Investigating the effectiveness of a blended professional development intervention in improving the teaching of Physical Sciences: A study of novice teachers in South African rural schools

Abstract

Professional development is a cornerstone in shaping the teaching practice of novice teachers as well as those teachers who are teaching subjects they are not qualified to teach (off-field teachers). However, such support is scarce in rural schools because of the shortage of qualified teachers and geographical constraints, leaving teachers with two options, either to sink or swim, particularly in getaway subjects such as Physical Sciences. This is possible because Physical Sciences has fewer teachers graduating each year and is most likely being taught by off-field and novice teachers due to the lack of desired posts in other schools besides those in rural areas. As such, a blended professional development intervention for Physical Sciences teachers in a circuit consisting of rural schools in Mpumalanga province was administered by another study (referred to as larger study). This province was selected because of the persisting poor performance in Physical Sciences. The intervention was blended because it consisted of online and face-to-face teacher workshops, using the training model from the transmissive category of professional development aimed at transmitting information. The blended nature of the professional development intervention also emanates from the utilisation of WhatsApp, an online tool, to establish a community of practice, promoting collaboration amongst teachers and facilitators. The aim of the intervention was to shape the teaching practices of the Physical Sciences teachers in the circuit. It was also aimed at helping the teachers improve the performance of their learners by sharing with them skills they can use to prepare their learners for examinations. However, research has shown that professional development initiatives tend to fail to meet their intended objectives, exacerbating the need for its effectiveness to be continuously determined. Given this background, this study examined the effectiveness of the intervention in shaping the teaching practice of novice teachers only due to the challenges they experience as outlined above. The novice teachers were defined as teachers with less than five years of experience teaching Physical Sciences, inclusive of off-field teachers. A total of three novice teachers, out of thirteen Physical Sciences teachers, were available in the circuit and participated in the intervention. Two of these novice teachers (Mr Jones and Mr Smith) were not qualified to teach Physical Sciences unlike Mr Brown. In addition, Mr Smith has been teaching Mathematics for sixteen years and had only two years’ experience in teaching Physical Sciences. Page | XXI To determine the effectiveness of the intervention, the following research questions were answered: (1) What are the teaching and learning needs of novice Physical Sciences teachers in the rural schools of Mpumalanga province? (2) What are the views of the novice Physical Sciences teachers about the effectiveness of the blended professional development intervention workshops? (3) In what ways have the teaching practices of Physical Sciences novice teachers changed after participating in a blended professional development intervention? (4) How were the identified teaching and learning needs of novice Physical Sciences teachers in the rural schools of Mpumalanga addressed by the blended professional development intervention? As such, two lessons per teachers were observed before and after they participated in the intervention. Semi- structured interviews were conducted with the teachers individually before and after participating in the intervention. Furthermore, field notes were written down during the intervention workshops. Triangulation of data methods and data sources (all collected data) was used to analyse the data in order to determine the teaching and learning challenges of these novice teachers as well as how the identified needs were addressed. The data was organised into two themes, classroom and professional efficacy, sub-categories of teacher efficacy which refer to teachers’ own set of beliefs about their capability to successfully perform tasks related to teaching. To determine the views of the teachers about the effectiveness of the blended intervention workshops, patterns from the interviews were sought and categorised into themes. Triangulation of data sources was utilised to strengthen the reliability and validity of the emerging findings by drawing mainly on the written field notes as well as lesson observations collected before and after the intervention. To determine ways in which the teaching practice of these three novice teachers changed, triangulation of frameworks was used to categorise and analyse all the lesson observations. The frameworks used were the knowledge building approach from the pedagogical links making (PLM) framework and semantic codes from the legitimation code theory (LCT). Their lesson observations before the intervention were compared with those conducted after the intervention to note changes, or lack thereof, in the teaching practice of these teachers. Using the described analysis process, this study found that the blended professional development intervention failed to shape the teaching practice of these teachers. This failure was primarily the result of poor design of the blended professional development intervention. For example, insufficient time was allocated to some topics that were identified as challenging by the teachers. Page | XXII Additionally, those topics that the majority of the teachers found challenging and needed professional development on were not addressed in the intervention workshops. Furthermore, there was poor attendance in online workshops perpetuated by the lack of active engagement as well as lack of sufficient digital tools, particularly internet data to access the workshops. Moreover, there was lack of individual support in online workshops, which has a potential to promote opportunities of assistance tailor made to the needs of the teachers through coaching and/or mentoring. Although the intervention did not succeed in shaping the teaching practices of these novice Physical Sciences teachers, it was able to assist them in improving the performance of their learners. This success was because of the explicit focus on this aspect, whereby the strategies to prepare learners to pass the examination were shared with the teachers per topic. Due to improved learner performance, this study noted a newfound confidence in these teachers, particularly Messrs Jones and Brown, resulting in an improvement in their classroom and professional efficacy. As such, this study recommends that professional development initiatives should consider learner performance as a separate entity that requires explicit focus instead of treating it as a byproduct of improved teaching practice. Furthermore, blended professional development interventions must be carefully designed to shape teaching practice by focusing on developing teachers’ subject content knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge. It must be informed by the needs and goals of all education stakeholders, be of long duration - not less than twenty hours of contact time, encourage active engagement, provide individual support, make provisions for required digital tools, promote active collaboration and it must be sustainable. However, Mr Smith did not see any improvement in the performance of his learners. This study attributed this to the attitude Mr Smith has about learners who can take Physical Sciences, thereby affecting his teaching practice. Furthermore, he is not qualified to teach Physical Sciences and showed lack of competence in teaching the Chemistry component of Physical Sciences compared to the other teachers. Therefore, great care should be taken in professional development initiatives to ease such attitudes and provide the required support to all novice teachers with distinct backgrounds.