Developing and evaluating a paper-and-pencil test to assess components of physics teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge

Abstract

Teachers' professional knowledge is assumed to be a key variable for effective teaching. As teacher education has the goal to enhance professional knowledge of current and future teachers, this knowledge should be described and assessed. Nevertheless, only a limited number of studies quantitatively measures physics teachers' professional knowledge. The study reported in this paper was part of a bigger project with the broader goal of understanding teacher professional knowledge. We designed a test instrument to assess the professional knowledge of physics teachers (N = 186) in the dimensions of content knowledge (CK), pedagogical content knowledge (PCK), and pedagogical knowledge (PK). A model describing the relationships between these three dimensions of professional knowledge was created to inform the design of the tests used to measure CK, PCK, and PK. In this paper, we describe the model with particular emphasis on the PCK part, and the subsequent PCK test development and its implementation in detail. We report different approaches to evaluate the PCK test, including the description of content validity, the examination of the internal structure of professional knowledge, and the analysis of construct validity by testing teachers across different school subjects, teachers from different school types, pre-service teachers, and physicists. Our findings demonstrate that our PCK test results could distinguish physics teachers from the other groups tested. The PCK test results could not be explained by teachers' CK or PK, cognitive abilities, computational skills, or science knowledge. ARTICLE HISTORY

Probing the amalgam: the relationship between science teachers’ content, pedagogical and pedagogical content knowledge

“…ProwiN conceptualised PCK in line with Magnusson et al's (1999) four components. Findings corroborate those of COACTIV, in that CK, PCK and PK represent distinct but correlated knowledge bases for biology (Jüttner & Neuhaus, 2012;Großschedl, Mahler, Kleickmann, & Harms, 2014), chemistry (Tepner & Dollny, 2014) and physics teachers (Kirschner, Borowski, Fischer, Gess-Newsome, & von Aufschnaiter, 2016). Further, Riese and Reinhold (2010) confirmed that pre-service physics teachers' CK, PCK and PK are distinct, strongly correlated knowledge bases These two lines of research generate similar insights into PCK, despite adopting different models for the construct.…”

Investigating the relationship between pre‐service physics teachers' professional knowledge, self‐concept, and interest

“…As subject‐specific knowledge bases, CK and PCK are deeply intertwined and codependent to such a degree that teachers do not even explicitly distinguish between them when they are articulating the knowledge they use for teaching (Marks, ). Researchers have examined the correlation between CK and PCK as well as PK for different subjects and topics, using large‐scale data sets and structural equation modeling (SEM; Großschedl, Harms, Kleickmann, & Glowinski, ; Kirschner et al, ; Krauss, Brunner, et al, ; Sorge et al, ). These studies provide evidence that CK and PCK, indeed, represent distinct but related knowledge bases for pre‐service teachers with medium to high correlations (Großschedl et al, –– r = 0.68; Kirschner et al, –– r = 0.52; Sorge et al, –– r = 0.78).…”

“…Researchers have examined the correlation between CK and PCK as well as PK for different subjects and topics, using large‐scale data sets and structural equation modeling (SEM; Großschedl, Harms, Kleickmann, & Glowinski, ; Kirschner et al, ; Krauss, Brunner, et al, ; Sorge et al, ). These studies provide evidence that CK and PCK, indeed, represent distinct but related knowledge bases for pre‐service teachers with medium to high correlations (Großschedl et al, –– r = 0.68; Kirschner et al, –– r = 0.52; Sorge et al, –– r = 0.78). Both CK and PCK were also found to be more deeply intertwined for expert teachers (Krauss, Brunner, et al, ; Sorge et al, ).…”

“…Both CK and PCK were also found to be more deeply intertwined for expert teachers (Krauss, Brunner, et al, ; Sorge et al, ). The correlations with PK were smaller compared to the correlations between CK and PCK (CK/PCK: Großschedl et al, –– r = 0.11/0.35; Kirschner et al, –– r = 0.04/0.23; Sorge et al, –– r = 0.54/0.81) Beyond correlational studies, several case studies also underline the importance of CK for the development of PCK (Kind, ). van Driel, de Jong, and Verloop (), for example, argue that a profound CK represents the foundation to transform such knowledge for instruction.…”

“…2 | THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 2.1 | Professional knowledge Shulman (1987) originally proposed seven knowledge bases a teacher needs in order to create quality instruction: (i) CK, (ii) PCK, (iii) (general) pedagogical knowledge (PK), (iv) curriculum knowledge, (v) knowledge of learners and their characteristics, (vi) knowledge of educational context, and (vii) knowledge of educational ends, purposes, and values. The first three of these knowledge bases, CK, PCK, and PK, are presently widely considered to form the core of teachers' professional knowledge (Grossman, 1990;Kirschner, Borowski, Fischer, Gess-Newsome, & von Aufschnaiter, 2016;van Driel et al, 2014). Among these knowledge bases, CK represents the knowledge of the subject matter; that is, knowledge about the academic content of the respective discipline, how this content is arranged into topics as well as how new knowledge within the discipline is constructed (Gess-Newsome, 2015;Shulman, 1986).…”