The influence of professional knowledge and content-related structure on the quality of spelling instruction

Abstract

With the aim of exploring the importance of subject-specific teacher knowledge for the quality of spelling instruction at primary level, the professional knowledge of 21 German and 23 Swiss primary school teachers was recorded and one spelling lesson each on double consonants was videotaped and analyzed as part of the cross-national study „Profess-R“. Regression analyses were used to investigate whether and to what extent the orthography-related content and pedagogical content knowledge of the teachers predicts the subject-specific quality of learning opportunities. In addition, the content-related structuring of the lessons was recorded and included as an additional predictor in the analyses. Contrary to the expectations, the quality of teaching could only be explained selectively by the professional knowledge of the teachers. As expected, the inclusion of the content-related structure of instruction did not lead to a further explanation of variance in most quality dimensions; however, it proved to be significant for aspects of presenting the content in a correct way.