The interrelation of opportunities to learn and professional knowledge in teacher training – a question of intensity?

Abstract

This paper deals with the relationship between the learning opportunities in the educational science part of the teacher training program and the pedagogical and psychological professional knowledge of teacher training students. A study conducted on a sample of N = 109 student teachers from the University of Kassel shows that students’ opportunities to learn in educational science – captured as treated content – predict pedagogical-psychological knowledge, and that the predictive power increases when learning opportunities are more closely related to knowledge. In addition, based on the offer-and-use-model in professionalization research, it can be shown that the intensity of dealing with learning opportunities mediates the relationship between opportunities to learn and knowledge. The simultaneous consideration of opportunities to learn and intensity of a student’s work on a given topic also explains more variance in pedagogical-psychological knowledge than the sole consideration of opportunities to learn.