PEDAGOGICAL CONTENT KNOWLEDGE: AN EMERGING ISSUE IN PREPARING TEACHERS

Teacher is one of the important components of education system. The quality and extent of learner achievement are determined primarily by teacher competence, sensitivity and teacher motivation (NCFTE, 2009). The achievement of the educational goals largely depends on the quality and standard of the teacher. Thus it is important to make them prepare for the future or upgrade their knowledge with new concepts to address the better quality and standard of them. Pedagogical content knowledge is one of such emerging concept which should be integrated in the curriculum of teacher education at all the level i.e. D.El.Ed, B.Ed or M.Ed. Pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) is a type of knowledge unique to teachers. PCK concerns the manner in which teachers relate their pedagogical knowledge to their subject matter knowledge in the school context for teaching students with specific level of understanding (Shulman, 1986). It is the integration of teacher pedagogical knowledge with their subject matter knowledge in the specific context so that definite needs of the group of students as well as individual students can be addressed and make the learning simple to understand. In a country like India where the teachers have to deal with different context and different level of understanding of the students PCK of the teacher is more important instead of the content knowledge or pedagogical knowledge singly. This paper will try to define and explore the concept PCK followed by explaining the need of implementing the concept PCK in Indian Teacher Education curriculum and thereby will try to identify the elements related to PCK that has been mentioned in the new NCTE regulation i.e. National Council for Teacher Education (Recognition Norms and Procedure) Regulations, 2014.