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RESEARCH

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The relationships between PCK components: the case of quantum chemistry professors
Kira Padillaa and Jan Van Drielb
Received 10th November 2010, Accepted 29th April 2011 DOI: The purpose of this paper is to capture the pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) of university professors about quantum chemistry. More specifically, we aimed to identify and analyze relationships between specific PCK components, using an adapted version of the model of PCK of Magnusson et al.. A sample of university professors (n=6) who teach quantum chemistry at undergraduate level was interviewed. Data analysis combined a quantitative and qualitative methodology. Relationships were found between components of the Magnusson model, in particular, between specific orientations to teaching science, and knowledge of instructional strategies. In addition, relationships were found between teachers knowledge of student learning, and their curriculum. In short, given their view that the learning of quantum chemistry presents many difficulties to students, most teachers combined a didactic view of teaching with an instructional approach focusing on problem solving. Taking the results of the study together, they explain what teachers do to teach quantum chemistry, and why, and therefore, the results help us to portray their PCK. Keywords: pedagogical content knowledge, quantum chemistry, university teachers, undergraduate chemistry education

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Introduction
In research on science teaching, much attention has been paid to teachers knowledge and beliefs (Abell, 2007). However, most studies concerned primary and secondary teachers. Relatively little research has been done at the university level. The project reported in this paper concerns the knowledge and beliefs of university teachers about the teaching of quantum chemistry at the undergraduate level. This subject requires understanding of very abstract ideas and is thus notoriously difficult to learn and understand for students (Warren, 1974; Jones, 1991; Ireson, 1999). It is a subject that plays a major role in chemistry curricula over the world, and it has a large impact on study success and future careers in chemistry. University professors who teach this subject are usually researchers with much expertise in the subject, but not in education. In this context, we were interested to investigate the pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) of teaching this difficult subject, and how teachers try to promote students understanding of it. In particular, we wanted to investigate what relations exist between their knowledge of instruction, assessment, curriculum and student learning concerning this subject. Relations between these PCK components have been rarely studied (Friedrichsen et al., 2011); a notable exception is Kaya, (2009).
Universidad Nacional Autnoma de Mxico (UNAM), Facultad de Qumica. e-mail: kira@unam.mx b University of Leiden, ICLON, The Netherlands. e-mail: driel@iclon.leidenuniv.nl
a

Framework
Pedagogical content knowledge Since Shulman (1986) wrote the first definition of Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK), many researches related to this subject have been conducted (Smith et al., 1989; Kagan, 1990; Briscoe, 1991; Carlsen, 1993; GessNewsome et al., 1993; Zuzovsky, 1994; Geddis, 1996; Adams et al., 1997; Kennedy, 1998; Bond-Robinson, 2005; Park et al., 2008). Some studies were focused on categorizing the knowledge that should be included in PCK (Cochran et al., 1993; Stengel, 1997; Magnusson et al., 1999; Hasweh, 2005). Others were more focused on trying to identify how teachers PCK is being developed (Clermont et al., 1993; Geddis, 1993; Lederman et al., 1994; van Driel et al., 1998; Loughran et al., 2004; Goodnough et al., 2006; Major et al., 2006; Nilsson, 2008). In addition, some studies have been conducted on the relationship between PCK and subject matter knowledge, SMK (McEwan et al., 1991; Foss et al., 1996; Geddis et al., 1997; Kahan et al., 2003; Garritz et al., 2006; Padilla, et al., 2008). Shulmans proposal of what a teacher should know was focused on the knowledge base, which was considered to consist of seven components: i) Content knowledge (or subject matter knowledge, SMK), ii) general pedagogical knowledge, iii) curriculum knowledge, iv) pedagogical content knowledge (PCK), v) knowledge of learners and their characteristics, vi) knowledge of educational context, vii) knowledge of educational ends, purposes, and values, and their philosophical and historical backgrounds (Shulman, 1987). In this first classification of the
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knowledge base, pedagogical content knowledge was defined by Shulman (1987) as: pedagogical content knowledge is that special amalgam of content (SMK) and pedagogy that is uniquely the province of teachers, their own special form of professional understanding (p. 8). The question what kind of knowledge should be included in that amalgam has been the main focus of many following researches (Cochran et al., 1993; Stengel, 1997; Magnusson et al., 1999; Hasweh, 2005). Shulman also wrote about PCK that [it] embodies the dimensions of content most germane to its teachability [it includes] the most regularly taught topics in ones subject area, the most useful forms of representation of those 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[] An understanding of what makes the learning of specific topics and preconceptions that students of different ages and backgrounds bring with them to the learning of those most frequently taught topics and lessons (Shulman, 1986, p. 9). Here Shulman was saying that PCK involves three main things: i) The subject matter knowledge, at least that knowledge which could be most relevant to teach to students of a certain age and level; ii) The most powerful representations of this SMK, which implies that teachers must have some knowledge about how the subject they are teaching has evolved in two ways, theoretical and educational (Shulman, 1986; Gil, 1991); iii) Knowledge about student understanding, which implies that teacher must know about misconceptions, learning processes, difficulties, etc. concerning the subject they teach. In the science education community, one PCK proposal that has been used as a model to portray teachers PCK was elaborated by Magnusson et al. (1999). These authors claimed that PCK is a teachers understanding of how to help students to understand one specific subject matter (p.96). Magnusson et al. (1999) described PCK as the knowledge that is acquired after a transformation from various sources of knowledge: subject matter knowledge, pedagogical knowledge and knowledge about the context. The combination of these three main sources leads to the formation of pedagogical content knowledge. According to these authors, PCK has five components: A) Orientation towards teaching science, B) Knowledge of science curricula, C) Knowledge of students understanding of science, D) Knowledge of assessment of scientific literacy, and E) Knowledge of instructional strategies. In this proposal the last four components are all interrelated with the first one, however, the authors dont mention relationships between B) E). Although these PCK components comprise almost all knowledge that teachers should have to teach science, Magnusson et al., (1999) did not include pedagogical knowledge (PK) nor subject matter knowledge (SMK) per se in their PCK model. As stated above, they consider both PK and SMK as separate forms of knowledge that are source for the development of PCK, but are not part of it.

