Primary science teachers generic and subject-specific professional competences and performance. A study on their predictive validity regarding student learning

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The effect of professional teacher knowledge on teaching behavior as well as on the development of students has increasingly been investigated over the last years. Most of these studies used paper-pencil-tests to measure professional knowledge. Those tests are supposed to assess rather declarative knowledge, that is not able to explain observable teaching behavior sufficiently. For this reason, indicators of situated knowledge, such as abilities to perceive and analyze teaching in a professional way, are more and more focused in the last years. Those skills are conceptually based on professional vision (Sherin, 2007; Seidel & Stürmer, 2014) or research on teaching expertise (Blömeke, Busse, Kaiser, König & Suhl, 2016). Those situation-specific abilities are supposed to have a mediation function between knowledge (as disposition for successful behavior) and teaching behavior (Blömeke, Gustafsson & Shavelson, 2015). Currently, there are only few studies, mostly from the mathematical domain, that indicate correlations between professional vision and teaching performance or student learning (Kersting, Givvin, Thompson, Santagata & Stigler, 2012; König & Kramer, 2016; Roth, Garnier, Chen, Lemmens, Schwille & Wickler, 2011; Sherin & van Es, 2009). Studies investigating this relationship with respect to other domains and additional dimensions of instructional quality are needed to allow reliable and generalizable inferences. In addition, the hypothesis of a stronger correlation of teaching behavior with professional vision than with knowledge (assessed with a paper-pencil-test), as well as the hypothesis of professional vision mediating knowledge and teaching behavior, are presently not satisfactorily answered. The proposed study will address these research desiderata with respect to two relevant teaching dimensions, classroom management and learning support. A cross-sectional study with 60 primary teachers and their respective classes will investigate the relationships between professional knowledge and professional vision of classroom management and learning support (IV teacher) on the one hand, and the quality of classroom management and learning support (DV/IV teacher behavior), the students learning progress (DV students) and student ratings of classroom management or learning support (DV students) on the other hand. Furthermore, correlations between subject-specific constructs regarding learning support and generic constructs regarding classroom management will be explored. Beyond the theoretical insights into fundamental relationships between important aspects of professional teacher competences, the study will provide findings about the predictive validity of the used tests.