| Description |
The purpose of this study was to examine whether teachers with more teaching experience possess greater expertise with regards to content knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge than teachers with less experience, and to identify a collection of variables that contribute to the growth of content knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge. The sample for this study was comprised of 388 first, second, and third grade inservice teachers and 105 preservice teachers. Data were obtained through the use of two survey instruments. The first survey instrument, the Teacher Demographic Information Survey (TDIS), was an instrument used to collect background data on each participant. The second survey instrument, the Literacy Instruction Knowledge Survey-Written Subscales (LIKS-WS), was used to measure each participant's content knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge of reading and reading instruction. Analyses showed that the two constructs, content knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge are not well-defined, and therefore, a composite of the two was used in all analyses. Results from a one-way ANOVA indicated that literacy knowledge increases between preservice teachers and inservice teachers who have 1 to 21+ years of experience, but literacy knowledge remains stable across all these years. Results from the backwards deletion regression identified four variables (gradevec1, gradevec2, yrseffectcode1, gradcoursevec1) which accounted for 68% of the variability in the composite measure of literacy knowledge. |
