Development and Validation of an Instrument to Measure Upper-Secondary School Science Teachers’ Perceived Practical Knowledge About Practical Work

Abstract

Teachers’ practical knowledge is closely related to teaching practice. The purpose of this research was to develop an instrument for assessing upper-secondary school science teachers’ perceived practical knowledge about practical work. The development of this instrument was based on five components in the conceptual framework of PCK about practical work: orientations of practical work, knowledge of curriculum materials in practical work, knowledge of students in practical work, knowledge of educational strategies for practical work, and knowledge of assessment in practical work. After the questionnaire was developed, 636 Chinese upper-secondary school science teachers participated in this research voluntarily. The results from exploratory factor analysis, correlation analysis and confirmatory factor analysis provided sufficient evidence for the construct validity of instrument. The high Cronbach coefficient indicated that the instrument had good internal consistency reliability. Finally, an instrument with six factors and 25 items was documented. The instrument would benefit science teacher educators and researchers. Keywords: instrument validation, pedagogical content knowledge, perceived knowledge, practical work

Design and validation of an instrument to determine the relationship between pedagogical content knowledge and practical work in science instruction

“…Furthermore, it indicates that the questionnaire can help to measure the perceptions of PCK elements and their incidence in the design, implementation, and evaluation of practical work in science teachers. This consistency value is comparable to the obtained in other studies conducted for the measurement of PCK elements in science teachers (Chen & Chen, 2021;Chen et al, 2022;Irmak & Yilmaz Tuzun, 2019). The aforementioned comments have been presented an original validated instrument that allows identifying the perceptions of science teachers about the components of PCK and its relationship with the design, implementation and evaluation of practical work in science.…”

“…Two phases were implemented for the questionnaire design: Phase I was determined by selecting information in which the review and analysis of inputs previously used by another research were carried out. For this purpose, the contributions made by Chen and Chen (2021), Chen et al (2022), Fan (2014), and Wei and Liu (2018) were considered. However, there was only a partial answer to the perception of PCK elements and their incidence in the design, implementation, and evaluation of practical work in science; therefore, the decision was made to design a new instrument.…”

“…The orientations shaped his knowledge of his students' learning, and the context significantly influenced his PCK. On the other hand, instruments have been designed, validated and implemented in which science teachers' perceptions have been characterized, firstly on the sources of PCK in teaching with practical work (Chen & Chen, 2021), and secondly on teachers' practical knowledge of practical work (Chen et al, 2022). Despite these reports of evidence of PCK elements in practical work, it should be noted that these reports have focused on a specific area (China).…”

Desarrollo profesional docente sobre el conocimiento pedagógico del contenido en profesores de ciencias: una revisión sistemática de la literatura

“…En este aspecto, es necesaria la generación de procesos de enseñanza y aprendizaje para dar un salto de calidad en los procesos de formación de los docentes y de alfabetización científica. La validación de instrumentos permite dar un punto de partida en el desarrollo de los TPD (Chen et al, 2022). En los insumos generados se busca el avance de la enseñanza de temas propios de la ciencia, como lo específico de la enseñanza de los conceptos de evolución (Rodríguez-Becerra et al, 2020) y de estequiometría (Malcolm et al, 2019), en donde se evalúan los componentes del PCK del tema específico (Mavhunga, 2016), identificando cómo se aborda el currículo, el conocimiento del estudiante y el conocimiento de estrategias y de representaciones, además de auscultar la ideas de enseñanza de los docentes alrededor de los contenidos, en el que los docentes exponen carencias de la comprensión de los conceptos y, por ende, hay escasa visión de las grandes ideas del contenido, lo que tiene como resultado dificultades en los aprendizajes de los estudiantes.…”