Professional knowledge of science teachers (ProwiN I; BMBF, 2009-2012)

involved persons:

LMU: Prof. Dr. Birgit J. Neuhaus, Dr. Melanie Sczudlek

Empirical research in didactics and pedagogy on professional knowledge has become more and more important during the last years (Abell, 2007). In educational research, there has been a growing interest in teachers’ professional knowledge (Abell, 2007). Originally, Shulman (1987) developed a model of professional teacher knowledge that comprises seven categories. In Germany, educational research focuses on three (core) domains of professional knowledge (Bromme, 1997; Baumert & Kunter, 2006): content knowledge (CK), pedagogical content knowledge (PCK), and pedagogical knowledge (PK). Comprehensive studies on teachers’ professional knowledge have mainly been done in mathematics (c.f. COACTIV, COACTIV-R, MT21, TEDS-M). Following the COACTIV-Study (Baumert & Kunter, 2006) there will be a cooperative research project, called ProwiN, in which the universities of Bochum, Duisburg-Essen, and Munich will analyze the professional knowledge of science teachers (Fischer et al., 2008). The project is funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF).

The aim of the dissertation at the University of Munich is to examine relationships between content knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge, and pedagogical knowledge of biology teachers from different types of secondary schools in Germany (‘Hauptschule’ and ‘Gymnasium’).