Schnick-Vollmer, Kathleen (2017)
Professional competence in business and economics education: Development and evaluation of a structural competency model of prospective business teachers in the domain of accounting.
Technische Universität Darmstadt
Dissertation, Erstveröffentlichung

Kurzbeschreibung (Abstract)

Because of the immense importance of professional competencies the measurement and modeling thereof has been become an important research field. In light of the (re)structuring of competence-oriented study programs, this importance can especially be expanded to the field of tertiary education. For this reason, the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research funded the research initiative "competency modeling and measurement in higher education” („Kompetenzmodellierung und Kompetenzerfassung im Hochschulsektor"; KoKoHS) in 2011. The presented joint research project (University of Frankfurt, University of Mannheim, and Technical University Darmstadt) "Modelling and Measurement of Content Knowledge and Pedagogical Content Knowledge in Business and Economic Education“ ("Modellierung und Erfassung fachwissenschaftlicher und fachdidaktischer Kompetenzen im wirtschaftspädagogischen Studium"; KoMeWP) was a part of this research initiative and focuses on the issue of examining competencies in German (n =1,158) and Austrian (n =249) business education students. The overall objective of this project was to establish a theoretical definition of the competence of prospective business and economics teachers, develop a corresponding competence structure model, and empirically support the model in terms of psychometric quality. Thus, the foundation of this PhD thesis is a conception of competence, in which competence comprises the aspects of professional knowledge (facets: knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge), self-regulation, and teaching-learningprocess-related beliefs. The prerequisite for testing the model was to first examine the included instruments individually. Initially in study 1, the instrument for measuring professional knowledge was investigated. The most important finding is the underpinning of the two-dimensional structure of professional knowledge and thus, be connected to important international research findings. Furthermore, the results indicate that the instrument has satisfactory reliabilities (content knowledge: .64; pedagogical content knowledge: .64) and good psychometric quality. In summary, the developed instrument allows one to measure in detail the professional knowledge of prospective business educators in the field of accounting/bookkeeping. In the second step, the framework conditions of professional knowledge acquisition interested. Thus, in study 2 the role of additional university course offerings (in addition to the compulsory courses), completed internships, vocational training with relevant professional reference, and attending a commercial school was examined. It turned out, that the influence of additional university offerings plays a relatively minor role. In contrast, significant influences of non-university learning opportunities (especially commercial training) on the facets of professional knowledge were found. Study 3 examined whether the previously mentioned theoretically modeled competence structure could be confirmed empirically. During these investigations, the individual instruments for measuring beliefs (self-developed) and self-regulation (adapted; Schmidt, 2009), were (re)analyzed. This resulted in suitable, high quality instruments to measure these aspects of professional competence. Overall, the results showed good model fit indices. In addition, the learning opportunities mentioned in study 2 were included in the model. Similar to the results of study 2, it was found that non-academic learning opportunities have a higher influence in terms of knowledge acquisition than taking additional university courses. It can be stated that in the context of the joint project and this thesis it has been possible, to make an important and significant contribution with satisfactory results to the very latest research field of modelling and measuring competencies.

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