Another proposal of what PCK should be was elaborated by Hashweh (2005). This author claimed that PCK is a collection of smaller knowledge entities that he called pedagogical constructions. Hashweh proposed seven categories into which he classified what he called pedagogical constructions (TPC): 1) subject matter knowledge; 2) aims, purposes and philosophy; 3) curricular knowledge, 4) knowledge of resources, 5) knowledge of context, 6) knowledge and beliefs about learning and learners, and 7) pedagogical knowledge and beliefs. At least, five of these components are similar to the PCK components proposed by Magnusson et al., and also to Shulmans components of the knowledge base. However, Shulman defined PCK as a separate component within the knowledge base. In Shulman and Magnussons proposal, subject matter knowledge is different from PCK but influences it, whereas in Hashwehs proposal SMK is part of PCK. This author stated that PCK represents personal and private knowledge (p. 277). which is a collection of teacher pedagogical constructions. These are developed through experience and when a teacher tries to answer a set of questions to which [t]he teacher draws on many sources of knowledge for answering such questions. The most important of these sources are the other general categories of teacher knowledge and beliefsknowledge of subject matter, of students, pedagogy, assessment and other categories. (p. 278). So, in all these three models of PCK, subject matter knowledge is an important source of knowledge that should be considered when PCK is studied. Hashwehs PCK proposal is very similar to the one of Magnusson et al. However, the latter includes assessment, which is absent in Hashwehs proposal. Also, Hashweh considers SMK as part of PCK, whereas Magnusson et al. sees SMK as an influence on PCK. In the present research we decided to take Magnussons proposal of PCK as a starting point. We considered that this model gives a comprehensive view of the knowledge that science teachers need to have to teach subject matter effectively, that is, leading to student learning. In particular, we were interested to include teachers knowledge about assessment of student learning in our investigation, which plays an important role in the proposal of Magnusson et al. A lot of PCK studies are focused on secondary school, high school and pre-service teachers. Only few of them have taken university professors as their object of study (Goodnough, 2006; Major and Palmer, 2006; Padilla, et al., 2008). The necessity to study the pedagogical ideas and training of university professors was pointed out by Campanario (2002), who claimed that university teachers often have developed specific ideas and conceptions about how university teaching is, or should be. According to Campanario, these teachers usually do not have a strong pedagogical background; they are primarily researchers, and as such, they are experts in the subject they teach. When they have to teach, they often do this in the same way in which they were taught. In their paper about chemistry teachers knowledge base De Jong et al. (2002) remarked the importance to develop

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chemistry teachers SMK and PCK in an integrated manner, and this would be particularly important for university professors. Studies on teaching chemistry at the university level have focused on the following subjects: chemical demonstrations (Clermont, et al., 1994), physical and organic chemistry (Treagust et al., 2003; Bucat, 2004), chemistry laboratory (Hofstein et al., 2003, 2004; BondRobinson, 2005), amount of substance (Padilla, 2004; Padilla et al., 2008), and chemical reaction (Reyes and Garritz, 2006). The present study will focus on the teaching of quantum chemistry at university level.
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Research questions
In order to elicit PCK about quantum chemistry from university teachers, we set out the following research questions: 1. What is the content of the PCK components of experienced university teachers of quantum chemistry? (A. Orientation towards teaching science; B. Knowledge of science curricula; C. Knowledge of students understanding of science; D. Knowledge of assessment of scientific literacy.; E. Knowledge of instructional strategies) 2. What kind of connections can be found between these PCK components?

a. What do you do to help your students to understand this concept? b. When you do your class planning what kind of strategies do you use to catch students interest? (If teachers didnt mention something about the relationship between the concept and students daily life, question c was asked) c. Do you create a relationship among this topic and something related to students daily life? (If the answer was no: Do you think there is a way to make that link?) d. What kind of understanding of what a wave-particle duality means do you think your students could have (from a scientific point of view) after taking this course? Which do you think those ideas are? e. What kind of strategies do you use to check students understandings of this/the intended concept? f. Could you tell how wave-particle duality was developed in the history of science? Do you pay attention to this historical development in your lessons? The first author interviewed each teacher individually, in English, and the interviews (which lasted 30-90 minutes) were recorded, transcribed and analyzed.

