Virginia Deborah Elaine Welter

The use of multiple-choice (MC) instruments to assess pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) has advantages in terms of test economy and objectivity, but it also poses challenges, for example, in terms of adequately capturing the intended construct. To help address these challenges, we developed and evaluated a new instrument to assess science teachers’ PCK of scientific reasoning in biology contexts (PCK_SR-bio), considering multiple sources of validity evidence. First, 12 MC items were developed to assess crucial PCK components for three scientific reasoning skills. Subsequently, the correlation of corresponding content knowledge (CK) with the PCK_SR-bio score was tested with 67 master’s students. In addition, the instrument was used in a cross-sectional study with 165 students (n = 29 bachelor, n = 115 master, n = 21 school-based preservice teachers), and the internal consistency as well as the correlation of the test score with the educational level was determined. An analysis of the response processes of 10 bachelor’s students showed that they more often referred to PCK when selecting an attractor and more often (rather intuitively) to other knowledge when selecting a distractor. In the cross-sectional study, the internal consistency was relatively low but increased with higher educational level. A correlation was found between the test score and CK but not between the test score and the educational level. Our results show that considering multiple sources of validity evidence can help to address common challenges in developing MC–PCK instruments. The results and limitations are discussed, and recommendations are made for the development of MC instruments to assess PCK in general.

A rapidly changing world and constantly expanding knowledge requires education to no longer focus on teaching subject-matter knowledge but also to promote students’ critical thinking (CT) and an accurate understanding of the nature of science (NOS). However, several studies have shown that these skills are still poorly acquired during formal education. Given the cause–effect sequence from teacher education to teacher action to student learning, it seems reasonable to consider individual factors on the part of (pre-service) teachers as possible contributors to such skill gaps. In our study, we therefore investigated how pre-service biology teachers perform on tasks assessing their CT skills and NOS beliefs. In addition, we addressed the questions of whether test performance and/or the relationships between CT skills and NOS beliefs differ as a function of the number of learning opportunities. Our results show that our participants’ CT skills were only in the low–average range. Moreover, 86% of them did not have an informed understanding of NOS. Although participants in the master’s program demonstrated clearly superior CT skills than those in the bachelor’s program, no such difference was found in terms of NOS beliefs. However, there was a consistent advantage for pre-service teachers who were aspiring to a teaching qualification in two (as opposed to only one) scientific subjects. Our findings provide useful implications, particularly with respect to the influence of learning opportunities in university teacher education and the effectiveness of CT- and NOS-based instructional settings. On a more prospective note, our findings underscore that, given the grand global tasks of the 21st century, it seems more important than ever to ensure that pre-service science teachers have sufficient expertise in CT and NOS in order to increase the likelihood that these teachers will be able to successfully help their future students develop these skills.

Already in 2016, the German educational policy adopted the Education in the Digital World strategy, recommending that all teachers should become experts in using media. However, despite this initiative regarding the promotion of innovative forms of teaching using digital media, most teachers did not feel optimally prepared to successfully cope with the demands of implementing e-learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. Most empirical studies on potential barriers to innovation pertain to comparatively easy, changeable environmental factors, whereas only a few studies have focused on teachers as an individual factor so far. Since several organizational psychological studies on the relationships between innovativeness and personality traits in professional contexts identified the personality trait of openness to experience to be particularly influential on the innovative behaviors of employees’, our study aimed to explore whether comparable results can also be found in the educational context. Therefore, we conducted a cross-sectional survey (n = 201) to analyze to what extent the Big Five personality traits are related to pre-service teachers’ self-concept of professional knowledge and, in particular, its digitalization-related domains. The results of our canonical correlation analysis show that the two personality traits of openness to experience and conscientiousness appear to be significantly related to the overall professional knowledge of our sample. Furthermore, a dominant affinity for technology seems to be associable with the risk of lower values on personality traits that are regarded to be pedagogically relevant. However, we found that our canonical model could also get along with fewer variables since the actual digitalization-related teaching skills were not sufficiently reflected by the canonical solution but were rather caught up in the domain of pedagogical content knowledge. Interpretations of these findings as well as practical implications are discussed.

Several empirical studies have shown that, during COVID-19-caused distance learning, many learners were struggling to realize the extent of self-regulated learning activities that were required to ensure the ongoing learning progress. Due to the significance of self-regulated learning regarding students’ learning success, the construct of metacognition also gained in importance, since corresponding skills are closely related to successful self-direction in learning. In our study, we focused on the learning strategy of concept mapping (CM), which is (1) directly related to beneficial effects on learning and retention performance, as well as (2) considered to cause constructive side-effects regarding metacognitive skills and, thus, self-regulated learning. To grasp CM’s full potential in terms of improving cognition-related learning performance, however, appropriate training of this learning strategy seems to be required. This raised the question of whether and to what extent appropriate CM training is also necessary to improve the metacognitive skills of our participants (N = 73 university students of different majors) in terms of the accuracy of their judgments of learning (JOLs). Although we were able to show, in a previous study, that the CM-training intensity did not affect the absolute level of these JOLs, the results of our current study show that there is, nevertheless, a significant effect in terms of the JOLs’ accuracy when considering their relationships to objective learning performance. Thus, CM training intensity affects the competence of metacognitive monitoring. In addition, we found that scaffolding- and feedback-including training conditions tend to counteract systematic misjudgments regarding the domain of conceptual knowledge, in particular. Practical implications and recommendations that can be derived from these results are discussed.

