Examining the components of pedagogical content knowledge and the construction of physics teachers’ classroom practices
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Date
2023
Authors
Hlaela, Nthoesele
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of the Free State
Abstract
Research considers teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) as knowledge that differentiates a teacher from a subject specialist. PCK is needed to help the teacher transform the knowledge of content to be teachable to students. Research has shown that when the PCK of teachers is not well established, classroom practice is jeopardized. The quality of teaching Science is a concern in many countries including Lesotho. There have been inconsistent findings on the large-scale studies to relate PCK and classroom instructional practices, thus the call for more studies that explore the relation of PCK and classroom practices so as to understand the role of PCK in teachers’ classroom actions. This study investigated the components of PCK that Physics teachers in Lesotho possess and how they draw on the components of PCK to construct their classroom practices in a variety of secondary school contexts. The PCK components were examined across Physics teaching as domain PCK while the manifestations of PCK were explored in the teaching of a specific topic in Physics, “the effects of force”. The Consensus Model of PCK was used as a conceptual framework guiding this study. This Model was adapted to incorporate the Model of Magnussonet al. (1999) to explore the PCK components and to portray the manifestations of PCK in classroom practices. The Consensus Model consists of five knowledge bases termed PCK components in this study being: assessment knowledge (AK), pedagogical knowledge (PK), content knowledge (CK), knowledge of students (KS) and curricular knowledge (CuK). This model allowed the researcher to explore both the knowledge on-action and the knowledge in-action, which are helpful in differentiating what the teacher knows about teaching Physics and how the teacher actually teaches Physics in the classroom. This study followed an explanatory sequential mixed method design where data were collected in two phases. In Phase one, a quantitative part, a paper-and pencil PCK test was administered to 87 qualified Physics teachers teaching the last two years of secondary education. The responses were scored using a rubric that was in line with the five PCK components, which were rated on a four point scale from 1 to 4, where 1 indicated undeveloped PCK and 4 indicated developed PCK. Data were analysed using the Extended Rasch Model and SPSS. Phase two, the qualitative part, involved four case teachers selected among the 87 teachers. These were purposively selected teachers with the highest and lowest scores from the PCK test. The qualitative data were collected through different methods. The audio-recorded pre-observation interviews, the video recorded classroom observations and the audio-recorded post-observation interviews. Data were analysed by presenting the narratives of the four case teachers. The findings revealed that the Physics teachers’ PCK was rather low since the person measures ranked in the interval −1.37𝑙𝑜𝑔𝑖𝑡<𝑃𝐶𝐾<+0.95𝑙𝑜𝑔𝑖𝑡 with the PCK components of CK and KS being the least developed. It was also found that the PCK components measured through the PCK test did not show the same level of development as the components manifested in classroom practices and this study argues that contextual factors shape classroom practices construction more than pedagogical content knowledge of the teacher. This study recommends the involvement of Physics teachers in regular refresher workshops that are meant to engage teachers in reflection on what they know about the topics they teach, focusing on different PCK components.
Description
Thesis (Ph.D.(Education Studies))--University of the Free State, 2023
Keywords
professional knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge, classroom practices, PCK components, knowledge on-action, physics teaching