UNPACKING PEDAGOGICAL CONTENT KNOWLEDGE AND CONTENT KNOWLEDGE: ASSESSING TECHNICAL VOCATIONAL EDUCATION TRAINING COLLEGE LECTURERS’ PEDAGOGICAL CONTENT KNOWLEDGE ON TOPIC SPECIFIC KNOWLEDGE

 

 

 Molefi Motsoeneng¹

¹Central University of Technology, Faculty of Humanities, School of Professional Studies, Free State, South Africa, smotsoen@cut.ac.za

 

 

Abstract

This paper focuses on the nature of entrepreneurship education  with particular regard to the pedagogical content knowledge and content knowledge of Technical Vocational Education and Training College lecturers in their teaching of entrepreneurship. The paper operationalises the participatory action research approach, in which a team is assembled to empower co-reseachers to find the solutions to their problems. The team consisted of two lecturers, two students, a learning facilitator, local entrepreneurs, and a parent. The results reveal that lecturers do not possess a deep knowledge of both pedagogical content knowledge, content knowledge and that the pedagogy used for teaching students is mostly outdated. Lecturers do not address students’ valid misconceptions of entrepreneurship . During lessons, they seem mostly unable to elucidate student entrepreneurship errors and so cannot present complete solutions. A deep understanding of entrepreneurship theory would thus seem to be a precondition for developing lecturers’ pedagogical content knowledge in the teaching of entrepreneurship education  concepts.

Keywords: Pedagogical Content knowledge; content knowledge; Entrepreneurship Education; Technical Vocational Education and Training College; Participatory Action Research