Unpacking Pedagogical Content Knowledge: Conceptualizing and Measuring Teachers' Topic-Specific Knowledge of Students

There is widespread agreement that effective teachers have unique knowledge of students' mathematical ideas and thinking. However, few scholars have focused on conceptualizing this domain, and even fewer have focused on measuring this knowledge. In this article, we describe an effort to concept...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal for research in mathematics education 2008-07, Vol.39 (4), p.372-400
Main Authors: Hill, Heather C., Ball, Deborah Loewenberg, Schilling, Stephen G.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
California
Conceptualization
Correlation
Educational evaluation
Educational research
Factor Analysis
Interviews
Item Response Theory
Knowledge
Learning
Mathematical knowledge
Mathematical problems
Mathematics education
Mathematics Instruction
Mathematics Skills
Mathematics teachers
Measures (Individuals)
Multiple Choice Tests
Pedagogical Content Knowledge
Professional Development
Reasoning
Scaling
Teacher Effectiveness
Teachers
Thinking Skills
Validity
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Description
Summary:There is widespread agreement that effective teachers have unique knowledge of students' mathematical ideas and thinking. However, few scholars have focused on conceptualizing this domain, and even fewer have focused on measuring this knowledge. In this article, we describe an effort to conceptualize and develop measures of teachers' combined knowledge of content and students by writing, piloting, and analyzing results from multiple-choice items. Our results suggest partial success in measuring this domain among practicing teachers but also identify key areas around which the field must achieve conceptual and empirical clarity. Although this is ongoing work, we believe that the lessons learned from our efforts shed light on teachers' knowledge in this domain and can inform future attempts to develop measures.
ISSN:0021-8251
1945-2306
DOI:10.5951/jresematheduc.39.4.0372