Content-Related Knowledge of Biology Teachers from Secondary Schools: Structure and learning opportunities

Abstract

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.

Keywords:

• Content-related knowledge
• Pedagogical content knowledge
• Curricular knowledge
• Learning opportunities
• Multi-dimensional Rasch analysis

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Kerstin Münchhoff for her fundamental contribution to the realization of the project. Furthermore, we would like to thank Norman Lederman for his comments on an earlier version of the manuscript. The study was supported by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research [grant number 01 JG 0909].

Notes

1. In line with research on workplace learning, informal learning opportunities refer to that type of learning that is not intentionally organized (Tynjälä, 2008). Informal learning is characterized by the absence of a teacher and a formal curriculum and occurs as a part of everyday work processes and activities (Eraut, 2004; Hein, 1998; Tynjälä, 2008). In science education, the term is often used for the learning at the museum which is not in the focus of this article (e.g. Rennie, 2007).