Pedagogical Content Knowledge in Action During Problem-Based Learning: A Qualitative Analysis of Teachers’ Facilitation and Classroom Regulation

Informed through Shulman’s Pedagogical Teaching Knowledge (PCK), this study further explores how teachers acquire and utilize PCK, while enriching research on PCK and Problem-Based Learning. In these environments, collaboration and guidance, as well as teachers being responsive, are central. Lay of knowledge in the literature is particularly prevalent in qualitative work. Not a lot of studies “have really looked at how teachers ‘practice’ the teacher professional knowledge that they hold, through interaction as they go through a classroom episode and then through reflection on those practices.” By putting reception teachers in behaviour in classrooms, in PBL scenarios, through the lens of PCK, this study conducts a MAXQDA analysis of the transcription of records of classroom transcripts and observational data. By positioning teachers’ guidance strategies, emotional scaffolding, and situational regulation within the PCK ‘sphere’, this study aims to clarify what constitutes teachable knowledge of a subject to teachers as a collaborative opportunity. This also theoretically redefines the “space” of subject teaching knowledge, making it applicable to PBL teaching. Methodologically, we show qualitative coding and triangulation, and how they are used to build the argument on teacher knowledge.