Pedagogical content knowledge in French: Development and relation with content knowledge and general pedagogical knowledge. In J. König (Chair). Pedagogical content knowledge of foreign language teachers: Conceptualizations and empirical findings across different domains. Symposium conducted at the AERA annual meeting, 8-12 april 2016, Washington DC

Several studies have shown a positive relation between CK and PCK, concluding that CK is a necessary, though not sufficient prerequisite for PCK. While a lot is known about PCK in the field of mathematics education, research on PCK in foreign languages, its relation with CK and PK, its development, and on how it is impacted by teachers’ background characteristics, is rather scarce. This paper reports on a study focusing on the relation between pre-service teachers’ French PCK, French CK and PK, as well as their development during teacher education (TE), and the impact of background characteristics on these knowledge domains, focusing on three research questions: (RQ1) What is the relation between preservice teachers’ PCK, CK and PK?, (RQ2) Are there differences in French PCK, French CK and PK performances between first, second and third year pre-service teachers? (RQ3) What is the impact of pre-service primary school teachers’ background characteristics (French prior learning opportunities, bilingualism, and prior education) on their French PCK, CK and general PK? Three tests were developed. There were 360 pre-service primary school teachers from two Flemish TE institutions who participated in the study. The results show significant positive correlations between PCK, PK and CK. Students from the first year performed significantly lower than students from the second and third year on all three knowledge domains, whereas no significant differences were found between the latter two groups. Several background variables have an impact on teacher knowledge.no ISSN/ISBNstatus: publishe