Exploring the Correlation Between Teacher Pedagogical Content Knowledge and Content Knowledge in Computer Science Classrooms

Educators have long claimed that pedagogical content knowledge (PCK), ways of presenting a subject that make it comprehensible to others, is a critical element of student academic success. This poster presents findings from a preliminary study of Computer Science Principles teachers that demonstrate a significant correlation between teacher PCK and student content knowledge. The study describes the measures used to assess PCK, operationalizes the mechanisms for measuring teacher pedagogical content knowledge, shares the results from a multi-level modeling analysis, and identifies methodological improvements for follow-up research. The findings from this initial study show correlations of teacher PCK with student content knowledge while accounting for other teacher- and student-level variables across multiple schools.