Assessing Contrasted Groups of Teachers on Their Pedagogical Knowledge and Skills With Paper-Pencil and Video-Based Methods

• In Event: 60.032 - Teacher Education Outcomes: A Multimethod Multitrait Perspective on Teacher Competence

Abstract

Objectives & Framework: General pedagogical knowledge (GPK) is one dimension of teachers’ cognitive characteristics. According to Shulman (1987, p. 8) GPK contains “broad principles and strategies of classroom management and organization that appear to transcend subject matter”. During teacher education pre-service teachers acquire GPK and are hypothesized to progress from novices to the stage of advanced beginners (Berliner, 2004). Their declarative knowledge is hypothesized to be proceduralized (Anderson et al., 2001). Whereas novices usually have difficulties in transferring their declarative knowledge to specific classroom situations, advance beginners are better able to do so. Later on, expert teachers’ procedural knowledge is of situated nature and closely related to typical sequences of teaching (Putnam & Borko, 2000).
Against this background, two questions will be examined: First, to what extent do teachers at different stages (“novices” vs. “advanced beginners”) show differences in their GPK and their skill to notice classroom management situations? Second, do advanced beginners’ GPK and their situation-specific skill to notice correlate with the instructional quality they provide to their students?
Methods & Data: Two groups of teachers who went through pre-service teacher education in Cologne, Germany, were sampled in the academic year of 2013/2014: 250 pre-service teachers in their third year of training (“novices” with hardly any practical teaching experience) and 50 teachers in their induction period before they get fully certified (“advanced beginners” with a good amount of teaching experience). Data was collected on their GPK via a paper-and-pencil test (Authors, 2011) and a video-based assessment capturing their situation-specific classroom management skill to notice (Authors, under review). Previous studies show good psychometric properties for both instruments (see Authors, under review). Moreover, the advanced beginners’ instructional quality was assessed using student rating (9 scales applied, derived from TIMSS 1999) as well as video tapes of their lessons (9 rating scales applied, derived from TIMSS 1995).
Expected Results: Data collection ended in July 2014, we are therefore only able to hypothesize expected results. Test scores in GPK and classroom management skills of the two groups will be compared (using multiple-group analysis option in the software package Mplus), hypothesizing that advanced beginners outperform novices (H1) and scores of the two tests are more strongly correlated among advanced beginners than among novices due to a higher level of expertise of the advanced beginners (H2). Regarding predictive validity, we hypothesize that advanced beginners’ GPK and classroom management skills are correlated with measures on instructional quality, such as teacher clarity and effective classroom management as rated by their students and as measured by video ratings (H3).
Significance: This study will provide in-depth analysis on the different dimensions of cognitive representations of general pedagogy. The discussion reflects the empirical findings against the background of research on teacher expertise, with a focus on the development of expertise during the phase of initial teacher education. Also, the study provides important findings on the validity of the two instruments measuring pedagogical knowledge and skills among pre-service teachers.

Author

• Johannes Koenig, University of Cologne