This article provides some details on the research questions in connection with the epistemic interests of our investigation. The questions, basically, refer to the evaluation of pre-service teacher students’ pedagogical diagnostic competences and to the competence model needed for the evaluation as well as to the impact of feedback on students’ competence development. Here, pedagogical diagnostic competence is conceived as a primary competence of all kinds of teaching, which enables professionals to determine the context factors (situations, processes, effects) and their complex interdependencies within the contexts of schooling and classroom activities. Further purposes of the development of the competence model aim at making a difference between more or less professional diagnostic competences and clarifying the borderlines of competence dimensions as defined within psychometric and cognitive psychological competence test models. The authors conclude the article by identifying some overarching goals of the research project, i.e. to establish connections with different theories and discourses and to outline measures of enhancing professional diagnoses that are systematically derived from the research findings.
