Further aspects of the validation of a vignette-based test to assess pedagogical content knowledge of pre-service teachers in the reading domain

Abstract

The present study introduces several approaches to validate vignette-based test instruments to assess pedagogical content knowledge of pre-service teachers. A vignette-based test to assess pedagogical content knowledge in the reading domain (Rutsch, Dörfler 2018) serves as an example. In order to validate the vignette-based test, 581 pre-service teachers of all semesters studying the subject German and control groups (German philology students: N = 33, psychology students: N = 67, pre-service teachers not studying the subject German: N = 69) were surveyed.

The pedagogical content knowledge in the reading domain increases significantly over the duration of one year, with regard to both cross-sectional and longitudinal results. In comparison with the control groups, pre-service teachers studying the subject German perform best in the vignettebased test. The intraclass correlation coefficient (.011) indicates that the test performance does not rely on the affiliation to a certain university.

The results concerning the validation of the vignette-based test are partly promising. They are discussed with regard to other test instruments to assess pedagogical content knowledge of pre-service teachers studying the subject German.