Pedagogical Content Knowledge and Industrial Design Education.

Pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) has been embraced by many of the recent educational reform documents as a way of describing the knowledge possessed by expert teachers. These reform documents have also served as guides for educators to develop models of teacher development. However, in the United States, few if any of the current models accurately address the role of PCK in the development of industrial design educators. This article introduces the concept of PCK and how a taxonomy of essential industrial design subject matter can be organized to serve as a content guide. The PCK model presented could serve as a catalyst for the field of industrial design education to produce a conceptual framework and taxonomy for the teaching of industrial design upon which future PCK studies in industrial design education can be based. These conceptual frameworks (or taxonomies) help within a field to articulate the core knowledge, skills, and dispositions that define practice. The interaction of teacher content knowledge in industrial design, pedagogical knowledge, and context of industrial design is framed within a PCK taxonomy. Introduction and Background Theoretical Framework The notion of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) was first introduced to the field of education by Lee Shulman in 1986 and a group of research colleagues collaborating on the Knowledge Growth in Teaching (KGT) project. The focus of the project was to study a broader perspective model for understanding teaching and learning (Shulman & Grossman, 1988). Members of the KGT project studied both how novice teachers gained new understandings of their content and how these new understandings interacted with their teaching. The researchers of the KGT project described PCK as the intersection of three knowledge bases coming together to inform teacher practice: subject matter knowledge, pedagogical knowledge, and knowledge of context. PCK is described as knowledge that is unique to teachers and separates, for example, an industrial design (ID) teacher/professor from a practicing industrial designer. Along the same lines, Cochran, King, and DeRuiter (1991) differentiated between a teacher and a content specialist in the following manner: Teachers differ from biologists, historians, writers, or educational researchers, not necessarily in the quality or quantity of their subject matter knowledge, but in how that knowledge is organized and used. For example, experienced science teachers’ knowledge of science is structured from a teaching perspective and is used as a basis for helping students to understand specific concepts. A scientist’s knowledge, on the other hand, is structured from a research perspective and is used as a basis for the construction of new knowledge in the field (p. 5). Geddis (1993) described PCK as a set of attributes that helped someone transfer the knowledge of content to others. According to Shulman, it includes "most useful forms of representation of these ideas, the most powerful analogies, illustrations, examples, explanations, and demonstrations—in a word, the ways of representing and formulating the subject that make it comprehensible to others" (Shulman, 1987, p. 9). In addition, Shulman (1987) suggested that PCK is made up of the attributes a teacher possess that help her/him guide students towards an understanding of specific content, such as industrial design, in a manner that is meaningful. Shulman argued that PCK included "an understanding of how particular topics, problems, or issues are organized, presented, and adapted to the diverse interests and abilities of learners, and presented for instruction" (1987, p. 8). In light of what industrial design educators should know and be able to do, Shulman (1987) might assert that PCK is the best knowledge base of teaching and suggested: The key to distinguishing the knowledge base of teaching lies at the intersection of content and pedagogy, in the capacity of a teacher to transform the content knowledge he or she possesses into forms that are T h e J o u rn a l o f Te c h n o lo g y S tu d ie s 48 pedagogically powerful and yet adaptive to the variations in ability and background presented by the students (p. 15). Therefore, the intersection of industrial design content knowledge and the pedagogical knowledge of industrial design instructors, depends on the ability of design educators to transform this knowledge into a design rich adaptive instruction that unifies these elements of PCK into successful instruction (Mishra & Koehler, 2006). Figure 1 helps to capture this complex relationship between content knowledge, knowledge of teaching, professional design context, and their interaction in an instructional setting. Figure 1 helps to conceptualize the complex relationship between a teacher’s content knowledge in industrial design in addition to knowledge required to infuse these concepts into classroom instruction. This knowledge combined with an instructor’s general knowledge of pedagogy helps to contribute to a specialized form of pedagogical knowledge in industrial design education. In addition, the specialized knowledge of industrial design is often highly contextualized in the form of authentic application to design problems that are relevant to professional practice. While content knowledge refers to one’s understanding of the subject matter, and pedagogical knowledge refers to one’s understanding of teaching and learning processes independent of subject matter, pedagogical content knowledge refers to knowledge about the teaching and learning of particular subject matter, taking into account its contextual learning demands. The rationale for doing this is appropriately suggested by Geddis (1993): The outstanding teacher is not simply a ‘teacher,’ but rather a ‘history teacher,’ a ‘chemistry teacher,’ or an ‘English teacher.’ While in some sense there are generic teaching skills, many of the pedagogical skills of the outstanding teacher are contentspecific. Beginning teachers need to learn not just ‘how to teach,’ but rather ‘how to teach electricity,’ how to teach world history,’ or ‘how to teach fractions.’ (p. 675) Additionally, one could add, ‘how to teach concept visualization skills,’ or ‘how to teach manufacturing processes,’ or ‘how to teach computer aided design.’ Obviously, the demands of learning about concept visualization skills are different from the demands of learning about manufacturing processes. Good teachers are able to carefully analyze the various sorts of contentspecific demands in each of these areas related to teaching industrial design. Each industrial design educator has a unique knowledge of specific domains spanning multiple content areas based on his/her industrial experience. This professional experience is what informs quality instruction when Figure 1. Model of content knowledge, pedagogy, and context in industrial design education. T h e J o u rn a l o f Te c h n o lo g y S tu d ie s 49 combined with overall content knowledge and pedagogy. Quality design educators have come to know the subject matter in industrial design, not only for the content itself, but also in terms of its “teachability” and “learnability.” Shulman (1986, p.9 ) conceptualized these as the “transformation of subject-matter knowledge into forms accessible to the students.” The implications for this in terms of quality industrial design instruction will require this blending of content knowledge, professional design context, and knowledge of pedagogy. Geddis (1993) informed us that “in order to be able to transform subject matter content knowledge into a form accessible to students, teachers need to know a multitude of particular things about the content that are relevant to its teachability” (p. 676). Developing ways to do this is indeed the creation of new knowledge of a type that characterizes the good teacher, and it is part of her/his professional skill. The design education community must recognize the requirement for teachers to invent this new integrated knowledge. The continued interest in PCK as an epistemological perspective in the preparation of industrial design educators may provide an opportunity to frame and guide the transition of industrial design professionals to becoming industrial design educators. The PCK model could serve as a catalyst for the field of industrial design education to produce a conceptual framework and taxonomy for the teaching of industrial design upon which future PCK studies in industrial design education can be based. These conceptual frameworks (or taxonomies) help within a field to articulate the core knowledge, skills, and dispositions that define practice (Travers, 1980). PCK and the Training of Industrial Design