Measuring teachers' pedagogical content knowledge in primary technology education

Abstract

Pedagogical content knowledge is found to be a crucial part of the knowledge base for teaching. Studies in the field of primary technology education showed that this domain of teacher knowledge is related to pupils' increased learning, motivation, and interest. The common methods to investigate teachers' pedagogical content knowledge are often complicated, and time and labour consuming. Hence, a challenge in measuring teachers' pedagogical content knowledge is to construct an instrument that is time and labour‐efficient, and makes it possible to investigate large sample sizes. This paper illustrates how a multiple‐choice test to measure teachers' pedagogical content knowledge in primary technology education was designed and validated. The procedure of test construction and the first results are presented. It is concluded that the systematic procedure that was followed is effective for the construction of a valid test. In addition, statistical analyses showed that test/re‐test reliability is moderate. Data collection with larger samples is needed in order to find more statistical support for the psychometric properties of the test.

Keywords:

• pedagogical content knowledge
• primary school
• technology education
• teacher knowledge
• test construction