Thilo Kleickmann

Teachers' Content Knowledge and Pedagogical Content Knowledge: The Role of Structural Differences in Teacher Education

Pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) and content knowledge (CK) are key components of teacher competence that affect student progress. However, little is known about how teacher education affects the development of CK and PCK. To address this question, our research group constructed tests to directly assess mathematics teachers’ CK and PCK. Based on these tests, we compared the PCK and CK of four groups of mathematics teachers at different points in their teaching careers in Germany. Confirmatory factor analyses showed that PCK and CK measurement was satisfactorily invariant across the teacher populations considered. As expected, the largest differences in CK and PCK were found between the beginning and the end of initial teacher education. Differences in the structures of teacher education were reasonably well reflected in participants’ CK and PCK.

Content-Related Knowledge of Biology Teachers from Secondary Schools: Structure and learning opportunities

Teachers’ content-related knowledge is a key factor influencing the learning progress of students. Different models of content-related knowledge have been proposed by educational researchers; most of them take into account three categories: content knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge, and curricular knowledge. As there is no consensus about the empirical separability (i.e. empirical structure) of content-related knowledge yet, a total of 134 biology teachers from secondary schools completed three tests which were to capture each of the three categories of content-related knowledge. The empirical structure of content-related knowledge was analyzed by Rasch analysis, which suggests content-related knowledge to be composed of (1) content knowledge, (2) pedagogical content knowledge, and (3) curricular knowledge. Pedagogical content knowledge and curricular knowledge are highly related (rlatent = .70). The latent correlations between content knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge (rlatent = .48)—and curricular knowledge, respectively (rlatent = .35)—are moderate to low (all ps < .001). Beyond the empirical structure of content-related knowledge, different learning opportunities for teachers were investigated with regard to their relationship to content knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge, and curricular knowledge acquisition. Our results show that an in-depth training in teacher education, professional development, and teacher self-study are positively related to particular categories of content-related knowledge. Furthermore, our results indicate that teaching experience is negatively related to curricular knowledge, compared to no significant relationship with content knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge.

Learning at University

Teachers’ professional knowledge, consisting of content knowledge (CK), pedagogical content knowledge (PCK), and pedagogical/psychological knowledge (PPK), is considered to be a core component of their competence. CK and PCK have already been shown to impact instructional practice and student outcomes. However, the question of how different teacher education programs impact the development of professional knowledge has not yet been satisfactorily investigated. Two cross-sectional studies with German preservice mathematics teachers were conducted to address this question. First, two groups of preservice teachers who had completed their university-based training, but in teacher education programs offering differing amounts of learning opportunities to build CK and PPK, were compared. Second, preservice teachers who did not attend the university-based phase of teacher education (late-entry teachers) were compared with preservice teachers who had taken the traditional route. The results support the hypothesis that structural differences in teacher education in terms of the amount of learning opportunities available for candidates to develop CK, PCK, and PPK are reflected in their scores on the respective COACTIV tests.

Mathematics teachers' beliefs

Teacher beliefs are thought to play a decisive role in the provision of classroom instruction (Richardson. Handbook of research on teacher education. Macmillan, New York, pp 102–106, 1996). This chapter investigates mathematics teachers’ beliefs about the nature of knowledge (epistemological beliefs) and about mathematics teaching and learning. To this end, 328 mathematics teachers from the COACTIV study were administered 44 Likert items tapping their professional beliefs. Confirmatory factor analyses revealed that epistemological beliefs and beliefs about mathematics teaching and learning tend to co-occur into two characteristic, and negatively correlated, patterns of beliefs: a transmissive orientation and a constructivist orientation. The results of multilevel structural equation modeling confirmed the relevance of teacher beliefs for instructional practice and student learning outcomes: Constructivist beliefs were positively related to instructional quality and student achievement, whereas the potential for cognitive activation mediated the relationship between teacher beliefs and students’ achievement. Tentative implications for practice are drawn in the Discussion, followed by an outlook on two other aspects of teacher beliefs investigated in COACTIV: beliefs about the role of the teacher and beliefs about the cultural diversity of the student population.

The Development of Teachers’ Professional Competence

This chapter offers a theoretical overview of the development of teachers’ professional competence. Drawing on the literature on teacher quality and teacher education, it discusses two diverging perspectives on the development of teachers’ professional knowledge and skills, namely, the “individual aptitude” approach and the “professional qualification” approach. It then presents a theoretical model that integrates various theoretical approaches that have been used to explain the emergence of interindividual differences in teacher competence. Based on empirical evidence, this model predicts that teachers’ professional competence develops through the active uptake of various learning opportunities and that individual characteristics influence the degree to which teachers utilize these learning opportunities. Moreover, the model assumes that the provision of learning opportunities is dependent on certain contextual variables, such as the education system or school-specific characteristics. This model of the determinants and consequences of professional competence provides a comprehensive theoretical framework for the empirical studies presented in the subsequent chapters.

