Teachers’ diagnostic competences are essential with respect to student achievement, classroom assessment, and instructional quality. Important components of diagnostic competences are teachers’ professional knowledge including content knowledge (CK), pedagogical knowledge (PK), and pedagogical content knowledge (PCK), their diagnostic activities as a specification of situation-specific skills, and diagnostic accuracy. Accuracy is determined by comparing a teacher’s observation of classroom incidents with subject-specific challenges to be identified from scripted instructional situations. To approximate diagnostic situations close to real-life, the assessment of science teachers’ diagnostic competences requires a situated context that was provided through videotaped classroom situations in this study. We investigated the relationship between professional knowledge (PCK, CK, PK) of 186 pre-service biology teachers, their diagnostic activities, and diagnostic accuracy measured with the video-based assessment tool DiKoBi Assess. Results of path analyses utilizing Rasch measures showed that both PCK and PK were statistically significantly related to pre-service teachers’ diagnostic activities. Additionally, biology teachers’ PCK was positively related to diagnostic accuracy. Considering higher effect sizes of PCK compared to PK, the findings support previous findings indicating the importance of PCK, thus demonstrating its importance in the context of subject-specific diagnosis as well.
In a diagnostic context of reasoning about instructional quality, scientific reasoning skills can be described as diagnostic activities, which require professional knowledge. Different approaches to enhance pre-service teachers’ professional knowledge (PCK, CK, PK), as well as diagnostic activities exist. However, results about their effectiveness are still inconsistent. We systematically investigated the effectiveness of self-directed knowledge acquisition via texts on PCK, CK, PK, and diagnostic activities of 81 pre-service biology teachers following an experimental design. Paper-pencil tests, measuring PCK, CK, and PK, and the video-based assessment tool DiKoBi Assess, measuring diagnostic activities in the context of diagnosing instructional quality, were used pre and post an intervention. Intervention included four treatments on self-directed knowledge acquisition via texts on (1) PCK, (2) CK, (3) PK, (4) combination PCK/CK/PK. Treatment (5) served as control. Mixed ANOVAs showed large time effects for PCK and CK, but no interaction effect concerning knowledge facets between time and treatment for any of the treatments. Time effects might be due to pre-service teachers’ scientific reasoning on biology instruction that activated knowledge. An ANCOVA showed no significant effect of treatment on diagnostic activities either. We conclude that scientific reasoning about instructional quality is more effective for knowledge acquisition than text-work.
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