A Grand Rubric for Measuring Science Teachers’ Pedagogical Content Knowledge

Abstract

Rubrics are increasingly used to differentiate the quality of science teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge (PCK), both qualitatively and quantitatively. Well-designed PCK rubrics can guide the judgement of PCK quality for valid assessment. This chapter considers the possibility of a “grand rubric” that allows measurement of different variants of PCK as depicted in the Refined Consensus Model (RCM). To achieve this goal, the chapter first reviews the characteristics of rubrics in current use in the science education field. It examines the critical considerations in the construction of a grand rubric through an analysis of an expert discussion group. Based on this analysis, the paper proposes a grand rubric and describes its layout and characteristics. The grand rubric is generic in nature and can be customised for use with different science content topics as well as for measurement of specific variants of PCK in the RCM, including individual science teachers’ personal or enacted PCK (pPCK and ePCK) and the collective PCK (cPCK) of a group of science teachers.