Professional knowledge or motivation? Investigating the role of teachers’ expertise on the quality of technology-enhanced lesson plans

Abstract

In an expertise study with 94 mathematics teachers varying in their teaching experience (i.e., pre-service, induction, in-service teachers), we examined effects of teachers' professional knowledge and motivational beliefs on their ability to effectively integrate educational technology into their lesson plans. We assessed teachers' professional knowledge (i.e., content knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge, technological knowledge), and their motivational beliefs (i.e., self-efficacy, utility-value). Additionally, teachers developed a worked-out lesson plan for introducing the Pythagorean theorem to secondary students. They were explicitly instructed to refer to the integration of technology in their lesson plans. Experienced teachers considered more cognitively activating tasks in their lesson plans and exploited the potential of technology more than inexperienced teachers. Mediation analyses revealed that this effect was explained by teachers' perceived utility-value of educational technology but not by their professional knowledge. These findings suggest that teachers' motivational beliefs play a decisive role for effectively integrating technology in mathematics instruction.

Teachers’ Professional Competences in Self-Regulated Learning: An Approach to Integrate Teachers’ Competences as Self-Regulated Learners and as Agents of Self-Regulated Learning in a Holistic Manner

“…Even though Dignath-van Ewijk (2016) found teachers' selfefficacy regarding the promotion of SRL to have much higher predictive power for teachers' SRL instructional practices than their content knowledge or beliefs, our results indicate that a teacher's PCK-SRL is related to their teaching practice. However, when we look at studies from other domains (e.g., Math), PCK becomes of great importance for explaining teachers' instructional practices (e.g., Backfisch et al, 2020). This emphasizes that a clear distinction between CK-SRL and PCK-SRL should be made.…”

“…This relates to general frameworks of teachers' professional competences that emphasize the importance of teachers' knowledge, beliefs, and motivation for students' development of competences and their achievements (Shulman, 1987;Woolfolk Hoy et al, 2006;Kunter et al, 2013;Blömeke et al, 2015). Moreover, subject-related studies have pointed to the relevance of subject specificity within a teachers' professional development, concerning subject-related knowledge, beliefs and motivations, which greatly modulates the student development of subject-specific competences (Fauth et al, 2019;Backfisch et al, 2020). Against this background, competence models were adapted for different school-subjects (e.g., Kunter et al, 2013).…”

“…Researchers adapted this framework to subject-specific domains (e.g., mathematics, science). PCK is related to teachers' teaching practices as well as to students' domain-specific knowledge development and achievement (e.g., Förtsch et al, 2016;Fauth et al, 2019;Backfisch et al, 2020). Distinguishing between CK and PCK is also important when looking at teachers' professional knowledge in SRL.…”

“…Teachers' self-efficacy and expectancy-value constructs have been linked to teachers' desirable choices and use of instructional practices and encouragement of students' SRL (Chatzistamatiou et al, 2014;Dignath-van Ewijk, 2016). Higher self-efficacy about teaching is related to greater teaching effort, a higher value of teaching, higher openness to new teaching methods, more effective and innovative teaching behaviors, the tendency of implementing more student-centered classroom practices, and students' academic outcomes (e.g., Tschannen-Moran and Barr, 2004;Klassen and Tze, 2014;Zee and Koomen, 2016;Granziera and Perera, 2019;Backfisch et al, 2020).…”

“…However, the results from studies in other fields (e.g., Mathematics, Technology, English) reveal inconsistent relationships between motivational variables and knowledge. Some studies report no correlations between motivational variables, such as utility-value, self-efficacy, or teacher enthusiasm and teachers' CK or PCK (e.g., Fauth et al, 2019;Backfisch et al, 2020). Others noted differences in the correlational patterns between CK and motivational aspects, and between PCK and motivational aspects (e.g., Baier et al, 2019).…”