Mathematics Content Knowledge and Pedagogical Content Knowledge

Teachers’ knowledge is a key factor to students’ achievement. One could question what this teachers’ knowledge comprises of content knowledge or pedagogical content knowledge or both. Whether acquiring Mathematics content knowledge alone adequately prepares prospective Mathematics teachers for teaching mathematics. Specifically, does the mastery in arithmetic, algebra, geometry, trigonometry, calculus etc. prepare future teachers to be highly competent to teach students or just acquiring pedagogical knowledge alone adequately prepares prospective Mathematics teachers for teaching mathematic. In the 1980’s, Lee Shulman and his colleagues coined a new term “pedagogical content knowledge” to answer these questions and categorized teacher’s knowledge in seven categories and this give a start to the new debate which one is more better content knowledge or pedagogical content knowledge. This paper is an attempt to define and elaborate the difference and relationship between these two terms Mathematics content knowledge or Mathematics pedagogical content knowledge to make them more understandable to the Mathematics teachers.