Effects of Teachers’ Professional Knowledge and Their Use of Three-Dimensional Physical Models in Biology Lessons on Students’ Achievement

Abstract

Using three-dimensional physical models elaborately in their learning, students can develop high-level understanding of models and modeling in science, thereby attaining higher achievement. However, there are in the literature few indications of how teachers should use three-dimensional physical models in instruction and whether teachers’ professional knowledge is a prerequisite for teaching with elaborate use of models. Therefore, our study used a mixed-methods approach to analyze the effects of biology teachers’ domain-specific pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) and content knowledge (CK) on students’ achievement mediated by elaborate model use (ELMO). Our quantitative sample comprised 36 German secondary school teachers whose lessons on the topic of neurobiology were videotaped twice (N = 72 lessons). Teachers completed professional knowledge tests on their PCK and CK. Students’ achievement was measured using pre- and post-knowledge tests. Our qualitative analysis involved five selected teachers according to aspects of ELMO. The results of our study indicated that teachers’ PCK and CK had no direct effect on students’ achievement. However, teachers’ PCK had a significant indirect and positive effect on students’ achievement mediated by ELMO. The findings of our study can provide teachers and researchers examples of how to implement biology instruction with elaborate use of three-dimensional physical models.

Diagnosing the Instructional Quality of Biology Lessons Based on Staged Videos: Developing DiKoBi, A Video-Based Simulation

“…Teachers need to create domain-specific learning activities in the classroom, as these activities strongly influence students' learning (Seidel & Shavelson, 2007). Thus, professional knowledge about implementing these activities is a necessary prerequisite for teachers' performance in the classroom, and thus also for instructional quality (Förtsch et al, 2016(Förtsch et al, , 2018bSeidel & Shavelson, 2007). University education should not only offer opportunities for pre-service teachers to gain professional knowledge in setting up these activities, but should also support pre-service teachers in applying their knowledge and developing their competences in assessing learning situations during actual teaching (Grossman & McDonald, 2008).…”

“…Cognitive activation can be influenced via tasks that promote students' cognitive engagement (Chi & Wylie, 2014). Additionally, students' learning can be fostered by a sophisticated use of models that increases scientific reasoning skills (Förtsch et al, 2018b). Scientific reasoning is also important when solving problems in biology (Dorfner et al, 2018a;Mayer, 2007).…”

“…In this project, the German online learning platform DiKoBi serves as a video-based simulation, in which six classroom situations are embedded. The classroom situations represent challenging dimensions in biology classrooms: (1) students' level of cognitive activities (Förtsch et al, 2016), (2) dealing with students' ideas and errors (Rach et al, 2013), (3) use of technical language (Dorfner et al, 2019;Wüsten, 2010), (4) use of experiments (Mayer, 2007), (5) use of models (Förtsch et al, 2018b;Werner et al, 2017), and (6) conceptual understanding (Förtsch et al, 2017). Pre-service teachers had to diagnose effective teaching using DiKoBi.…”

Can Pre-Service Biology Teachers’ Professional Knowledge and Diagnostic Activities Be Fostered by Self-Directed Knowledge Acquisition via Texts?

“…CK describes the knowledge of subject matter, discipline-specific methods for generating knowledge, and the conceptual understanding of specific topics, which researchers emphasized as a necessary but insufficient precondition for the development of PCK [11,36,41]. With regard to a specific subject matter, PCK includes subject-specific knowledge about corresponding (mis)conceptions of particular students, knowledge about subject-specific structures of instruction, and corresponding teaching strategies, and was shown to be highly predictive for instructional quality and students' achievement [15,21,[42][43][44]. Accordingly, PCK is related to the implementation of subject-specific instructional quality features and is thus considered particularly relevant for subject-specific instruction [42,44].…”

Unterrichtsqualität aus der Perspektive der Biologiedidaktik

“…Zusammenfassend kommen wir bezüglich der Fachspezifität von Unterricht zu folgenden Erkenntnissen:2.1 Bedeutung des Professionswissens für die UnterrichtsqualitätDas Professionswissen, vor allem das von uns schwerpunktmäßig untersuchte fachdidaktische Wissen, hat einen Einfluss auf verschiedene Unterrichtsqualitätsmerkmale. Besonders stark wirkt sich das fachdidaktische Wissen auf den qualitativ hochwertigen Einsatz von Modellen im Unterricht(Förtsch et al 2018), die kognitive Aktivierung im Unterricht(Förtsch et al 2016) und die Konzeptorientierung des Unterrichts(Werner et al 2016) aus. Aber auch die anderen von uns analysierten Qualitätsmerkmale korrelieren mit dem fachdidaktischen Wissen, allerdings weniger stark, so dass sie häufig erst in Form eines Variablenbündels gemeinsam mit anderen Qualitätsmerkmalen Korrelationen mit dem Professionswissen zeigen.…”