Pedagogical content knowledge in a planetarium

Research has shown that the added educational value of planetariums (for visiting school groups) only emerges if the planetarium educators incorporate educational theory-driven and research-confirmed practices of (formal) school science education into the planetarium learning environment. After all, planetarium educators, like teachers, set out learning goals they want to achieve with the students, guide the students through the content, and interact with the students. A framework that describes teachers’ knowledge needed for teaching specific content to specific groups in a specific setting is that of Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK). In this project we want to study the PCK of planetarium educators. In doing so we will test the refined consensus model of PCK (Carlson et al., 2019) in the particular setting of the planetarium and add to the recently proposed informal-science-educator PCK model (Busch et al., 2022). Developing a planetarium educator specific PCK will also allow for more targeted professional development.