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Abstract
The topic of ‘teacher professionalism’ is one of the most crucial ones in quality education research. It has a potential to generate results that could inform and hence enhance the practice in classrooms. Thus, research in this field needs reliable instruments to measure the professional knowledge of our teachers to be able to generate reliable results for our research problems. Not many instruments have been developed with regard to this topic. At the same time, an adequate validation of the instrument developed is often missing (Schilling & Hill, 2007). Hence, in a bigger project ProwiN (German acronym for professional knowledge of science teachers), test instruments for measuring science teachers’ pedagogical, pedagogical content and content knowledge (PK, PCK, and CK) were developed for the subjects biology, chemistry and physics. The present study tested the validity of some of these items which were used to measure the pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) of biology teachers. These items focused on measuring teachers’ professional knowledge by analyzing 1) teachers’ knowledge about student understanding (or lack of understanding) of several topics in biology and 2) knowledge about instructional strategies like the use of models or experiments. The content validity of these instruments was examined by think-aloud interviews with American and German Biology teachers ( N =11). This study shows a high content validity for these items. Furthermore, this paper demonstrates the scope for adapting the conceptual framework of these items to measure biology teachers’ PCK in other countries.
Highlights
In research about professional knowledge, there is broad agreement that teachers‘ domain-specific knowledge is most important for high-quality instruction (Krauss, Baumert, & Blum, 2008)
This paper demonstrates the scope for adapting the conceptual framework of these items to measure biology teachers‘ pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) in other countries
The main aim of researchers has usually been to identify the type of PCK that is necessary for high quality instruction and about the way it correlates with teachers‘ performance in the classrooms (Park & Chen, 2012)
Summary
In research about professional knowledge, there is broad agreement that teachers‘ domain-specific knowledge is most important for high-quality instruction (Krauss, Baumert, & Blum, 2008). CK, PCK, and pedagogical knowledge (PK) are considered to be the main categories of teachers‘ professional knowledge (Baumert et al, 2010). PCK is the one which describes the teachers‘ expertise in making the content comprehensible to students. It is often seen as the most specific type of knowledge for teachers and this work focuses on biology teachers‘ PCK. The main aim of researchers has usually been to identify the type of PCK that is necessary for high quality instruction and about the way it correlates with teachers‘ performance in the classrooms (Park & Chen, 2012)
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