Developing a Rubric For Measuring the Quality of Teachers’ Digital-TSPCK as Expressed in their Self-build Asynchronous Instructional Videos

The move towards digitalisation of education calls for the refinement of traditionally trusted theoretical frameworks like topic-specific pedagogical content knowledge (TSPCK) as digital-TSPCK for teaching and learning digitally. The current paper reports on the development of a rubric for measuring the quality of teachers’ digital-TSPCK in purposefully self-built instructional videos for asynchronous science lessons. Thirty self-created digital instructional videos on Chemical Equilibrium were analysed. The videos were collected from a sample that comprised fourth-year Chemistry pre-service teachers (n = 22) and expert Chemistry education teacher educators (n = 8). An in-depth qualitative analysis of the videos for digital-TSPCK was employed with digital-TSPCK Maps used as a visualisation tool. Sixty-one digital-TSPCK episodes were identified with emerging distinct patterns that informed the criteria of three quality categories (basic, proficient and exemplary), each of which reflected increasing levels of sophistication. The assignment of numerical values to these categories produced ordinal scores that were converted to interval scores for the determination of reliability and validity of the rubric using the Rasch model analysis. The findings revealed complex interactions, within and across the different constructs that constitute the digital-TSPCK framework providing nucleus points for identifying varying depth in teachers’ explanations of content in digital formats. These findings have implications for structuring teacher development programmes and evaluating their impact on teaching and learning of science digitally. The recommendations highlight specific cross-construct interactions of digital-TSPCK framework to be emphasised in initial teacher education for creating learner-centred conceptual explanations in science topics.