The technique of probing acceptance as a tool for teachers' professional development: A PCK study

Abstract

This article presents a study that examined an innovative short‐term program (two sessions of 3 hr each) for the professional development of teachers. The program design is based on the technique of probing acceptance, which is aimed at investigating student learning processes. It relies on students' evaluation, paraphrasing, and adaptation of information presented during a one‐on‐one interview with defined student‐centered interview phases. During the professional development program, teachers were introduced to a novel learning unit that focuses on the subatomic structure of matter. In addition, the teachers were instructed in how to use the technique of probing acceptance during one‐on‐one interviews to evaluate the concepts of the unit. The rationale of the professional development program is that the preparation and execution of, and reflection on the one‐on‐one interviews based on the technique of probing acceptance should have an impact on dimensions of teachers' pedagogical content knowledge (PCK). Four teachers from one Austrian high school participated in this exploratory study, and each teacher conducted two one‐on‐one interviews with two different grade‐6 students. Postintervention interviews were conducted with all the teachers to document the potential influences on the teachers' PCK. The interviews were transcribed word for word, and a category‐based content analysis was applied to the transcripts. Our results indicate that during the professional development program, all the teachers revisited their existing knowledge about the subatomic structure of matter and left with an enhanced PCK, especially regarding their knowledge of learners and of instructional strategies. Overall, we show the technique of probing acceptance to be a promising tool for short‐term professional development programs, and we suggest that our findings have implications for both professional development designers and educators.

Science Teachers’ Conceptions of Atomic Models

“…These findings corroborate the fact that in all current working conceptualisations of Shulman's pedagogical content knowledge (PCK), teachers' knowledge of learners and their knowledge of instructional strategies are listed as distinctive dimensions (Park & Oliver, 2008;Wiener et al, 2018). Moreover, they highlight the notion that teachers are one of the essential factors in the science classroom and that their values and beliefs play a crucial role in the educational process (Anderson & Helms, 2001).…”

Quantenoptik an Schulen. Studie im Mixed-Methods Design zur Evaluation des Erlanger Unterrichtskonzepts zur Quantenoptik

“…Bekannt ist die Methode der Akzeptanzbefragung auch unter dem Begriff "Teaching Experiments", wie zum Beispiel bei [36,196,102]. In vielen Bereichen der didaktischen Forschung -nicht nur in der Physik -wurden Akzeptanzbefragungen zur Entwicklung von Unterrichtsansätzen eingesetzt [35,72,124,218,227], aber auch für andere Forschungsbereiche, zum Beispiel zur Erhebung von pädagogischem Wissen von Physiklehrkräften [219].…”

Setting empirically informed content knowledge policy benchmarks for physical science teaching

“…SMK is derived from various learning environments related to different ways of acquiring knowledge that changes over time. For example, in analyzing recent (i.e., January 2014 to September 2019) published research articles from key science education journals (i.e., Journal of Research in Science Teaching , Journal of Science Teacher Education , and Science Education ) we found that SMK has been studied from the perspective of in‐service teachers' professional development (Ogodo, 2019; Wiener et al, 2018), and elementary teachers' SMK has been studied more than that of secondary teachers (Donna & Hick, 2017; Nixon et al, 2019). Also, SMK is differentiated from content knowledge (CK) when referring to content knowledge in general outside the United States (Kulgemeyer & Riese, 2018; Großschedl, Harms, Kleickmann & Glowinski, 2015).…”