Pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) is specialized knowledge necessary to teach a subject. PCK integrates subject-matter content knowledge with knowledge of students and of teaching strategies so that teachers can perform the daily tasks of teaching. Studies in mathematics education have found correlations between measures of PCK and student learning. Finding robust, scalable ways for developing and measuring computer science (CS) teachers’ PCK is particularly important in CS education in the United States, given the lack of formal CS teacher preparation programs and certifications. However, measuring pedagogical content knowledge is a challenge for all subject areas. It can be difficult to write assessment items that elicit the different aspects of PCK and there are often multiple appropriate pedagogical choices in any given teaching scenario. In this paper, we describe a framework and pilot data from a questionnaire intended to elicit PCK from teachers of high school introductory CS courses and we propose future directions for this work.
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Assessing Pedagogical Content Knowledge for Data Fluency for Middle School STEM Teachers
This work-in-progress paper describes the development of an assessment for teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) for data fluency – the ability and confidence to actively make sense of and use data. In the context of a project that seeks to develop and pilot test data fluency professional learning for mathematics and science teachers in grades 6–9, researchers constructed a novel instrument for assessing teachers’ specialized knowledge for teaching, which lives at the intersection of data knowledge, domain-specific knowledge, pedagogy, and technology. This online one-hour instrument is a written performance task and is sensitive to three dimensions of PCK: 1) teachers’ ability to analyze student thinking, 2) teachers’ ability to plan instruction, and 3) the degree to which teachers’ responses reflect a learner-centered orientation. The project team is currently developing a scoring rubric for this instrument, which will be revised based on the pretest and posttest data from the pilot study.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2101049
- PAR ID:
- 10501734
- Publisher / Repository:
- NARST
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Ninety-seventh annual international conference of the National Association for Research in Science Teaching (NARST)
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Location:
- Denver, CO
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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