Analysis
The analysis process followed a systematic procedure, which consisted of the following steps. First, the interviews were transcribed in full and the first author read the transcripts repeatedly to get an overview of the interviews. Second, each interview was broken into different fragments (from 36 to 94). Fragments consisted of one or several lines that concerned the same issue or topic. Next, to develop a coding scheme, we started with Magnussons model of PCK which consists of five components related to: orientations towards teaching science (A), teachers knowledge of science curriculum (B), teachers knowledge of students understanding of science (C), teachers knowledge of assessment in science (D), and teachers knowledge of instructional strategies (E) (see Fig. 1). In Magnussons model each component is divided into different subcomponents, for example, orientations have nine subcomponents, assessment just has two. For the purpose of this study, we selected those subcomponents that are predominant at university level1. Almost all of them are from Magnussons model and some others have been added. These subcomponents are described in detail in Table 1. After several iterations, Table 1 was developed as our coding scheme. This table was developed by the authors by interpreting and discussing the content of the fragments of each interview, and then comparing fragments from different interviews to identify similar issues, which were then labeled with the same code. In the next step, this code scheme was applied to all the interview data, that is, the interview fragments mentioned earlier. One first code analysis was made by the first author, and a second one was made by a research assistant who was not an expert in
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Method
Sample As we have said before, the main aim of this research is to study the PCK of university teachers, specifically those who teach quantum chemistry at the Bachelors level. For this purpose, we contacted ten teachers from different universities in the Netherlands. Six of them answered positively. These teachers have taught Quantum Chemistry at university level from 2 to 25 years and are experts in the subject. Almost all were men, there was just one woman. To preserve their anonymity we will use masculine pseudonymous. All of them teach very similar groups of students, from the first or second year of a chemistry degree course (chemistry engineering, chemistry, etc.). The groups consist of 25 to 30 students and just some of them have what they call lab work and workshops, that is, some classes where students could carry out quantum calculations and solve exercises and problems. Procedure We designed a set of questions related to basic concepts that are taught in quantum chemistry courses. These concepts are: atom model, wave-particle duality, and atomic orbital. The set of questions were related to components of the PCK model. The interview started with one question about the knowledge teachers have about students previous knowledge. As an example, we present below the questions that we asked about wave-particle duality: 1. What kind of understanding of what wave-particle duality means do you think your students could have before they take this course? How do you know that?
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PCK includes

Orientation to teaching Science

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Which shapes

Knowledge of science curricula Knowledge of assessment of scientific literacy Knowledge of students understanding of science Knowledge of instructional strategies

Fig. 1 Components of pedagogical content knowledge for science teaching. Model proposed by Magnusson et al., 1999.

Table 1 Components and subcomponents of PCK used in this research

Orientations toward teaching Science (A) Orientation Process Code Definition A1 Teacher introduces students to the thinking process employed by scientists. Example from interviews I do talk about quite a bit of the mysteries of quantum mechanics. I try to tell some historical anecdotes. I talk about the people of quantum mechanics, some of the excitement of the discoveries. I try to give them perspectives on how unusual this development has been and what a great achievement, and also I stress a lot that it is an unfinished theory. Of course, I provide them with a lot of exercises. So, actually they have to do calculations on paper to write on the wave functions, and the corresponding electron density, to solve a simple system such as a particle in a box. [Students have] to get used with wave function and to the probability density. I try to explain of what a particle is, [...] then I spend some time on the waves, which all we know, the diffraction of waves to deduce of these experiments. Then I focus on a couple of things that [show], OK you can have interference so they also interact with each other in a certain way. I try to make them curious, especially at the beginning. If we are talking about the first year freshmen course, I try to make them curious and I try to say things that cannot be true and then talk about that

Academic rigor

A2

Students are challenged with difficult problems and activities. Lab work and demonstrations show the relationship between concepts and phenomena.

Didactics

A3

Teacher presents information through lecture or discussion, and questions directed.

Conceptual change

A4

Students are pressed for their views about the world and consider the adequacy of alternative explanations. Teacher facilitates discussion and debates necessary to establish valid knowledge.

Activity-driven

A5

Students participate in hands-on activities used for We try to make the quantum world alive by a lot of paper and pencil verification or discovery. work and in the computer lab we visit a web site that is used to help students to visualize [models]

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Table 1 Continued Knowledge of science curriculum (B) Orientation Teachers knowledge of goals and objectives Code Definition B1 Teachers ideas of students goals to learn that subject Teachers goals and guidelines across topics Example from interviews If you do not understand this concept you cannot possible hope to understand chemical bonding. It is a key ingredient and I try they go to steps where we are on this map to work out our final goal. I have tried to out the whole course a kind of red line which I follow, [] I ask crossed references back two, three or four lectures ago to see if they have acquired that knowledge[] I try they go to steps where we are on this map to get our final goal. I think they heard about Bohrs model in high school.

B2

B3

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Teachers knowledge of specific curricular programs Knowledge of requirements for learning

B4

Students knowledge acquired in previous courses or what they should learn in this or the next courses. Knowledge of curriculum and materials related to the subject they teach and others related to this.

In the book there are some numbers of exercises in the back.... exercises [with a step by step explanation] that help to solve a problem, calculate something but there are also parts of questions which are there to check the concepts.

