Measurement of pedagogical content knowledge: students' knowledge and conceptions

Abstract

Almost 30 years ago, Shulman categorized the knowledge of teachers by several categories including the pedagogical content knowledge (PCK): "It represents the blending of content and pedagogy into an understanding of how particular topics, problems, or issues are organized, represented and adapted to the diverse interests and abilities of learners." [10]. The interest in research results dealing with this competency has increased in the last years. Several research projects have operationalized and measured the PCK for different subjects with notable results. They have shown discrepancies in teacher education, which need to be considered and overcome. Due to the young age of the subject computer science it will be interesting to obtain corresponding results in computer science education. In this article we present examples for test items measuring computer science teachers' PCK with main focus on the field of students' tasks and conceptions. They were developed on the base of the test instrument of the MoKoM project which was used in a large study investigating students' knowledge in computer science. Furthermore we will give an outlook on the setting of the assessment we are planning to conduct with these test items.