Abstract German science teachers often teach interdisciplinary science without being specifically qualified for interdisciplinary science teaching. Instead, they study one or two science-subjects out of biology, chemistry, and physics. Hence, science teachers need out-of-field teaching expertise within the sciences for interdisciplinary science teaching in Germany. We developed a questionnaire on self-rated content knowledge based on an interdisciplinary science curriculum for lower secondary education. Self-rated content knowledge is investigated as it is a proxy for actual content knowledge and a part of science academic self-concept. We surveyed 312 German pre-service science teachers to find out, to what extent they feel prepared to teach science interdisciplinarily. We confirmed the reliability and the validity of the questionnaire for self-rated content knowledge. We identified three disciplinary science-subject-related factors corresponding to biology, chemistry, and physics in a confirmatory factor analysis. Pre-service teachers, who studied different disciplinary science-subjects varied in their self-rated content knowledge for those three factors. They rated their content knowledge the highest for the subject they studied. Pre-service biology teachers’ self-rated content knowledge related to non-studied science-subjects was the lowest compared to all other groups. Our hypothesis that self-rated content knowledge for out-of-field science-subjects is more challenging for higher than for lower school years was only partially confirmed. Instead, disciplinary educated pre-service teachers displayed a more differentiated pattern depending on the subjects and school years. The paper argues for further developing interdisciplinary science teacher education in and beyond Germany.
Schuster et al. (Sat,) studied this question.