Knowledge of students understanding of science (C) C1 Prerequisite, abilities and skills to learn that concept and alternative conceptions Variations in students approaches or views Science concepts or topics that students find difficult to learn (abstract or lack any connection to students common experience) or nonintuitive. Teachers beliefs related to that knowledge that he/she assumes or believes that students have or dont; or that knowledge that teachers think students should learn. In essence, we dont spend too much time in doing complicated derivations, but of course we do emphasize that it is a key point you have to be able to do it. I try to make connections back to their models and try to outline what is not complete in the relational model. Once you are at the university and take quantum mechanics for the first time you really open this Pandoras box. It is a new world to them for most of them and you cannot expect them to reach a similar fast progression in understanding concept as they do it with for example classical mechanics I think they have some notions of general chemistry; in essence they have seen the atoms, they have seen the spherical harmonics, the shapes of them so they have some the wave concept of atomic orbital, what they mean

C2 Knowledge of areas of students difficulty C3

Beliefs about what students know or dont, or they should learn Knowledge of dimensions of science learning to assess Knowledge of methods of assessment Knowledge of subject-specific strategies Knowledge of topic-specific strategies

C4

Knowledge of assessment in Science (D) D1 Those concepts that are important or not to assess I dont think it is necessary to test the atomic model in such as sense at the exam

D2

What kind of strategies teachers use to assess I did test through exercises Ive given them the opportunity to prove that students understanding or those [ideas] that they they know it; of course I can not force them because in the exam you consider are not so good. cannot test everything Knowledge of instructional strategies (E) Strategies that are more general and could be used to teach almost any subject. (e.g. learning to cycle) Topic specific representations (e.g. illustrations, examples, models, analogies) Very often in the lecture I explain a concept and some practical results come up with them, and then I ask crossed references back two, three or four lectures ago to see if they have acquired that knowledge I try to use, as much as possible, visualization tools. We have been looking into graphical interface as a main tools that can help to visualize these concepts, delocalization, quantum particles, what does it mean to have a superposition, available states The combination of proper theoretical regard with visualization and computer lab can be a very positive strategy for interest them

E1

E2

E3

Topic specific activities (e.g. problems, demonstrations, simulations, or experiments)

quantum chemistry, but who specializes on education research methodology. To each fragment 1 to 4 codes were assigned, and the codes were compared and discussed until agreement was reached. In the next step, we computed the relative frequencies of each subcomponent per interview, assigning a value if subcomponents appeared once, twice or three times on specific fragments. The PRINCALS methodology was used to explore the relationships between different subcomponents for each teacher. PRINCALS is essentially the same as Principal Components Analysis in that it allows
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calculating loadings for variables as well as scores for individual objects or persons, both with respect to the same dimensions (Gifi, 1985, 1990). All statistical analyses were performed using SPSS software, version 14.1 [Note that in this version, PRINCALS is part of the optimal scaling techniques as Categorical Principal Components (CatPCA); see also SPSS Inc., 2004: chap. 3]. A data matrix was introduced into PRINCALS to reduce data and to identify relationships among subcomponents. It was decided to delete those subcomponents with low frequencies (< 3%), prior to PRINCALS introduction data. The
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a. Peter

b. Thomas

c. Matthew

d. Paul

e. Philip

f. Iacobus

Fig. 2 Teachers PCK relationships obtained from the PRINCALS analysis.

information retrieved from PRINCALS is basically one graph for each interview, where those subcomponents that appeared in the interview are shown as arrows. These arrows have two specific characteristics: first the longer they are, the better they fit in the general solution; second, the smaller the angle between them, the more interrelated

they are, which means that they have a high correlation. With this information we could make a specific analysis of each graph, and found clusters of two or more interrelated subcomponents that characterized a teachers PCK. Finally, results from each teacher were compared and discussed.

