Family as a Topic of Instruction

Abstract

Family as a Topic of Instruction. – Cultural universals are domains of human existence that form part of everybody’s experience. These universals – e.g. family, housing, work, shopping – form substantive part of primary social studies curricula. Despite that, children need a skilled instruction helping them to elaborate these topics. We studied pre-service teachers’ content knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge of family. We wanted to know whether pre-service teachers rely on their everyday knowledge (including misconceptions) of family (folk theories) or use the knowledge gained in social science classes at the high school or at our university. We elicited pre-service teachers’ knowledge related to the topic of family using concept mapping. The quantitative content analysis of the obtained concepts was performed. We use our findings to discuss the usefulness of scientific perspective in pre-service teacher training and in planning the elementary social science curriculum and instruction.