter.

-   It enables the teacher to identify the terms, facts, ideas and concepts that are to be covered. - It makes the teacher search for pre requisites and ensure this before teaching a new item.

-  By analysing the content, the chances of omitting any point is ruled out. How to analyse content?

The content of any unit should be analysed in terms of the following aspects:

 

1)  Terms: A term is a new word having a specific meaning approved in all discussions.

2)  Fact: It is an event or a phenomenon that has occurred and agreed upon as something that exists.

3)  Principle: A principle is a meaningful linking of two or more concepts.

4)  Rule: A rule is an established principle.

5)  Concept: A concept is a generalized idea in the form of a mental image representing all members in a set of objects or phenomenon.

6)   Process: A process is a set of sequential actions done in accordance with relevant principles resulting in a new product.

 

 

DISCOURSES

A discourse is a mode of communicating certain ideas meaningfully in a particular situation. 

TYPES OF DISCOURSES – slogans, placards, notices, reports, diary entry, messages, script of a speech, letter, posters, advertisement, write up, conversation, profile etc.