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Results
In Fig. 2, we show the graphs of every teacher from the PRINCALS analysis. Following this, we discuss each teachers case individually. Peter Peters interview was short, around 30 min, and the PCK ideas were not so abundant, as we can see in Table 2 (i.e. only 36 fragments). However, this teacher shows (see graph 2.a) a clear correlation among the following pairs of subcomponents: B3-C4, A2-D2, A3-E2 and A3-C3. The pair B3-C4 seems a quite logical combination, because B3 is related to what teachers know about what students have learned in their previous courses, and C4 is related to teachers beliefs about what students should know or should learn. Here is an example of what Peter said concerning this pair: I know what is, more or less, what is talked in high school (B3), but I assume that they have more or less the fake ideas that were taught in high school (C4). The next pair is A2-D2, where A2 is one of the orientations this teacher adopts. Peter related academic rigor, which means that he believes in teaching through different activities or problems that force students to think about the relationships between concepts and phenomena, to D2, which concerns the way he evaluates his students, in his case, by using of a lot of problems. The next pair is A3-E2 where A3 refers to the didactic orientation toward teaching, which emphasizes presenting information during lectures, and E2, which relates to topic-specific teaching activities (problems, demonstrations, simulations or experiments). The relationship between these two subcomponents is high, which means that despite Peter expressing the A3 orientation, in practice he seems to use many simulations, demonstrations or problems to promote students comprehension of scientific ideas. The other relationship that Peter is showing is A3-C3, which relates his didactic orientation with what he knows about concepts or ideas that students find difficult to learn. One example of this pair is: I look at the Hamiltonian. I look at the system and I say this is complicated (C3) with this electron interaction and I break up in simpler particle Hamiltonians (A3) they are hydrogen like This is how I come to the... how I teach the concept. In summary, Peter has rather traditional views of teaching and challenges students with problems and other activities. He is concerned about students previous ideas, especially what they learned at high schools, because these ideas are different from the accepted scientific models. Thomas The interview with Thomas was divided into 46 fragments. From the analysis we obtained the graph (2.b) where we got the principal pairs of subcomponents; the frequencies of these pairs are shown in Table 2. These data show three pairs of subcomponents that belong to the same component; for instance, two components that belong to the teachers knowledge of students understanding (C1-C4) have a very
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Table 2 Pairs related to each teacher and their frequencies of interrelation Peter Thomas Matthew A3-C3 2 C1-C4 7 A3-D2 5 A2-D2 2 C1-C4-B3 4 A2-E1 2 A3-E2 2 D1-D2 3 A2-E3 2 B3-C4 2 E2-E3 3 B3-C1 4 B4-C4 5 E1-E3 3 Paul A2-E3 7 B3-C1 4 B2-D1 3 C3-D2 2 Philip A3-C1 3 A2-E1-E3 4 A2-E3 3 B4-C1 3 B1-C3 2 E1-E3 5 E2-E3 4 Iacobous A3-E3 4 B3-C1 3 B4-C4 5

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good fit, and correlation, and high frequency. The same applies to two components that belong to assessment (D1D2) and to two that belong to instructional strategies (E2E3). In this research other teachers show this kind of relationship as well, but apparently they are not as important as in this case. What is interesting about Thomas is that his PCK doesnt show a clear relationship between subcomponents of different components. There is one cumulus here B3-C1-C4; however, B3 doesnt have a good fit, but has a good correlation and frequency. These three components are all related to students learning: knowledge about what students learned in previous courses (B3), knowledge about what is prerequisite to take the course (C1), and what a teacher thinks students should know or learn (C4). These components seem to be quite related, and Iacobous, Matthew, Paul and Thomas also mentioned the relationship B3-C1; however, Thomas was the only one with this cumulus (B3-C1-C4). In summary, Thomas doesnt seem to relate his ideas about student learning and understanding, assessment, or instructional strategies explicitly with each other, nor with his dominant orientation (A3, didactic). Matthew The interview of Matthew was divided into 72 fragments. After qualitative analysis prior to PRINCALS, graph (2.c) was obtained, which revealed at least six pairs of subcomponents which comply with at least two of three conditions to be considered: fit well in the whole solution, have a good correlation, or good frequency. These six pairs are also shown in Table 2. The first pair we found in Matthews interview is B4-C4. This pair concerns the relationship between Matthews knowledge about curriculum and materials (B4), and his beliefs about what students should or shouldnt know (C4). In this case, this pair has a very good correlation, a good frequency, but not such a good fit (i.e. rather short arrows). The following phrase about orbitals is an example of this: They all have seen them before in previous classes (B4). I think (C4) they know these strange shapes. I think (C4) they also know that there are core electrons and valence electrons In the phrase above Matthew is talking about some concepts that he thinks students have studied in previous courses, specifically General Chemistry, and thats the main reason he believes that students know something about it.

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The next pair was not observed in any other teacher: A3D2. A3 refers to teachers orientation, specifically the Didactic one. D2 concerns the kind of strategies used by the teacher to assess students understanding. In this case, Matthew talked about to assess (or to check) students understanding during the lecture by asking students about the concepts. In this way he could check if the concepts were being understood or not. At the same time, he never said that he would use a different strategy to make students comprehend the concepts. Instead, he just said that he tried to explain concepts in a different way, which could mean that with different words. The following phrase is an example: Sometimes you explain something (A3), and then you stop a while then you ask a question about it to check (D2), and some times you notice that they did not understand it at all. So, you have to start again and try to explain in a different way (A3). The next pair we found in this interview was B3-C1, a pair that appeared in Pauls interview as well. In Matthews case there was a good fit and frequency. The B3-C1 pair is formed by what we think are very close components, as we have said previously. The following is a clear example of what we are talking about: I think they heard about Bohr model in high school (B3). They also discuss the Bohr model, even a little bit of quantum mechanics very basic, so in that sense it is not entirely new when they come here (C1). In the analysis of Matthews interview appeared three further pairs of components that showed a good correlation (E1-E3), or a relatively good fit (A2-E3, A2-E1). These last two pairs were identified in Philips interview as well. First of all, there is a relationship between two subcomponents that belong to the same component, in this case E1 and E3. Both subcomponents are linked with the kind of strategies used by the teacher to make the subject more comprehensible to students. As can be seen in graph 2.c, these two subcomponents are also related to Matthews orientation to teaching, that is, Academic Rigor (A2). Matthew explained this relationship in the following quote: [They] have to calculate wavelengths and [] have particles serve by dots in a phosphorous screen (E3) [] for them at the beginning is not a big mystery until we really explain to them that this is really strange. We force them to think about it and then you see they get confused (A2). In summary, first of all, Matthew seems to have a didactic orientation (A3), emphasizing the importance of explaining subject matter and checking understanding. Also, he related his own beliefs about what students know (or not) in relation to his own knowledge about the curriculum. In addition, Matthew, like some of the other teachers, talked about academic rigor related to different strategies to improve students comprehension. Paul Pauls interview was the longest and most informative. We obtained 94 fragments to be classified. PRINCALS resulted

