Available online at www.sciencedirect.com
ScienceDirect Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 191 (2015) 1838 – 1842
WCES 2014
Preservice Teachers’ Perceptions About Teacher Knowledge Hulya Kilic a* a
Yeditepe University, Mathematics Education Department GSF 517, Atasehir, Istanbul, 34755, Turkey
Abstract Teacher knowledge involves various knowledge domains such as content knowledge, pedagogical knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge that are required for teaching. Teacher education programs should provide opportunities for improvement of professional knowledge and skills for preservice teachers. Hence, the aim of this study was to determine the level of preservice teachers’ perception about teacher knowledge and investigate how it differs with respect to some variables such as gender, department, class, academic achievement and career planning. A total of 315 preservice teachers (109 male, 206 female) from four different universities participated in this study. The data was collected through a 24-item Perception About Teacher Knowledge Scale. The reliability coefficient of the scale was found to be .93. The factor analysis revealed that teacher knowledge can be explained by five knowledge domains: Pedagogical Knowledge, Pedagogical Content Knowledge, Curriculum Knowledge, Content Knowledge and Knowledge of Students. The findings indicated that preservice teachers’ perception about their own teacher knowledge is high and that perception varies with respect to preservice teachers’ class, career planning and their perception about the quality of the undergraduate program that they enrolled in. © byby Elsevier Ltd.Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license © 2015 2014The TheAuthors. Authors.Published Published Elsevier (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the Organizing Committee of WCES 2014. Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the Organizing Committee of WCES 2014 Keywords: Preservice teachers; teacher knowledge scale; pedagogical content knowledge
1. Introduction Teachers should be equipped with various knowledge and skills for effective teaching. The bunch of such knowledge and skills is named as teacher knowledge (Fennema & Franke, 1992) or professional knowledge of teachers (Tamir, 1991) or teacher proficiencies (Turkish Ministry of National Education [MEB], 2008). In this article the term teacher knowledge is used to indicate those specific knowledge and skills.
* Hulya Kilic. Tel.: +90-216-578-0000 / 3006 E-mail address:
[email protected]
1877-0428 © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the Organizing Committee of WCES 2014 doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2015.04.306
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Shulman (1987) proposed seven knowledge domains that teachers should possess. Those knowledge domains are subject-matter knowledge, general pedagogical knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge, knowledge of learners and learning, curriculum knowledge, knowledge of educational contexts, and knowledge of educational philosophies, goals, and objectives. Although other scholars classified those knowledge domains differently, they agreed upon on what knowledge and skills teachers should have for effective teaching. Furthermore, these domains are compatible with what Ministry of Education (MEB) accepts as the proficiency domains for teachers. According to the MEB (2008) there are six proficiency areas for teachers: personal and professional values and professional development, knowledge of students, learning and teaching process, monitoring and evaluating learning and development, relationships between school-family and society and knowledge of curriculum. In the MEB report, the descriptions of the proficiencies for learning and teaching process and knowledge of students indicates what Shulman (1987) defined as general pedagogical knowledge and knowledge of learners and learning or what MEB indicated as relationships between school-family and society corresponds with Shulman’s definition of knowledge of educational philosophies, goals, and objectives. Although content knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge are not apparent in MEB report, those skills are defined under other documents specifically written for teaching a particular subject (MEB, 2008). Briefly, what MEB proposed as teacher proficiencies are aligned with the criteria and expectations that are emerged from the studies about teaching and teacher knowledge. Although teacher knowledge is likely to improve through experience in the field (Philipp et al., 2007), undergraduate programs for teaching are vital to provide opportunities for preservice teachers to get the basis of that knowledge. Some studies revealed that preservice teachers have lack of content knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge and knowledge of students (Kilic, 2011; Morris, Hiebert, & Spitzer, 2009) while others proposed that preservice teachers can improve such knowledge even if the undergraduate programs and courses designed in a way to support that improvement (Ball, 1991; Saka & Saka, 2006). In the methods course and during the school experience and teaching practice, preservice teachers have opportunity to develop some activities, do microteaching and observe experienced teachers in the field. In these courses if the preservice teachers are also given opportunity to prepare lesson plans and activities and perform them in the school settings, to prepare assessment tools, apply them and evaluate the results and to analyze students’ difficulties and misconceptions, their pedagogical content knowledge is likely to improve. To measure teachers’ level of teacher knowledge both quantitative and qualitative data collection tools should be used. Although measuring teachers’ perceptions about their teacher knowledge may not reflect their actual knowledge level, it provides a basis to evaluate the effectiveness of teacher education process and to monitor the programs and the course contents. Therefore, the aim of this study was to develop a scale to measure preservice teachers’ perceptions about teacher knowledge and investigate how that level differs with respect to some variables. 