Teachers, turtles and gravity

Four cohorts of preservice science teachers were examined to determine their scientific content knowledge of gravity, and to look for evidence of emerging pedagogical content knowledge related to their classroom teaching of gravity in the senior secondary school curriculum. A fine-grained, semi-structured interview that made extensive use of media and computer-based probes, was used to collect detailed data about a narrow range of gravitational contexts relating to orbital motion and planetary gravity. Logo played a significant role in exploring the participants’ conceptual difficulties.