The present study reports on the development, structure, and associations with practice for a new measure of preschool teachers' knowledge about language and vocabulary development and how to support this development in the classroom. Results from item response theory models with responses from a sample of 248 preschool teachers indicated that four scales measuring pedagogical content knowledge and content knowledge for vocabulary and language, respectively, had adequate psychometric characteristics. Confirmatory factor analyses further supported a four‐factor structure, although all scales were correlated. In an overlapping sample of 94 preschool teachers, preliminary investigation of associations between knowledge and teachers' self‐reported practices, observed instructional time allocation, and the quality of classroom language environments were mixed. Results indicate promise for the measure yet add to prior research suggesting that connections between knowledge and practice are highly complex and likely interwoven with many other influences on instructional decision‐making in early childhood classrooms.

中文翻译：

---

学龄前老师的语言和词汇知识：一项新措施的发展和预测联系

本研究报告了学前教师关于语言和词汇发展以及如何在课堂上支持这种发展的知识的一种新方法，即发展，结构以及与实践的联系。项目反应理论模型的结果与来自248名学前教师的样本的反应表明，分别测量词汇和语言的教学内容知识和内容知识的四个量表具有足够的心理计量学特征。验证性因素分析进一步支持了四因素结构，尽管所有量表都相关。在94名学龄前教师的重叠样本中，对知识与教师自我报告的行为之间的关联进行了初步调查，观察了教学时间分配，课堂语言环境的质量参差不齐。结果表明该措施有望实现，但又增加了先前的研究，表明知识与实践之间的联系非常复杂，并且可能与对幼儿课堂教学决策的许多其他影响交织在一起。