TY - JOUR A1 - Massolt, Joost Willem A1 - Borowski, Andreas T1 - Perceived relevance of university physics problems by pre-service physics teachers BT - personal constructs JF - International journal of science education N2 - Pre-service physics teachers often do not recognise the relevance for their future career in their university content knowledge courses. A lower perceived relevance can, however, have a negative effect on their motivation and on their academic success. Several intervention studies have been undertaken with the goal to increase this perceived relevance. A previous study shows that conceptual physics problems used in university physics courses are perceived by pre-service physics teachers as more relevant for their future career than regular, quantitative problems. It is however not clear, what the students' meaning of the construct 'relevance' is: what makes a problem more relevant to them than another problem? To answer this question, N = 7 pre-service teachers were interviewed using the repertory grid technique, based on the personal construct theory. Nine physics problems were discussed with regards to their perceived relevance and with regards to problem properties that distinguish these problems from each other. We are able to identify six problem properties that have a positive influence on the perceived relevance. Physics problems that are based on these properties should therefore potentially have a higher perceived relevance, which can have a positive effect on the motivation of the pre-service teachers who solve these problems. KW - Motivation KW - physics education KW - pre-service teachers KW - repertory grid Y1 - 2020 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/09500693.2019.1705424 SN - 0950-0693 SN - 1464-5289 VL - 42 IS - 2 SP - 167 EP - 189 PB - Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group CY - Abingdon ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Kirschner, Sophie A1 - Borowski, Andreas A1 - Fischer, Hans E. A1 - Gess-Newsome, Julie A1 - von Aufschnaiter, Claudia T1 - Developing and evaluating a paper-and-pencil test to assess components JF - International journal of science education N2 - Teachers’ professional knowledge is assumed to be a key variable for effective teaching. As teacher education has the goal to enhance professional knowledge of current and future teachers, this knowledge should be described and assessed. Nevertheless, only a limited number of studies quantitatively measures physics teachers’ professional knowledge. The study reported in this paper was part of a bigger project with the broader goal of understanding teacher professional knowledge. We designed a test instrument to assess the professional knowledge of physics teachers (N = 186) in the dimensions of content knowledge (CK), pedagogical content knowledge (PCK), and pedagogical knowledge (PK). A model describing the relationships between these three dimensions of professional knowledge was created to inform the design of the tests used to measure CK, PCK, and PK. In this paper, we describe the model with particular emphasis on the PCK part, and the subsequent PCK test development and its implementation in detail. We report different approaches to evaluate the PCK test, including the description of content validity, the examination of the internal structure of professional knowledge, and the analysis of construct validity by testing teachers across different school subjects, teachers from different school types, pre-service teachers, and physicists. Our findings demonstrate that our PCK test results could distinguish physics teachers from the other groups tested. The PCK test results could not be explained by teachers’ CK or PK, cognitive abilities, computational skills, or science knowledge. KW - Pedagogical content knowledge KW - physics education KW - teacher knowledge KW - quantitative research Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/09500693.2016.1190479 SN - 0950-0693 SN - 1464-5289 VL - 38 SP - 1343 EP - 1372 PB - Royal Society of Chemistry CY - Abingdon ER -