A Physics Teacher's Lifetime Search for PCK and Physics Representations across Contexts and Cultures

The challenges of physics teacher education are obvious: 1) physics teaching in schools is often uninspiring and ineffective, the many brilliant ideas for exciting physics are underused; 2) in many countries there is a shortage of qualified physics teachers, enrolments in physics teacher education are minimal, well qualified baby boomers are leaving, un- or under qualified teachers take their place, and physics teacher education has a low status in university physics departments; 3) good physics teaching needs lifelong nurture and maintenance. What can we do? First of all, we are lucky to have a very exciting subject, let’s make use of physics excitement and put that as a first priority in our teacher education. Then there are pre-service teaching activities which can contribute much to the learning of Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) and subsequent better teaching as these methods are generating PCK within the pre-service teacher’s own classroom. Six examples are described in this paper including fast feedback as an example of formative assessment which leads teaching and almost inevitably results in development of PCK. Finally some examples are presented of induction and professional development initiatives.