Pedagogical content knowledge for Statistics

Pedagogical content knowledge means knowing how to teach a specific subject, discipline or context. There is a school of thought that the skill of teaching is transferable between subjects, so long as the teacher knows the content. However others argue that teaching strategies differ sufficiently across disciplines to create individual but overlapping bodies of knowledge, called pedagogical content knowledge. To me it is clear that different skills and approaches are needed in the teaching of different disciplines. The methods for teaching a foreign language differ largely from those for teaching history or science or cake decorating or jazz piano. There are also commonalities in all teaching, such as the need to build a relationship between the teacher and student, and building on students’ previous knowledge.

I first learned about the concept of “pedagogical content knowledge” in one of my favourite books – How People…