Middle School Science Teachers’ Knowledge to Teach Pressure: An Adaptation of the Content Knowledge for Teaching Framework

Teachers’ content and pedagogical content knowledge shape science instruction and student learning. This qualitative case study examines middle-school science teachers’ knowledge of pressure by adapting the Content Knowledge for Teaching framework to a physical science topic. Five Turkish in-service science teachers participated in semi-structured interviews covering 12 pressure problems previously administered to 159 Grade 8 and Grade 9 students. The study used deductive content analysis to classify teachers’ statements into four domains: common content knowledge, specialized content knowledge, knowledge of content and students, and knowledge of content and teaching. Teachers anticipated student responses most successfully, but showed limited depth in content reasoning and in evaluating student explanations; only about one-third of coded statements in the content domains were fully correct. The framework’s usefulness for diagnosing topic-specific teacher knowledge and its implications for science teacher education are discussed.