Future Secondary Teachers' German Pedagogical Content Knowledge: Test Construction

Pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) is a core facet of professional teacher knowledge. In contrast to mathematics and science subjects, only few PCK tests exist for language subjects. This article presents a standardized test measuring the PCK of future teachers for German at secondary schools. The test was developed in the project PlanvoLL-D. Data were available from 378 teacher candidates (Sample 1) and 150 student teachers (Sample 2) during their bachelor (n = 114) or master studies (n = 36). Additionally, 85 of the student teachers were tested again 1 year later. and the instructional quality of 27 of the teacher candidates was rated by their students (n = 564) at school. Research questions concerning the reliability of the test applied to Sample 1 and Sample 2 as well as research questions regarding criterion validity were investigated. Findings show that the test allows for a reliable measurement for all samples, and retest stability is high. Criterion validity can be provided with regard to concurrent validity, known-groups method, and predictive validity.