2. Methodology In this study survey method was used to develop a scale. A questionnaire was prepared to collect some demographic information about the participants. A total of 315 preservice teachers (109 male (35%) and 206 female (65%)) from four different universities participated in this study. The distribution of the participants in terms of the programs they enrolled was as follows: 26 of them from Computer Ed. & Instructional Tech (CEIT) (8%), 13 of them from Science Ed. (SE) (4%), 17 of them from Teaching English (EFL) (5%), 47 of them from Elementary Math (EM) (15%), 15 of them from Teaching Physics (TP) (5%), 24 of them from Teaching Chemistry (TC) (8%) 73 of them from Secondary Math (SM) (23%), 22 of them from Guidance and Counselling (GC) (7%), 48 of them from Primary Ed. (PE) (15%) and 30 of them from Turkish Literature (TL) (10%). A 24-item scale was developed to measure preservice teachers’ perception about teacher knowledge. The issues identified in MEB (2008) report for teacher proficiencies and studies on teacher knowledge were taken into account to prepare the scale. The items were related to pedagogical knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge, curriculum knowledge, content knowledge and knowledge of students. The items were 5-point Likert-type such that preservice teachers indicated whether they “Strictly Disagree”, “Disagree”, “Neither Disagree Nor Agree”, “Agree” or “Strictly Agree” with the items. The questionnaire consisted of 14 items that participants either gave short answers or chose among the given options. The reliability and validity of the scale were investigated. For content and face validity, experts’ opinion were asked, for construct validity factor analysis was done. Two experts agreed on the content of the scale. For the factor analysis and reliability, a special statistical program was used. That program was also used to determine whether
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scale scores differ with respect to some variables. 3. Results 3.1. Scale The Perception About Teacher Knowledge Scale was a 24-item and 5-point Likert-type scale such that all the items were written as positive statements and the points assigned for options were gradually increased from “Strictly Disagree” to “Strictly Agree”. Hence, the minimum score for the scale is 24 and maximum score is 120. The perception level is identified in terms of the scores obtained from the scale as follows: if the score is between 24 and 43 points then very low level, if it varies between 44 and 63 points then low level, if it varies between 64 and 83 points then moderate level, if it varies between 84 and 103 points then high level and if it varies between 104 and 120 points then very high level. In this study, the minimum score obtained was 24, the maximum score was 120, the mean score was 93.04 and standard deviation was 11.60. The mean score revealed that the preservice teachers’ perception about their own teacher knowledge was high. In terms of the means of each item, the mean of item M2 (I have a rich repertoire of teaching strategies.) was the lowest (3.29) while the mean of item M12 (I give feedback about the assessment results to the students.) was the highest (4.24). The reliability coefficient of the scale was .93 and this value is accepted to be high (Miller, Linn, & Gronlund, 2009). Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) and Barlett sphericity tests were held to check its appropriateness for factor analysis. The KMO value was found to be .92 and Barlett test result was significant ( F 2 3950,584 , df=276, p=.000). Then the factor analysis was held. The factor analysis revealed that there are five components of teacher knowledge as shown in Table 1. Table 1. Factor Loadings for the Perception About Teacher Knowledge Scale 1st Factor 2nd Factor Pedagogical Knowledge Pedagogical Content Knowledge Item no Item loading Item no Item loading
3rd Factor Curriculum Knowledge
4th Factor Content Knowledge
5th Factor Knowledge of Students
Item no
Item loading
Item no
Item loading
Item no
Item loading
1
.782
4
.540
14
.763
18
.830
21
.697
2
.778
5
.610
15
.723
19
.749
22
.767
3
.615
6
.702
16
.757
20
.631
23
.759
7
.707
17
.803
24
.710
8
.671
9
.626
10
.627
11
.565
12
.586
13
.521
Under each factor, the load of item was greater than .50 which supports the reliability of factor analysis (Çokluk, Şekercioğlu, & Büyüköztürk, 2012). Furthermore, the reliability analysis of each factor was done. The reliability of each factor was as follows: .76, .90, .75, .84 and .84. These values support the reliability of factor analysis and the construct validity of the scale (Çokluk, Şekercioğlu, & Büyüköztürk, 2012). After the total variance explained by each factor was analyzed it was found that Pedagogical Content Knowledge factor explained 39.72% of variance and the others explained approximately either 7% or 5%. According to some researchers such a large difference between the variance of the factors indicates that the scale has a single factor (Çokluk, Şekercioğlu, & Büyüköztürk, 2012) but other researchers think that the difference can be ignored because the reliability of each factor is greater than .70 (Durmuş, Yurtkoru, & Çinko, 2011). Therefore, this scale was accepted to have five factors.