At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in spring 2020, school and university learning were abruptly switched to distance learning, coming along with psychological strains and various learning lags on the part of the students. These problems come to a head when focusing on university teacher students, since an expectable competence lag on their part, similarly arising from pandemic-caused distance learning in university teacher training, could affect their future teaching in schools, possibly then disadvantaging school students a second time. To determine changes of teacher students’ self-concept of professional knowledge, we used data of a repeated cross-sectional survey carried out in a period from 2018 to 2021, including several comparable cohorts of overall N = 395 teacher students. This design allowed for splitting the participants in two groups relating to times before and after switching to distance learning. Our results show that the switch to distance learning goes hand in hand with lower scores on almost every dimension of teacher students’ self-concept of professional knowledge, although, in parallel, their scores on variables such as openness to experiences, agreeableness, and conscientiousness increased significantly, indicating a certain degree of compliance with the new situation. Beyond that, we report on an evaluative survey among N = 84 teacher students carried out in July 2020, offering further insights into their situation during the first semester of distance learning. Its results primarily show which specific aspects of distance learning the students consider in need of improvement. On the other hand, it becomes clear that they experienced handicaps in various areas, accompanied by a significant decrease of their core self-evaluations when comparing them to a reference sample. Practical implications and recommendations that can be derived from these results are discussed.

German preservice teachers always study two teaching subjects instead of only one. This offers an almost paradigmatic approach for the investigation of effects of specific subject combinations on professional competence. So far, few studies focused on potential beneficial effects or risks on preservice teachers' motivational orientations, beliefs, and professional knowledge. In our exploratory study, we chose a cross‐sectional quasi‐experimental design to compare preservice teachers studying a combination of biology and chemistry to those who study only one of these two subjects and any other, as it is expected that the differences between less similar subjects (such as chemistry and art) are greater than those between two science subjects. A total ofN = 570 preservice teachers with a minimum of one of their subjects being biology or chemistry were recruited in 12 universities in Germany. Nonparametric analyses using Westenberg–Mood's median test show that preservice teachers studying both biology and chemistry score significantly different on some central aspects of professional competence compared to those who study only one of the two subjects and any other. However, advantages regarding motivational orientations and professional knowledge can only be found for the domain of biology, whereas in the domain of chemistry it does not seem to matter which second subject is studied beside chemistry. Furthermore, students taking both sciences show a significantly lower educational motivation and corresponding self‐concept, suggesting that dual science students' teaching and learning beliefs are less education‐focused than those of students combining one science with a social or language subject. Our findings regarding synergy effects of the dual study of different natural sciences on aspects of professional knowledge can be relevant beyond the specific German context, that is, they can help to supplement or restructure a university curriculum.

Concept mapping (CM) can be an effective strategy to facilitate understanding-based learning of complex and abstract scientific content. In our study, we tried to answer two questions that have not yet been clarified: (1) How effective is CM if the learners do not have the textual learning material available when constructing their concept maps (retrieval setting) in contrast to when the material is available (elaboration setting)? (2) Do potential effects of the two settings depend on the intensity of a previous CM strategy training? To this end, we established a quasi-experimental four-group plan and collected data of N = 93 undergraduate students. The participants received either a detailed CM strategy training or just a short introduction and were then asked to apply CM in a retrieval or elaboration setting. The quality of constructed concept maps and content-related learning success were assessed to determine potential group differences. Overall, our results show a significantly positive but setting-independent effect of the CM strategy training on methodical CM skills. However, the different setting conditions differed neither regarding concept map quality nor content-related learning success, implying that CM in retrieval settings could be as effective as in elaboration settings.

Concept Mapping (CM) is a learning strategy to organize and understand complex relationships, which are particularly characteristic of the natural science subjects. Previous research has already shown that constructing concept maps can promote students’ meaningful learning in terms of deeper knowledge and its more flexible use. While researchers generally agree that students need to practice using CM successfully for learning, key parameters of effective CM training (e.g., content, structure, and duration) remain controversial. This desideratum is taken up by our study, in which three different training approaches were evaluated: a CM training with scaffolding and feedback vs. a CM training without additional elements vs. a non-CM control training. In a quasi-experimental design, we assessed the learning outcome of N = 73 university students who each had participated in one of the trainings before. Our results suggest that an extensive CM training with scaffolding and feedback is most appropriate to promote both CM competence and acquisition of knowledge. From an educational perspective, it would therefore be advisable to accept the time-consuming process of intensive practice of CM in order to enable students to adequately use of the strategy and thus facilitate meaningful learning in terms of achieving sustained learning success.