Acquiring sufficient content knowledge to lead effectively in the classroom is one of the greatest challenges for beginning teachers. National and state agencies have made significant investments in content-specific induction supports, but these efforts have not been informed by any empirical evidence regarding the topic-level content knowledge of novice teachers. Here we analyze category-level data from the Praxis Chemistry Subject Assessment from May 2006 to June 2016 to determine the areas of general strength and weakness among examinees and explore differences in categorical performance by test-taker demographics. Examinees have generally performed well in the area of “Atomic and Nuclear Structure” and appear to have struggled most in the area of “Solutions and Solubility; Acid–Base Chemistry”. Across categories, estimates of academic preparation (e.g., undergraduate GPA, undergraduate major, and graduate major) have explained a large proportion of variance in examinee performance, although demographic characteristics such as gender and race or ethnicity were more explanatory in certain categories, such as “Atomic and Nuclear Structure”. Chemistry majors were the top performers in almost all categories, and education majors underperformed, often at the level of non-STEM majors, across all topics. The findings from this work should inform both professional development efforts for beginning teachers as well as instructional reform at the undergraduate level.

中文翻译：

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准化学老师对化学的了解：实践化学学科评估类别绩效的分析

对于初任教师而言，获得足够的内容知识以有效地在课堂上学习是最大的挑战之一。国家和州机构在特定内容的归纳支持上进行了大量投资，但是这些努力尚未获得有关新手教师在主题级别的内容知识上的任何经验证据的支持。在这里，我们从实践化学学科评估中分析类别级别的数据从2006年5月至2016年6月，确定应试者的总体优势和劣势领域，并通过考生人口统计学探索分类表现的差异。考生在“原子和核结构”方面通常表现良好，而在“解决方案和溶解度”方面似乎挣扎最多。酸碱化学”。尽管在某些类别中，诸如性别，种族或族裔等人口统计特征在某些类别中更具解释性，但跨类别的学术准备（例如，本科GPA，本科专业和研究生专业）的估计值解释了考生表现的很大一部分差异。 “原子与核结构”。化学专业几乎是所有类别中表现最好的，而教育专业的表现通常不如非STEM专业，所有主题。这项工作的发现应该为初学者的专业发展工作以及本科阶段的教学改革提供信息。