Development of Items for a Pedagogical Content Knowledge-Test Based on Empirical Analysis of Pupils' Errors.

International audienceIn view of the lack of instruments for measuring biology teachers' pedagogical content knowledge (PCK), this article reports on a study about the development of PCK-items for measuring teachers' knowledge of pupils' errors and ways for dealing with them. This study investigated ninth and tenth grade German pupils' (n = 461) drawings in an achievement test about the knee-jerk in biology, which were analysed by using the inductive qualitative analysis of their content. The empirical data were used for the development of the items in the PCK-test. The validation of the items was determined with think-aloud interviews of German secondary school teachers (n = 5). If the item was determined, the reliability was tested by the results of German secondary school biology teachers (n = 65) who took the PCK-test. The results indicated that these items are satisfactorily reliable (Cronbach alpha values ranged from .60 to .67). We suggest a larger sample size and American biology teachers be used in our further studies. The findings of this study about teachers' professional knowledge from the PCK-test could provide new information about the influence of teachers' knowledge on their pupils' understanding of biology and their possible errors in learning biology