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3.2. Perception of Teacher Knowledge Preservice teachers’ perception about their teacher knowledge was investigated in terms of their gender, department, class, academic achievement, career planning and their thoughts about the quality of undergraduate program that they enrolled in. The findings showed that preservice teachers’ perception differs with respect to their class and their thoughts about their program. Senior preservice teachers’ perception was higher than junior preservice teachers’. Preservice teachers who think that their program contributes to their professional development had higher perception than the others. Each factor of the scale was also analyzed in terms of the variables identified above. The mean score for each factor was found. The highest mean was obtained for Pedagogical Content Knowledge (4.05) and the lowest mean was obtained for Pedagogical Knowledge (3.56). Preservice teachers’ perception about pedagogical knowledge varied with respect to their gender and department. Female preservice teachers’ perception was higher than male preservice teachers’ and preservice teachers enrolled in Teaching Elementary Mathematics and Teaching English programs have higher perception than the ones enrolled in Primary Education. Preservice teachers’ perception about pedagogical content knowledge varied with respect to their department and class. The perception of preservice teachers enrolled in Teaching Elementary Mathematics was higher than the ones enrolled in Computer Education and Instructional Technologies and senior preservice teachers’ perception was higher than junior preservice teachers’. Preservice teachers’ perception of curriculum knowledge varied with respect to their gender, department and class. Female preservice teachers’ perception was higher than male preservice teachers’ and preservice teachers enrolled in Teaching Secondary Mathematics has higher perception than the ones enrolled in Computer Education and Instructional Technologies and senior preservice teachers’ perception was higher than sophomore preservice teachers. Preservice teachers’ perception of content knowledge only varied with respect to their department. The perception of preservice teachers enrolled in Teaching Elementary Mathematics was higher than the ones enrolled in Primary Education. There were no significant differences between the preservice teachers in terms of their perceptions of knowledge of students. 4. Discussion and Conclusion The findings revealed that the items of the scale were categorized with respect to the knowledge domains that constitute teacher knowledge. Furthermore, the variance explained by pedagogical content knowledge factor was the highest. This fact indicates that pedagogical content knowledge is a fundamental component of teacher knowledge. The studies on teacher knowledge also support the fact that pedagogical content knowledge involves in knowledge of pedagogy, content, curriculum, student and other educational issues (An, Kulm, & Wu, 2004; Ball, Thames, & Phelps, 2008). Although that knowledge develops through experience in teaching, preservice teachers have high perception about it. This can be interpreted in two ways: 1) Teacher education programs involves various courses and provides opportunities for professional development, 2) Preservice teachers possess high self-efficacy beliefs about their knowledge and skills. Studies with preservice teachers revealed that although preservice teachers have high self-efficacy about themselves (Diker-Coşkun & Kılıç, 2010; Kan, 2007), they are unable to transfer their knowledge into practice and even lack of content and pedagogical knowledge (Even & Tirosh, 1995; Kahyaoğlu & Yavuzer, 2004). If preservice teachers’ perceptions were high because of the programs they enrolled in, it can be interpreted as an instance for the quality of teaching education in Turkey. However, not only perceptions but also objective assessment of teacher knowledge is required to decide both the quality of teacher education programs and the level of preservice teachers’ teacher knowledge. The scores of the scale were analyzed in terms of some variable and significant differences were found in terms of preservice teachers’ class and their thoughts about the quality of teacher education programs. As the class level gets higher preservice teachers take more courses and have more experiences in the field. Therefore the level of their perceptions was higher than the ones in the lower classes. When the preservice teachers think that they