in figure (2.d), where we can see four important pairs of components. These are: A2-E3, B3-C1, B2-D1, and C3-D2. All these pairs fulfill at least two of the following conditions: good correlation (i.e. small angles), fit well in the whole solution (i.e. long arrows), and/or have a high frequency of interrelation (see Table 2). The first pair of components is A2-E3. These subcomponents are related to the orientation toward teaching (A2) and topic specific strategies (E3) (problems, demonstrations, etc.) that a teacher could use during his lecture. A2 is Academic Rigor, which means that students should be challenged to answer difficult problems and questions. We think that the relationship between these two components is quite clear, because in both students have to solve difficult problems to improve their understanding. An illustrative statement from the interview was: the combination of direct interaction with students, and providing them challenging exercises (A2, E3) and checking if they have understood the key concepts The second pair is B3-C1. This has a good correlation, relatively high frequency, and a good fit in the whole solution. This pair has, in fact, two components with related content: B3 that refers to students knowledge acquired in previous courses and C1 that addresses the prerequisite, abilities, skills and alternative conceptions that students could have. The connection between these subcomponents means that the teacher is aware of the previous curriculum and how this is related to the ideas that could be useful as learning tools to build the framework knowledge, but at the same time, the misconceptions that could be an obstacle to get a good learning process: Some [students] have mini term solar system in mind (C1, which concerns previous knowledge). I think that it is what basically they have from high school (B3). If they have any model atom, it is the nucleus as a sun with electrons as a planets running around in orbits (C1). The third pair is B2-D1, which has a good correlation and fit, but its frequency is slightly less than the others. It relates the teachers goals and guidelines across topics (B2) to the assessment process (D1), which in this case is the knowledge or ideas that the teacher considers important (or not) to evaluate. Finally, the last pair is C3-D2, where each arrow has very good fit, but the related frequencies are lower than for B2-D1. C3-D2 relates the knowledge that the teacher has about ideas or concepts that are difficult (C3) for students to the knowledge of methods of assessment (D2). In summary, Paul has a view of teaching that emphasizes challenging students to solve difficult problems. He is aware of previous ideas that students could have, as well as alternative ideas, and how these affects students learning. Paul is able to relate the goals of his course and his own ideas related to students difficulties, with his assessment strategies. Philip Philips interview was classified into 72 fragments that were analyzed in a qualitative way before the data matrix

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was introduced in the PRINCALS program. From this analysis we obtained the graph (2.e) where we got three clusters of interrelated subcomponents: A2-E3-E1, B4-C1, B1-C3. As stated before, the criterion for mentioning a cluster is that they should fit well in the solution (long arrow length) or have a good correlation (small angle), and a high frequency of occurring together in fragments in the interview (Table 2). In Philips case we found one cumulus of three interrelated subcomponents: A2-E1-E3. E1 and E3 refer to teaching strategies that are related to one orientation: academic rigor. The frequency of this cumulus is 4. The combination A2-E3 appeared in Pauls interview as well. This relation is quite consistent with what is being evaluated, because A2 reflects an orientation towards teaching focused on problem solving and lab work (Academic rigor), and E3 reflects the instructional strategies using principally problems, exercises, simulations, etc. Philip commented on this relationship during the interview as follows: They [students] have to show, on the blackboard, how to solve problems (E3), so every one can really contribute to this practical session, not just the teacher in front and solving the problem for them (A2) In addition, A2-E1 shows that lab work or solving problems could be used as general teaching strategies, as we can see in the sentence below where Philip is talking about these two components: I think that at very basic levels one needs to combine the traditional theoretical lecture also with computer lab, exercises (A2) the combination with visualization and computer lab can be a very positive strategy (E1) for their interest Another pair is formed by B4-C1, which has a very good correlation and fit. B4 concerns the teachers knowledge about curriculum and materials, and C1 shows the teachers knowledge about students prior knowledge and alternative conceptions. The relationship is illustrated in the following quote from Philips interview: I think mathematics should be taught at a good level at the very beginning in the first year (B4) in order to prepare the student also to deal with differential equations, imaginary object and matrices (C1). The last pair of interrelated subcomponents is B1-C3, which shows the relationship between teachers ideas about goals and what he knows about students difficulties, which permits teacher to choose strategies aimed to promote students comprehension of abstract ideas. In summary, Philips ideas about teaching focus on academic rigor. He considers various kinds of strategies that allow students, by active participation, to improve their comprehension of the subject. At the same time he is aware of students previous ideas and relates this to his own knowledge about the curriculum. Iacobous Iacobous interview was classified into 51 fragments that were analyzed in a qualitative way prior to performing

