Measuring Preservice Teachers' Pedagogical Language Knowledge in the United States: A Test Instrument

• In Event: One Instrument, Four Contexts: International Explorations of Pedagogical Language Knowledge

Abstract

Objectives
Novice general education teachers continue to report feeling unprepared to work with multilingual students (Deng et al., 2020). In order to support improved teacher preparation practices for content teachers to work with multilingual learners, we translated the German DazKom instrument into English, measuring the same constructs as the instrument in German. Inspired by Shulman’s different knowledge types (Shulman 1986, 1987) and Galguera’s (2011) introduction of the concept of pedagogical language knowledge (PLK), we call this version the PLK test. This study sought to establish the validity and reliability of the PLK test version and explore its usefulness with pre-service general content teachers.

Perspective(s)
Drawing from the DazKom competency model, competencies can be understood as a continuum from dispositions to situation-specific skills to performance (Blömeke et al., 2015). The purpose of translating the DazKom test into English for use in the US was to further investigate the dispositions related to quality content teaching for multilingual students.

Methods
The item and scale analyses were carried out on the basis of the Rasch model (Rost, 2004; Wilson, 2005). The person scores were determined using weighted likelihood estimates (WLE). These are based exclusively on the respondents' answers to the test items. Because of their low average deviation from the true competence value, WLE estimators are particularly suitable for determining individual competence levels (Rost, 2004). The internal consistency of the scales was checked by EAP reliabilities (Wilson, 2005).

Data Sources
The sample consists of n = 339 pre-service teachers who were seeking to work as teachers in elementary education. 89% are female, 97% have English as their first language. Only 22% learned another language and/or identify as multilingual. 45.6% are in their third year of study.

Results
The Pedagogical Language Knowledge (PLK) test consists of 35 items that have open-constructed responses, closed-constructed responses and selected responses. There are three types of item stimuli: math problem, presenting a typical mathematical task; student production/case study where a student's case is presented with background information and/or linguistic examples; and classroom interaction describing a typical classroom situation with a dialogue. The response formats as well as the item stimuli are quite evenly distributed among the different options.

The item discrimination is acceptable (M = 0.33, SD = 0.07). The values for WLE reliability is α =0.63 and can still be described as satisfactory. However, since the sample is very homogeneous regarding the use of opportunities to learn with regard to multilingual teaching as well as person characteristics this value can still be considered acceptable. The instrument with item and coding examples will be presented.

Scholarly Significance
The PLK test enables teacher educators to evaluate their programs in order to get a better understanding of their students’ learning progress. Based on the results, course structures, formats, and content can be adapted and improved to prepare pre-service teachers better to work with multilingual students. Further, it will be possible to compare data from using the German instrument and the US-American instrument with regard to the effectiveness of course structure.

Authors

• Svenja Hammer, Norwegian University of Science and Technology
  Presenting Author

• Kara Mitchell Viesca, University of Nebraska - Lincoln
  Presenting Author