Reflection on Content Knowledge

Content knowledge to me reflects how much you are willing to do to ensure that your students
can understand and take away the best available resources/content for every topic you teach. As
Science Teachers, it is our duty to bring home the basic truth about Science and dispose with all
the myths that surround it. Having a core knowledge of the course content is the key to an
outstanding performance as a teacher because one has the body of information that students are
expected to learn in a given subject/content area. Also, one should have answers to questions like
the availability of materials to teach the relevant content, determining what the students already
know as well as the evaluation process to follow. (Magnusson, Krajcik, and Borko 1999)

Although, I am broad field certified, teaching Physics has always been a challenge for
me. When we began our course work for the program, and I found out I had to take Physics
classes, I was a little bit apprehensive about passing the class. It eventually came to naught
because my teacher took his time to bring all the topics we were studying home to us and that
helped me a lot with assimilating and relating information obtained when necessary. The
confidence I gained from this class enabled me to take another course in the Physics Department.
It was a Directed Reading Course entitled: The Physics of Sea-level Rise and its relationship to
the thermal expansion of water. As teachers, we must render this same service to all our students
regardless of the perception we may have about their grasp of the topic at hand.

We should also remember that in the course of imparting knowledge to our children that
misconceptions will arise. We are responsible for seeing that those misconceptions are explained
and clarified for the students. For example, a common misconception which we encounter in the
Biology class is that cold, wet weather causes the flu. This cannot be true because we know that
influenzas are caused by viruses. Viruses live and reproduce within the cells of host organisms
and not within cold, wet rain. Granted, people often get sick during the cold wet weather. When
this fact is correlated with the one that people also tend to stay indoors in this type of weather,
then contamination occurs at a higher rate because of proximity. (Herr, 2008). Another thing I
do in class to help with dealing with misconceptions is by administering probes. I have been
able to address misconceptions directly and in a timely fashion as a result.
Reflection on Content Knowledge

I have also learned to keep an open mind and not jump to conclusions when interacting with my
students in and out of class. The main reason for this being that everyone makes an
analogy/explanation based on their point of view. A story that brings this close to home is the
story about the six blind men and the elephant whereby they each had a different way to describe
an elephant because they had ended up examining different parts of the elephant.

By the way, the curriculum is set up; we are conducting our classes in sequential order. This has
helped tremendously when we introduce new topics in the class because invariably the students
have heard something about it so one can elicit prior knowledge in the explanation of the new
one. Eliciting prior knowledge is important because it enables students with processing and
integrating new information. (Barile, 2017).

References
Barile, N., (2017). Five Ways to Help Students Build Prior
Knowledge. Education week. Volume 36 (16) Retrieved 10/21/2017 from
http://www.edweek.org/tm/articles/2017/01/04/five-ways-to-help-students-build-prior.html
Herr, N., (2008). The sourcebook for teaching Science. Strategies, activities and Instructional
Resources. Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, CA
Magnusson, S., Krajcik, J., & Borko, H., (1999). Nature, Sources and Development of
Pedagogical Content Knowledge for Science Teaching. Science and Technology Education
Library. CTISE 6, 95-96.