PRINCALS. From this analysis, graph (2.f) was obtained. Three pairs of interrelated subcomponents were identified; their frequencies are shown in Table 2. The one with the highest frequency is B4-C4. This same pair was found in Matthews interview with the same frequency. We think that it is quite logical that teachers beliefs about the knowledge that students should have (C4), but may not, is linked with the knowledge about curriculum and materials (B4). The next statement is an example of what Iacobous said about this relationship during the interview, when he was talking about atomic orbitals: They have learnt the concept already in the first year (B4). Im teaching in the second year and in the first year they already know it (C4). Actually, it is even called chemical bonding. They get it without quantum mechanics, basically. In the sentence above Iacobous is showing that he has knowledge about the curriculum and about the subjects that are related to the ones he is teaching. Besides, he is assuming that students have already learned this concept. The second pair is A3-E3 which relates the Didactic orientation to Topic specific activities as problems, demonstrations, simulations or experiments. In this case, Iacobous referred to different topic teaching strategies and he said that students should realize that all mathematical procedures, which are developed in class, are really the mathematical expression of those representations that they have visualized in previous courses as orbitals. Iacobous: they know the concept of atomic orbitals and they have seen all these balloons of the p, and the d, etcetera, yea! They feel quite familiar with the idea that there are atomic orbitals. I: they are quite familiar with the idea or with the visualization of what an atomic orbital is? Iacobous: yea! I think the visualization. OK, I told them that this comes from wave function (A3), one electron wave function or state function and then for the hydrogen atom I show them that they look like as the pictures they have seen (E3). The third pair is B3-C1, which was also found in the analysis of the interviews of Matthew, Paul and Thomas. One example of what Iacobous said about this is: they have heard about the Bohr model, they have heard about k, l, m shields, they even know about orbitals, s, p orbitals, hybridization (B3), so, you could call that the model that they bring to the course (C1) In this way, Iacobous related students knowledge acquired in previous courses to what he saw as alternative conceptions, that is, previously he had said that he did not discuss the Bohr model because his aim is that students would get the complete quantum mechanical treatment. In summary, Iacobous appeared to be a very particular teacher. One interesting thing that he used to do is make students think about some philosophical aspects related to the subject. He explained that this approach helps students to go further in what they can understand of what quantum chemistry is. Interestingly, he combines this deep level approach with a strong didactic orientation. It seems that he

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60 percentage of answers 50 40 30 20 10 0 A B C D E
PCK's general categories

Peter Thomas Matthew Paul Philiph Iacobous

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Fig. 3 Frequencies showed by teachers for general categories.

does not use models and visualizations, although they are referenced in his lectures. He also emphasized that students must know some concepts because he is aware that these are included in previous courses.

Discussion and conclusions

What is clear from the results of our study is, that although teachers have different pictures of their PCK, there are some parallels between them. All of them teach the same subject, and they consider this subject to be quite complicated for students. Consequently, these teachers seem to have almost identical views on what is important and what is unimportant. They have similar orientations towards teaching: didactics (A3) and academic rigor (A2); the first one because quantum chemistry is one of the most difficult subjects for students to comprehend, so teachers tend to think that thorough and careful explanation is required during lectures. The second orientation was prominent, because teachers consider it important that students learn to solve problems to help them understand the subject. Friedrichsen et al. (2011) consider both didactics and academic rigor as teacher-centered orientations. To us, the main difference between these two is that a didactic orientation concerns a very traditional way of teaching that pays very little attention to student learning. In academic rigor, however, teachers try to have their students solve some challenges, problems, and so on. Thus, in this orientation students are more active than in the didactic orientation. Looking at relationships between PCK elements, we found that some appeared in two or three of the teachers. This was the case for two pairs of subcomponents: B3-C1, which was evident in the interviews of Paul, Iacobous, Matthew and Thomas, and A2-E3 which appeared in Paul, Philiph and Matthews interviews. The most prominent orientations (A2; didactic, and A3; academic rigor) are often linked with knowledge of instructional strategies (E1, E2 and E3), or with knowledge of students understanding of science (C1, C3). The latter knowledge subcomponents
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(also including C2 and C4) are often related to knowledge of science curriculum (B1-B4). For example, Philip explained he splits up his course into three parts. The first part is the introductory course where he will explain new ideas and concepts, the second part is a workshop (one session per week) where he or his adjunct, together with students, solve problems that, initially, students had to work on by themselves. The third part is a lab session, which is held twice during the semester, one in the middle and one at the end. Another case of relating knowledge of student understanding to the structure of the curriculum was Paul. At the beginning of the course, he shows some videos to students, where some abstract ideas like wave-particle duality are explained in different ways. After showing the videos, Paul discussed with his students how they understood the ideas. A general view of teachers profile is showed in Fig. 3, where a general view is shown of the components (A, B, C, D, E) that are used most by teachers. From this graph it is apparent that assessment (D) is much less considered, compared to students understanding, curriculum and instructional strategies. When we look closer at the assessment component (D), it appears to be related to orientations (academic rigor and didactic), to knowledge of science curriculum (teachers goals and guidelines across topics) and to knowledge of students understanding of science (knowledge of students difficulties). Assessment is one of the most difficult aspects of education; however, in this case it didnt get much attention. It is possible that our teachers did not consider student learning in relation to students evaluation, because it is difficult to evaluate the understanding of quantum chemistry concepts, and it may require strategies that are different from the typical examinations. We think that it is important to conduct more research on the role of assessment, because many university teachers seem to think that assessment is simply about testing students knowledge through a final exam, that is, a traditional paper-and-pencil test; however, as we know, this is often not the best way to

