Developing pedagogical content knowledge of science teachers through action research: A case study from Pakistan

One of the ways that the role of teachers has the potential to change is the expectation or the desire for teachers to become researchers. Stenhouse persuasively argued that, “it is not enough that teachers’ work should be studied: they need to study it themselves” (Stenhouse, 1975, p. 143). Since then the “teacher as researcher” movement has gained widespread support from academics as well as teachers (Elliot, 1991; Cochran & Lytle, 1993; Grundy, 1994; Kemmis & Mctaggart, 1988). Action research has been acknowledged to be one of the methods best suited to the work of practitioners such as teachers (Altrichter, Feldman, Posch & Somekh, 2008; Goswami & Stillman, 1987; Reason & Bradbury, 2001) but questions have also been raised at the efficacy of action research in the classroom (Hammersley, 2004; Radford, 2007). However, in Pakistan the teacher as researcher movement has not as yet gained currency or general acceptance. Research is considered to be a very esoteric activity that can only be undertaken by University professors or by scientists in laboratories. Hence, the concept that teachers can conduct research to improve their practice is still very new and novel. But over the last 15 years action research has been introduced in Pakistan by teacher education institutions in the private sector such as the Aga Khan University, Institute for Educational Development (AKU-IED) and Notre Dame Institute of Education (NDIE). Faculty members either from abroad or trained from outside Pakistan introduced it in the curriculum of their Masters Degree programs and also began to write about their experiences (see for example, Halai, 2004; Retallick & Mithani, 2003). But teacher education degree programs offered by public sector universities generally do not include a research component as yet, but attempts have been made to include it in the new B.Ed. and M.Ed. curriculum (HEC, 2010).

This paper attempts to understand the development of Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) as Khan a science teacher tries to both teach the topic of heat and temperature to grade nine female students of a private school, using inquiry approach and simultaneously understand his practice through action research as part of programmatic requirement at AKU-IED. In other words this study analyzes the role that action research plays in developing PCK in the teacher researcher. For this paper PCK is defined as, “The blending of content and pedagogy into an understanding of how particular topics, problems, or issues are organized, represented, and adapted to the diverse interests and abilities of learners, and presented for instruction (Shulman 1987, p.8). This implies that it encompasses both teachers’ understanding and enactment.

The first author’s 16-year experience of teaching science methods to graduate students at AKU-IED and guiding their action research studies is used to examine and reflect on the development of the science teacher’s Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK). The findings in this paper are based on the analysis undertaken by the first author who is also the supervisor of the action research study undertaken by Khan (2009) for his M.Ed. program degree requirement (see abstract of thesis in Appendix A). This analysis was undertaken with permission of Khan who is also credited with being the second author as the manuscript was shared with him and his ideas incorporated into the final paper. Of the more than two dozen M.Ed. theses supervised by the first author this was selected because Khan was engaged in researching his own practice taking the stance of “teacher as a researcher” in a science classroom at the secondary level (grade 9 and 10) rather than at the lower secondary (grades 6 to 8) and primary level (grades 3 to 5) which is generally the norm at AKU-IED. Additionally, Khan has strong content knowledge and his study was not enmeshed with issues related to the need for support in science content, which would allow for a better analysis for development of PCK. Khan uses the Lewinian (1946) concept of action research characterized by “Proceeding in a spiral of steps, each of which is composed of planning, action and the evaluation of the result of the action… the cyclic nature of this model recognizes the need for action plans to be flexible” (Kemmis, McTaggart & Retllick, 2004, p. 3). Given the newness of the role of teachers as researchers in Pakistan this paper will help to understand how action research in the science classroom can be used for professional development of teachers as related to PCK in science. This is particularly of great significance in the context of Pakistan where knowledge is considered to be “out there” for human beings to discover and not something that can be created or constructed, much more so by teachers in the classroom (Halai, 2008).