Below you find a step-by-step process to use the CoRe tool to articulate your PCK. You will find examples of completed CoRe tools across various disciplines and video snippets from exemplary educators showcasing their PCK-informed teaching practices in the PCK in Practice section.
The first step of using the CoRe tool is to identify the one ‘big idea’ (or topic) that you teach.
A ‘big idea’ is a central concept associated with a topic. For example, for the topic “Information flow in viruses”, a big idea might be “In viruses, gene expression and replication is dependent on host cells”. Developing big ideas for a topic is an important aspect of articulating your PCK because it reveals how you, as an educator, frame the topic. These big ideas highlight what you consider the most valuable concepts for students to grasp in order to fully conceptualise the topic. Identifying these ideas helps you distinguish between the more essential and less essential aspects of the topic, thereby clarifying the focus of both teaching and student learning.
Once you've identified the big idea, you then determine what is most important for students to understand about it. This process of unpacking your content knowledge allows you to concentrate on what truly matters within a content area. It also guides you in teaching with a clear purpose, helping both you and your students develop a deeper conceptual understanding of the subject.
It is not just a matter of describing what you are teaching, but just as importantly, why are you teaching this big idea, and why is it important for students to know about it?
The CoRe tool provides a scaffold for planning and designing instruction focused on students’ learning needs, particularly considering students’ prior knowledge, disciplinary backgrounds, learning challenges and knowledge gaps.
Anticipating students’ prior knowledge and experiences in relation to learning the big ideas may enable you to tailor teaching strategies accordingly. Finding out what students have previously learnt about big ideas can help you scaffold students’ learning to progressively build on their existing understanding.
Considering what you know about students’ thinking that influences your teaching of this idea is valuable for accommodating their diverse disciplinary backgrounds and experiences. Establishing connections between the big ideas, students’ prior knowledge, and their disciplinary backgrounds can support you to bridge the gap between different courses that students may undertake.
In this step, you can also identify common student learning challenges and misconceptions. By drawing on your past professional and teaching experiences, you will likely be able to foresee these challenges and select big ideas accordingly.
Based on your big ideas, you will now explore specific teaching strategies related to the teaching of that content idea, the rationale for choosing them, and their sources.
You can visit the Monash Teach HQ page to explore a range of teaching practices, inspiring examples from Monash educators, and teaching and learning blog posts. These resources can offer ideas on engaging teaching strategies.
Also explore for external resources. For example, if you teach chemistry, the ChemPCK website is a useful resource containing teaching strategies and insights from a large number of tertiary chemistry educators. You can search by topic that you are interested in to find specific strategies that have been successfully used by others.
Next, you will be prompted to reflect on the reasoning behind choosing specific teaching strategies and how they are intended to enhance student engagement and understanding. It is important to address student needs and prior knowledge, tailoring strategies to meet diverse needs and bridge learning gaps. This reflection ensures that the teaching practices are intentional, effective, and aligned with the learning objectives.
As you make your tacit knowledge explicit, it is valuable to identify the sources of the teaching strategies you employ. This step ensures that your methods are grounded in credible, evidence-based practices, while also providing you with a clear blueprint that you can revisit in the future. Reflect on whether these strategies were inspired by educational research, professional development sessions, collaboration with colleagues, feedback from students, curriculum guidelines, or your own personal experiences. By doing so, you reinforce the intentionality of your teaching and create a robust, reflective approach to continuous professional growth.
Assessment is a fundamental element of student learning and allows you to evaluate student achievement. The final CoRe prompt asks you to plan how you will assess students’ understanding or confusion of the big idea after teaching them. When addressing this, consider the following aspects:
The process of documenting your PCK using the CoRe tool can serve a dual purpose—enhancing both your own teaching through feedback and reflection and providing a departmental resource for sharing with colleagues to support the professional growth of new educators.
The CoRe tool can become a teaching guide, used to clearly articulate and record the reasoning behind your chosen pedagogical strategies. This guide will help you deeply reflect on the relationship between your teaching of specific content and your students’ learning outcomes.
You may like to share your documented CoRe with colleagues to provide valuable insights and strategies, supporting the professional growth of educators in your department. Incorporating feedback from peers and mentors on your CoRe documentation will support continuous improvement of your teaching methods.
Once you have completed an entire CoRe worksheet, actively review and reflect on your teaching activities that you have documented and delivered. By comparing actual teaching practices with intended outcomes, you can facilitate a cycle of quality improvement in your teaching.