Probing the amalgam: the relationship between science teachers’ content,pedagogical and pedagogical content knowledge

ABSTRACT

This Special Issue aims to present evidence about the relationships between content knowledge (CK), pedagogical knowledge (PK) and pedagogical content knowledge (PCK); the development of these types of knowledge in novice and experienced secondary science teachers; and how CK, PK and/or PCK impact students’ learning. Since Shulman’s introduction of PCK as the feature that distinguishes the teacher from the content expert, researchers have attempted to understand, delineate, assess and/or develop the construct in pre- and in-service teachers. Accordingly, empirical findings are presented that permit further discussion. Outcomes permit post-hoc examination of a recent, collectively described, ‘consensus’ model of PCK, identifying strengths and potential issues. As we will illustrate, the relationship between CK, PK and PCK is central to this; that is, probing the hypothesis of pedagogical content knowledge as an ‘amalgam’ of content and pedagogical knowledge.     

Structure and development of pre-service physics teachers’ professional knowledge

ABSTRACT

Teachers’ professional knowledge is considered one of the most important predictors of instructional quality. According to Shulman, such professional knowledge includes content, pedagogical content and pedagogical knowledge. Although recent research shed some light on the structure of the dimensions of professional knowledge, little is known how teacher education impacts pre-service physics teachers’ professional knowledge. In an effort to address this issue, we examined the content, pedagogical content and pedagogical knowledge of N?=?200 pre-service physics teachers enrolled in different years of teacher education at 12 major teacher education universities in Germany. We used structural equation modelling (1) to examine the relations amongst pre-service physics teachers’ content, pedagogical content and pedagogical knowledge, (2) to explore how the three kinds of knowledge and their relations differ across different stages of teacher education and (3) to identify factors affecting the level of each component of professional knowledge. Our findings suggest that content, pedagogical content and pedagogical knowledge represent distinct types of knowledge. Furthermore, our findings show that in the first years of professional education, pedagogical content knowledge is more closely related with general pedagogical knowledge while in later years, it is more closely related with content knowledge, suggesting that it develops from a general knowledge about teaching and learning into knowledge about the teaching and learning of specific content. Finally, beyond school achievement and years of enrolment as predictors, we find in particular the amount of classroom observations to have a positive impact on the professional knowledge of pre-service physics teachers.     

Fachspezifische Entscheidungen zum Auslandsstudium

In the context of economic globalization, international student mobility is considered increasingly important. However, due to data limitations, systematic studies to explain observed disciplinary differences are rare. Using expectancy-value-theory, we argue that this “discipline gap” in international student mobility can either be explained by a particular link to costs and/or to expected benefits. A factorial survey experiment administered to students of economics and engineering at a German university allows for a comparison of the separate consideration of both systematically varied costs and measured benefit expectations of studying abroad across both groups of students. The results reveal that disciplinary differences in the intention to study abroad are based on differently-weighted benefit potential, and not on differences in the evaluation of costs.     

Balancing the Local and the Global in Infrastructural Information Systems

A considerable body of literature has demonstrated-- empirically as well as analytically--that information systems need to be situated to the local context of use. Yet for infrastructural information systems that span numerous contexts spread out globally, this is literally prohibitive. For these systems to work, it is necessary to strike a balance between sensitiveness to local contexts and a need to standardize across contexts. We analyze a key element in this, namely, spelling out the (largely invisible) "costs" that the different actors pay to achieve working solutions. Empirically, we draw from an ongoing case study. We analyze the attempts of a maritime classification company with 5500 employees located in 300 sites in 100 countries to develop an infrastructural information system to support the surveying of ships globally. We elaborate design implications and concepts relevant to developing information infrastructures that also apply to the context of developing countries.     

The Study of Special Education in Köln

The article briefly outlines the post‐1945 development of the training of teachers for Special Education in Köln and reviews the current structure of courses. The link with research activities is also examined.

L'article expose en bref le dévéloppement, après 1945, de la formation des enseignants pour les handicapés à Cologne et fait la critique des programmes actuels. Il examine ensuite le lien existant entre la recherche et la pratique.     

Onset,development, and prevention of drinking and driving among adolescents

An etiological study was designed to investigate the onset and development of drinking and driving among adolescents who recently received their driver’s license. A theoretical framework, derived from Problem Behavior Theory, was applied in order to identify environmental, personality and behavioral factors associated with drinking and driving. Among students who reported that they had driven a motor vehicle in the past three months (N=1416), 33 percent of the males and 22 percent of the females (who averaged 16.7 years) reported “drinking at least two drinks on a single occasion prior to driving” at least once in the previous three months. Personality factors (including perceived ability to drive after drinking, tolerance of drinking and driving, and lack of self-confidence in avoiding drinking and driving situations), perceived environmental factors (perceived car availability and friends modelling of drinking and driving) and behavioral factors (riding with a drinking driver and marijuana use) accounted for a large proportion (49%) of the variance in reported drinking and driving. It is recommended that school-based, peer-led educational programs be designed which target young adolescents prior to the age at which legal driver license is obtained. The programs should be broad-based and consider drinking and driving within the larger context of drinking and driving related behaviors and traffic safety in general.     

FROM PISA TO EDUCATIONAL STANDARDS: THE IMPACT OF LARGE-SCALE ASSESSMENTS ON SCIENCE EDUCATION IN GERMANY

The German education system does not traditionally rely on standardized testing. However, when the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) study revealed an average performance of German students compared to other participating countries, a particular proportion of low-performing students, and remarkable disparities between the federal states, German policy makers decided for a major reform of the education system. A core piece of this reform was the introduction of National Education Standards. For science education, these standards were heavily influenced by the PISA results and its underlying framework. That is, with the standards, a paradigm shift took place from the German notion of Bildung towards the Anglo-American notion of literacy. With the introduction of these standards, a new field of empirical educational research was created: research on models of scientific literacy or competency models as a basis of benchmarking the standards. This article describes the German education system before PISA, summarizes the major findings from PISA, and describes how these findings informed the formulation of the performance standards for science education. It also details the measures undertaken to benchmark these standards. Finally, it provides insight into the issues with developing and benchmarking performance standards and points out future areas of research on evidence-based decision making in educational policy.     

Publishing,patenting, and standardization: Motives and barriers of scientists

In this paper, we analyze the motives and barriers of researchers to engage in standardization in comparison with publishing and patenting. We conduct a survey on 129 researchers at the Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing, one of Germany’s largest federal research institutes. The resultant dataset enables us to study not only the researchers’ motives and barriers but also the effect of those motives and barriers on the extent to which the respective activities are undertaken. We find that publishing constitutes a baseline activity. By contrast, patenting is driven by commercialization motives, and standardization is mainly fostered by intrinsic motivation. With respect to the barriers, we find that they are mostly inherent to the activity itself or the system in which it is performed. Finally, we discuss several options to develop a more integrative incentive system to exploit the possible synergies between standardization and publishing and patenting.