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evaluate students comprehension. It could be interesting to develop some strategies that help students self-assessment of their learning, and help teachers to know how much and how meaningfully have the students been learning. In studies on PCK, relationships between components are often neglected (Friedrichsen et al., 2011). An exception is a recent paper by Kaya (2009) on relationships between PCK components of pre-service teachers related to ozone layer depletion. This paper is similar , but at the same time different from ours because of the following reasons: 1) the size and sort of sample is quite different: in Kayas paper the sample is of 216 pre-service science teachers, which means that they are students; in our case the sample is of 6 experienced quantum chemistry teachers; 2) The subject is completely different; in Kayas case it is ozone layer depletion, in ours it is quantum chemistry; 3) PCKs model used to data analysis is different; in his paper Kaya didnt support the model used, just said that it has four components that are used in his research; in our case we are using a modified version of the model of Magnusson et al. (1999); 4) The kind of analysis is different in the two cases; in Kayas it is using a quantitative analysis where PCCM (Pearson correlation coefficient MANOVA) is used to define correlations among components; in our case we are doing a double analysis, quantitative and qualitative. In the first, PRINCALS is used to find PCK components relationships; 5) In both cases, relationships between PCK components were found. In particular, relationships between knowledge of curriculum, knowledge of students learning difficulties, as well as instructional strategies and activities were found. Similarly to us, Kaya found low correlations between knowledge of assessment and the other components. Although Kaya did not consider science teaching orientations in his research; there were similar findings, despite the different topics and contexts of both studies.

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teachers have about their own teaching (cf. Shulman, 1986), we think a focus on teachers reasoning is justified. Finally, we didnt correlate the teachers PCK with the textbooks they used in their courses. It is possible, however, that these textbooks, which represent, to some degree, the PCK of experienced professors in this field, have influenced the PCK of the teachers in our sample. There are very few studies on teachers knowledge and beliefs about teaching a specific subject at university level, and none focuses on quantum chemistry. To explore this unknown territory, we thought that teachers who have been teaching this subject for many years must have developed PCK, and surely know about different strategies that may help students understand and appreciate the beauty of quantum chemistry, as Iacobous said. We found, however, that teachers struggle to make these ideas comprehensible to their students. The problem of students previous ideas and misconceptions, together with their lack of a strong background in mathematics, make the teaching of this subject difficult. Nevertheless, teachers make their best effort to improve students comprehension of quantum chemistry.

Acknowledgment
The authors wish to thank Ben Smit, MSc, and Pieter Kroonenberg, PhD, both of Leiden University, The Netherlands, for their assistance with the analysis of the data. The first author wishes to thank the Mexican Council of Science and Technology (CONACYT) for the research grant she was awarded to do her postdoctoral research in Leiden University.

Notes and References

1. The orientations considered by Magnusson are much more than those considered by us. Magnusson et al. (1999) distinguished nine different orientations toward teaching science i.e., process, academic rigor, didactic, conceptual change, activitydriven, discovery, project-based learning, inquiry and guided inquiry. In our first analysis we realized that some of these orientations did not appear in teachers answers, e.g. inquiry, guided inquiry or project-based learning. Instead, the orientations we found were more traditional: didactic, academic rigor, etc. Another important change concerns the definition of Knowledge of specific Curricular Programs: in Magnusson et al.s model this subcomponent is related with changes of the curriculum more than with the knowledge of the curriculum per se. In our study, we decided to formulate this component just in terms of the knowledge of materials and curriculum, relating the term materials mostly to books, or computational programs to solve problems and simulations. Abell S. K., (2007), Research on science teacher knowledge, in S. K. Abell and N. G. Lederman (eds.), Handbook of research on science education, Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Earlbaum, pp. 11051149. Adams P. E. and Krockover G. H., (1997), Beginning science teacher cognition and its origins and the preservice secondary science teacher program, J. Res. Sci. Teach., 34, 633-653. Ainley M., (2006), Connecting with learning: motivation, affect, and cognition in interest processes, Educ. Psychol. Rev., 18, 391-405. Bond-Robinson J., (2005), Identifying pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) in the chemistry laboratory, Chem. Educ. Res. Pract., 6, 83103.

Limitations and implications

This research has shown that it is possible to identify connections between PCK components related to teaching subject matter in a very specific way, which permit us to clearly capture and portray teachers PCK. For this purpose, it was vital to combine a qualitative analysis of the interview data with a quantitative technique. PRINCALS appeared to be a useful tool to visualize the strength and importance of the relationships that emerged from the interview data. In that way, it became possible to draw a profile of how each teacher views the teaching of his subject, and find inter-relationships between PCKs components. This helped us to characterize, for each teacher, his teaching profile and his kind of considerations about the teaching of this difficult subject. We are aware that our study has some limitations. First of all, the size of the sample is small. Also, we did not make use of class observations or students perceptions. These last are quite important, since it is known that students perceptions of teaching are often different from those of the teacher. However, since PCK concerns the knowledge
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