Bridging skills and content in teaching

摘要

The importance of understanding specific content in order to teach it effectively is clear. Similarly, it is now generally accepted that some pedagogical skills are helpful when teaching students, and so new academic staff at most Australian institutions are required to complete a tertiary education preparatory course. These courses typically focus on developing generic skills in curriculum and assessment design as well as reflective teaching practice and usually contain little or no discipline-specific information. Thus, the two pillars of content knowledge and educational theory are separate. The bridge to connect them is provided by pedagogical content knowledge (PCK).