Foreign Language Pedagogical Content Knowledge of Pre-Service Teachers: Concept, Measurement, and Validation

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Pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) is a central cognitive component of the professional competence of teachers. Thus initiatives have been recently launched to conceptualize and to measure PCK of pre-service and in-service teachers, however their focus is clearly on mathematics. Similiar research related to English as a Foreign Language (EFL) virtually does not exist. An important exception is the Teacher Education and Development Study: Learning to Teach (TEDS-LT, funded by BMBF), a study in which instruments measuring the content knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge of student teachers of EFL were developed.The objective of our study elaborates on the groundwork of TEDS-LT and continues to develop a standardized instrument to measure the PCK of future EFL teachers. First, the test instrument that was developed in TEDS-LT is developed further by adding professional knowledge that is closer to the performance of teachers and thus more important during the second phase of initial teacher education in Germany. Second, this instrument is put into trial in an empirical study with EFL pre-service teachers of the first and second phase of initial teacher education (pre-service teachers of the second phase had not been focused on in TEDS-LT). In addition to that, their content knowledge (CK) in the areas of linguistics, British and American literature and culture, their general pedagogical knowledge (GPK) as well as their oral language proficiency is assessed (using hitherto existing instruments). For the first time, relational analyses of cognitive elements of professional knowledge in both stages of teacher training (first and second phase) can be performed, also allowing for testing the central assumptions of construct validity of PCK. Moreover, this study includes an analysis of the opportunities to learn in relation to the professional competence of pre-service teachers.From this study, we expect profound insight into the conceptualization and operationalization of the PCK of pre-service teachers as well as differences in PCK related to different stages of pre-service teachers during initial teacher education. Therefore, theoretical frameworks, concepts and assumptions of EFL teacher training can be empirically grounded. Also, our study makes a significant contribution to the discourse on quality assurance and standard setting in EFL teacher training.