Institutional opportunities to learn and the development of pedagogical knowledge of student teachers

Current studies that analyse the impact of opportunities to learn on pedagogical knowledge in teacher education show that the acquisition depends on the individual use of the opportunities to learn. There is still a high variability in the study programs of Educational Science Studies which leads to heterogeneity in the attended courses (cf. Terhart 2012). That requires a more detailed gathering of the individual used opportunities to learn (e. g. contents and quality of teaching methods) to analyse the correlation between the pedagogical knowledge and the opportunities to learn. The data were collected directly from student teachers who have studied Educational Science. Based on an instrument to measure pedagogical knowledge, the development of competencies of student teachers is analysed on longitudinal data. The analysis considered 289 student teachers from one German university who took part in the study at two assessment points. Using IRT scaling, ability scores for each student were estimated using WLE (weighted likelihood estimates; Warm 1989). The development of pedagogical knowledge is analysed using regression change models. The results show a significant development of pedagogical knowledge. The data for the opportunities to learn were collected by self-disclosure of the student teachers. Referred to the institutional factors, the use of opportunities to learn is an important predictor for the development of professional knowledge.