have enough courses and experiences in the program they feel more competent. Therefore, their scores were higher than the others who did not think so. Analysis of each factor with respect to the same variables indicates similar results. In addition, female preservice teachers’ perceptions of pedagogical and curriculum knowledge were higher than male preservice teachers. The items related with those domains were related with individual effort. Therefore, such difference can be explained as females put more effort for their profession development than males. Finally, the differences between departments can be explained by the differences in their curriculum. Although there are some common courses that are required to be taught in each teacher education programs, number of required courses and elective courses and their contents may differ. Briefly,
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Perception About Teacher Knowledge Scale can be used to collect information how preservice teachers perceive themselves in terms of knowledge domains that constitute teacher knowledge. However, to decide actual level of teacher knowledge, other quantitative and qualitative data collection tools should be used with the scale. Because pedagogical content knowledge is prominent factor emerged from the analysis, the scale can be also used to measure perceptions about pedagogical content knowledge. References An, S., Kulm, G., & Wu, Z. (2004). The pedagogical content knowledge of middle school mathematics teachers in China and the U.S. Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education, 7, 145–172. Ball, D. L. (1991). Research on teaching mathematics: Making subject-matter knowledge part of the equation. In J. E. Brophy (Ed.), Advances in research on teaching: Vol. 2. Teachers’ knowledge of subject-matter as it relates to their teaching practice (pp. 1–48). Greenwich, CT: JAI Press. Ball, D. L., Thames, M. H., & Phelps, G. (2008). Content knowledge for teaching: What makes it special? Journal of Teacher Education, 59, 389–407. Çokluk, Ö., Şekercioğlu, G., & Büyüköztürk, Ş. (2012). Sosyal bilimler için çok değişkenli istatistik SPSS ve LISREL uygulamaları. Ankara: Pegem Akademi. Diker-Coşkun, Y., & Kılıç, H. (2010). Öğretmen adaylarının özyetkinliklerinin çeşitli değişkenler açısından incelenmesi. 1. Ulusal Eğitim Programları ve Öğretim Kongresi, Balıkesir. Durmuş, B., Yurtkoru, E. S., & Çinko, M. (2011). Sosyal bilimlerde SPSS’le veri analizi. İstanbul: Beta. Even, R., & Tirosh, D. (1995). Subject-matter knowledge and knowledge about students as sources of teacher presentations of the subject-matter. Educational Studies in Mathematics, 29, 1–20. Fennema, E., & Franke, M. L. (1992). Teachers’ knowledge and its impact. In D. A. Grouws (Ed.), Handbook of research on mathematics teaching and learning (pp. 147–164). New York: Macmillan. Kahyaoğlu, H., & Yavuzer, Y. (2004). Öğretmen adaylarının ilköğretim 5. sınıf fen bilgisi dersindeki ünitelere ilişkin bilgi düzeyleri. İlköğretimOnline, 3(2), 26–34. Kan, A. (2007). Öğretmen adaylarının eğitme-öğretme özyetkinliğine yönelik ölçek geliştirme ve eğitme-öğretme özyetkinlikleri açısından değerlendirilmesi. Mersin Üniversitesi Eğitim Fakültesi Dergisi, 3 (1), 35–50. Kilic, H. (2011). Preservice secondary mathematics teachers’ knowledge of students. Turkish Online Journal of Qualitative Inquiry, 2, 17-35. Miller, M., D., Linn, R. L., & Gronlund, N. E. (2009). Measurement and assessment in teaching. New Jersey: Pearson. Milli Eğitim Bakanlığı (MEB). (2008). Öğretmenlik mesleği genel yeterlilikleri. Öğretmen Yetiştirme ve Eğitimi Genel Müdürlüğü: Ankara. Morris, A. K., Hiebert, J., & Spitzer, S. M. (2009). Mathematical knowledge for teaching in planning and evaluating instruction: What can preservice teachers learn? Journal for Research in Mathematics Education, 40, 491–529. Philipp, R. A., Ambrose, R., Lamb, L. L. C., Sowder, J. T., Schappelle, B. P., Sowder, L., Thanheiser, E., & Chauvot, J. (2007). Effects of early field experiences on the mathematical content knowledge and beliefs of prospective elementary school teachers: An experimental study. Journal for Research in Mathematics Education, 38, 438–476. Saka, A. Z., & Saka, A. (2006). An integrative model for preparing effective teachers. Eurasian Journal of Educational Research, 23, 168–176. Shulman, L. S. (1987). Knowledge and teaching: Foundations of the new reform. Harvard Educational Review, 57, 1–22. Tamir, P. (1991). Professional and personal knowledge of teachers and teacher educators. Teaching and Teacher Education, 7, 263–268.
