Abstract:
Biology education in South Africa faces challenges, as matric students continue to underperform.
Diagnostic reports attribute this issue not only to teacher knowledge but also to students' limited
comprehension of biology terminology. This study aimed to investigate the pedagogical approaches used by
biology teacher educators in addressing terminology during their content module lectures and to suggest ways
to enhance the development of pedagogical scientific language knowledge among pre-service and in-service
biology teachers. Four biology teacher educators were observed teaching various topics in their content
modules. These observations were transformed into vignettes and analysed inductively to uncover different
methods of addressing biology terminology. The findings revealed that educators utilized diverse pedagogical
approaches, such as representations, to address terminology effectively. This study emphasizes how these
pedagogical approaches in initial teacher education programs can be optimized, offering recommendations
for equipping both pre-service and in-service teachers with essential pedagogical scientific language
knowledge.
