Abstract
ABSTRACT Research on teacher knowledge has been criticised for taking too narrow a view on expertise. Therefore, teacher competence frameworks have been developed that are closely related to professional demands. Their practice-oriented conceptualisations have led to innovative measures with situative demands. However, there is still a lack of knowledge on whether these frameworks are actually suited to map teacher growth. This study investigated whether two components of teacher competence, Action-related (AC) and Reflective Competence (RC), can be differentially fostered through specific interventions in early childhood mathematics education. We designed two professional development programmes with a focus on AC and RC and implemented them in a randomised controlled experiment with 170 teachers. Overall, we found that AC, RC, and professional knowledge were sensitive to interventions with different change profiles. Although our hypotheses were only partially supported, the results can be seen as evidence regarding the distinctness of competence and knowledge components.
Highlights
A response to the criticism that prevalent teacher knowledge research often takes a too narrow view on teacher expertise is the use of teacher professional competence frameworks
In this study we investigated an approach for modelling teacher competence with respect to its sensitivity to professional development, focussing on learning mathematics in early childhood education
We designed two closely aligned interventions with a focus on AC and Reflective Competence (RC) for early childhood teachers in order to investigate whether these two components of teacher competence can be differentially fostered through specific interventions
Summary
A response to the criticism that prevalent teacher knowledge research often takes a too narrow view on teacher expertise is the use of teacher professional competence frameworks (see Section 1.1). The teacher competence model of Lindmeier (2011), initially developed for secondary mathematics teachers, differentiates, for example, between the ininstructional and pre-/post-instructional demands of teaching a subject and is already. The model builds on innovative video-based and (partly) timed items, and first successful applications have already been reported (see Section 1.2) As these approaches are still evolving, sound knowledge of whether they fulfill the intended purposes is lacking, for example, concerning the tracing of effects of professional development (see Section 1.3). The present study addressed this gap and investigated whether two competence components related to different instructional demands can be differentially fostered through specific interventions in the context of early childhood education. Empirical research provided important findings on the structure of mathematics teachers’ knowledge, its development in teacher education, and international differences in initial teacher education.
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