Teacher Knowledge Experiment: Conditions of the Development of Pedagogical Content Knowledge

Abstract

Pedagogical content knowledge (PCK)—that is, knowledge necessary to make subject matter accessible to students—is considered to be a key component of teacher competence. Thus, how teachers develop PCK is an important issue for educational research and practice. Our study aimed at investigating the conditions of development of PCK, and especially at testing competing assumptions about the role of prior content knowledge (CK) and prior pedagogical knowledge (PK) for PCK development. We targeted three assumptions: (1) CK and PK amalgamate, (2) CK is a necessary condition and facilitates PCK development, and (3) CK is a sufficient condition for teachers’ PCK development. One hundred German pre-service elementary teachers participated in a randomized controlled trial. Participants’ prior knowledge was manipulated through five courses, constituting three experimental conditions and two controls. In this chapter, we report on the conceptualization of the treatments, and provide a detailed analysis of our knowledge measures. We further give an overview of the initial, preliminary results of the experiment. The findings of our study may have important implications for the discussion of how PCK can best be fostered in teacher education.