Teacher Knowledge Experiment: Conditions of the Development of Pedagogical Content Knowledge

Pedagogical content knowledge (PCK)—that is, knowledge necessary to make subject matter accessible to students—is considered to be a key component of teacher competence. Thus, how teachers develop PCK is an important issue for educational research and practice. Our study aimed at investigating the conditions of development of PCK, and especially at testing competing assumptions about the role of prior content knowledge (CK) and prior pedagogical knowledge (PK) for PCK development. We targeted three assumptions: (1) CK and PK amalgamate, (2) CK is a necessary condition and facilitates PCK development, and (3) CK is a sufficient condition for teachers’ PCK development. One hundred German pre-service elementary teachers participated in a randomized controlled trial. Participants’ prior knowledge was manipulated through five courses, constituting three experimental conditions and two controls. In this chapter, we report on the conceptualization of the treatments, and provide a detailed analysis of our knowledge measures. We further give an overview of the initial, preliminary results of the experiment. The findings of our study may have important implications for the discussion of how PCK can best be fostered in teacher education.

Können Lehrerfortbildungen einen Beitrag zur Förderung naturwissenschaftlichen Verständnisses bei Schülerinnen und Schülern leisten

In einer im Rahmen des DFG-Schwerpunktprogramms „BiQua“ (Die Bildungsqualitat von Schule) geforderten Studie verfolgen wir die Zielsetzungen, Auswirkungen verschiedener Fortbildungskonzepte im Bereich des naturwissenschaftsbezogenen Sachunterrichts auf Aspekte des professionellen Wissens von Lehrkraften (insb. Vorstellungen zum Lehren und Lemen) sowie auf motivationale und selbstbezogene Variablen seitens der Lehrkrafle zu untersuchen und auserdem Zusammenhangen des professionellen Wissens von Lehrkraften mit deren Unterrichtshandeln und mit Zielkriterien auf Schulerebene nachzugehen.

Teacher knowledge experiment: Testing mechanisms underlying the formation of preservice elementary school teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge concerning fractions and fractional arithmetic.

Pedagogical content knowledge forms the core of teachers’ professional knowledge; it refers to knowledge about making subject matter accessible to students. Thus, the formation of pedagogical content knowledge constitutes a crucial issue for educational research and practice. We investigated the contributions of content knowledge and pedagogical knowledge to the formation of pedagogical content knowledge about fractions and fractional arithmetic in 6th grade mathematics in a between-participants study with 100 German preservice teachers. The three experimental and two control groups received 7 hr of intervention spread out over two days. We assessed participants’ pedagogical content knowledge before intervention, between the two days, after intervention, as well as at 6-week follow-up. The control groups exclusively received instruction on either pedagogical knowledge or pedagogical content knowledge; each of the experimental groups embodied a specific hypothesis about the formation of pedagogical content knowledge. Providing support for a mechanism of amalgamation, a combination of instruction on content knowledge and pedagogical knowledge produced small but statistically significant growth in pedagogical content knowledge. Similarly, instruction on content knowledge exclusively was sufficient to cause small but statistically significant growth in pedagogical content knowledge. Prior instruction on content knowledge did not facilitate learning from instruction on pedagogical content knowledge. Nevertheless, direct instruction on pedagogical content knowledge caused medium and statistically significant growth in pedagogical content knowledge.

Science-P I: Modeling Conceptual Understanding in Primary School

In the Science-P project (Science Competency in Primary School), we aimed at modeling scientific literacy in two dimensions—scientific reasoning and conceptual understanding—to describe science learning in primary school. The present chapter focuses on conceptual understanding exemplified by two content areas: floating and sinking (FS) and evaporation and condensation (EC). Drawing on results from conceptual change research in developmental psychology and science education, we devised a model with three hierarchically ordered levels of understanding—naive, intermediate and scientifically advanced—as the foundation of item and test construction. The two content areas engendered a two-dimensional structure in our test instrument. A validation study underscored that responses to our paper-pencil items were systematically related to responses obtained in interviews. Our test instrument was used to capture the development of primary school students’ conceptual understanding from second to fourth grade, in both a cross-sectional and a longitudinal study. For cross-sectional data, students’ proficiency in scientific reasoning was found to predict their conceptual understanding. In future analyses, we will test this finding with our longitudinal data.

Instruction and Students’ Declining Interest in Science An Analysis of German Fourth- and Sixth-Grade Classrooms

Students’ interest in science declines substantially in the transition from elementary to secondary education. Using students’ ratings of their instruction on the topic of evaporation and condensation, we examined if changes in instructional practices accounted for differences in situational interest in science instruction and enduring individual interest in science between elementary and secondary school classrooms. Multilevel regression analyses were conducted for a sample of 60 fourth- and 54 sixth-grade classrooms. The use of student experiments, the elicitation of student explanations, and lack of clarity accounted to varying degrees for disparities in science interest between grade levels. The impact of instructional practices on individual interest was mediated by situational interest. This corroborated predictions of the person-object theory of interest.