Examining the interaction between in-service Physical Science teachers’ teaching orientations and Teacher Professional Knowledge (TPK) domains

Abstract

This doctoral thesis reports on a study that sought to examine the interaction between science teachers’ science teaching orientations and their teacher professional knowledge domains. This study took place in three schools in the Zomba Urban Education District, Malawi, from which five experienced science teachers were drawn. Specifically, the five teachers were teaching two core science subjects: Physics and Chemistry. Even though there are several definitions of science teaching orientations in the literature, for the purposes of this study, I used the Friedrichsen, Van Driel, and Abell (2011) definition of science teaching orientations. Aligned with this definition of science teaching orientations, I explored the teachers’ beliefs about goals and purposes of science teaching, teachers’ beliefs about teaching and learning of science and teachers’ beliefs about the nature of science. Then I explored the extent to which STOs influence classroom enactment of content knowledge, pedagogical knowledge, assessment knowledge, curriculum knowledge and knowledge of students during instruction. Since the phenomenon is tacit and elusive, I gathered data using a variety of tools. I used semi-structured interviews as well as a questionnaire to gather data on the three dimensions of teaching orientations. Specifically, I used semi-structured interviews to gather data on teachers’ beliefs about the goals and purposes of science teaching and teachers’ beliefs about teaching and learning of science. I used a questionnaire to gather data on the third dimension of teaching orientations: beliefs about the nature of science. To gather data that would help me understand the interaction between science teaching orientations and teacher professional knowledge domains, I used classroom observations and teachers’ tasks–Content Representations (CoRes). CoRes and classroom observations complemented one another. I also used unstructured post-observation interviews in order to get an in-depth understanding of the reasons for teachers’ decisions that I had observed during instruction. I used two approaches to analyse the data set that I had gathered. I used a deductive analysis approach to analyse interviews, questionnaires as well as classroom observation data to determine the teaching orientations that science teachers held. This was achieved by comparing the data against predetermined categories from the literature. An inductive analysis approach was used to analyse data mainly from classroom observations, CoRes, and post-observation interviews, to determine the interactions between science teaching orientations and teacher professional knowledge domains. Deductive data analysis showed that teachers’ beliefs are complex. Teachers had multiple goals and purposes of science teaching. Further, their beliefs about the teaching and learning of science were moderately sophisticated and appeared to be compartmentalised. Their beliefs about the nature of science were sophisticated however, these could be not be made explicit during instruction. Inductive analysis, on the other hand, revealed that STOs interact with TPK domains through active engagement with the various sub-domains of TPK. This is exemplified in the three main claims:(1) that the goals and purposes of science teaching interact with teacher professional knowledge domains; (2) beliefs about teaching and learning of science interact with teachers’ professional knowledge domains, and (3) beliefs about the nature of science do not interact with teacher professional knowledge unless the teachers are teaching a topic that relates to the nature of science itself. Beyond these primary findings, I also identified the following: (1) that there is uniform interaction between STOs and TPK domains, (2) that the interaction between STOs and TPK domains is influenced by several factors (3) that there is apparent lack of interaction between the items on the beliefs about teaching and learning of science schedule. These contributions may be useful when developing PD or initial teacher programmes. I discuss these findings and their implications both on theory and teacher training in the last chapter of this research report