Establishing the Validity of a Test of Common Content Knowledge for Soccer

ABSTRACT

Common content knowledge (CCK) is fundamental for quality instruction and critical to be acquired among physical education preservice teachers (PSTs). The purpose of this study was to develop a soccer CCK test for PSTs and to examine the validity and reliability of the test using Rasch measurement modeling. Two content experts developed a test in a multiple-choice question format, which was content validated by five in-service teachers and field-tested by 10 PSTs. Once content and face validities were confirmed, the test was given to 129 PSTs. The results confirmed that all the test items measured soccer CCK as a unidimensional construct, and the levels of the test items align with PSTs’ knowledge levels (mean square residuals – infit = 0.8 to 1.1; outfit = 0.8 to 1.3). The item separation index was 2.05 (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.81), and the person separation index was 1.99 (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.80), which assured that the test includes items with a wide range in difficulty levels to meet the variability of respondents’ knowledge levels. To conclude, the soccer CCK test is a valid and reliable instrument, and the test can be used to contribute to the field in practice and research. Those include, for instance, assessing PSTs’ learning gains of soccer content classes, improving the effectiveness of PSTs and in-service content education, and measuring the effects of differing soccer CCK on student learning in secondary physical education.

KEYWORDS:

• Content knowledge
• effective teaching
• national standards
• invasion games

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).