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 (r_latent?=?.70). The latent correlations between content knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge (r_latent?=?.48)—and curricular knowledge, respectively (r_latent?=?.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.     

Word length and word frequency affect eye movements in dyslexic children reading in a regular (German) orthography

We combined independently the word length and word frequency to examine if the difficulty of reading material affects eye movements in readers of German, which has high orthographic regularity, comparing the outcome with previous findings available in other languages. Sixteen carefully selected German-speaking dyslexic children (mean age, 9.5 years) and 16 age-matched controls read aloud four lists, each comprising ten unrelated words. The lists varied orthogonally in word length and word frequency: high-frequency, short; high-frequency, long; low-frequency, short; low-frequency, long. Eye movements were measured using a scanning laser ophthalmoscope (SLO). In dyslexic children, fixation durations and the number of saccades increased both with word length and word frequency. The percentage of regressions was only increased for low-frequency words. Most of these effects were qualitatively similar in the two groups, but stronger in dyslexic children, pointing to a deficient higher-level word processing, especially phonological deficit. The results indicate that reading eye movements in German children are modulated by the degree of difficulty, and orthographic regularity of the language can determine the nature of modulation. The findings suggest that, similar to Italian but unlike English readers, German children prefer indirect sub-lexical strategy of grapheme-phoneme conversion.     

Students’ Energy Concepts at the Transition Between Primary and Secondary School

Energy is considered both a core idea and a crosscutting concept in science education. A thorough understanding of the energy concept is thought to help students learn about other (related) concepts within and across science subjects, thereby fostering scientific literacy. This study investigates students’ progression in understanding the energy concept in biological contexts at the transition from primary to lower secondary school by employing a quantitative, cross-sectional study in grades 3–6 (N?=?540) using complex multiple-choice items. Based on a model developed in a previous study, energy concepts were assessed along four aspects of energy: (1) forms and sources of energy, (2) transfer and transformation, (3) degradation and dissipation, and (4) energy conservation. Two parallel test forms (A and B) indicated energy concept scores to increase significantly by a factor of 2.3 (A)/1.7 (B) from grade 3 to grade 6. Students were observed to progress in their understanding of all four aspects of the concept and scored highest on items for energy forms. The lowest scores and the smallest gain across grades were found for energy conservation. Based on our results, we argue that despite numerous learning opportunities, students lack a more integrated understanding of energy at this stage, underlining the requirement of a more explicit approach to teaching energy to young learners. Likewise, more interdisciplinary links for energy learning between relevant contexts in each science discipline may enable older students to more efficiently use energy as a tool and crosscutting concept with which to analyze complex content.     

Modellierung von Lehrerkompetenzen

This contribution will investigate both the subject-specific and the didactic competencies of trainee teachers for lower secondary education in mathematics on the basis of the study “Mathematics Teaching in the 21st Century (MT21)”, which compares criteria-based samples from Germany, Bulgaria, South Korea, Taiwan, Mexico and the USA. In order to analyze their strengths and weaknesses more precisely, the paper considers both traditional IRT-scaling of competencies, which involves a simple loading of test performance in mathematics and didactics of mathematics, and an alternative. Under the assumption that solving items concerning didactics of mathematics requires competencies in didactics of mathematics and mathematics itself, a double-barreled approach was used in the alternative. In a further elaboration of this model, knowledge of arithmetic, algebra, functions, geometry and stochastic was used as a set of further explanatory factors for solving the items. This third model, which presumes a hierarchical structure of teaching competencies, displays the best data fit. Only this model reflects the specialisms and focal points of the education and training systems in the countries participating in MT21 concerning the relative learning opportunities in mathematics and didactics of mathematics and concerning the five subject areas in the field of mathematics.