TEACHERS LEARNING COMMUNITY
3.2 The types of teachers’ PCK intersection
The comparison of teachers’ initial and final content, pedagogy, culture knowledge, and PCK, and its contribution to the types of PCK intersection are shown in Table 2. There are four types of teachers’ initial and final PCK, they are 1) type 1, PCK is an intersection of content, pedagogy, and culture, 2) type 2, PCK is an intersection of content and pedagogy, 3) type 3, PCK is an intersection of content and culture, 4) type 4, PCK is not an intersection of content, pedagogy, and culture. Figure 1 presents the types of teachers’ PCK intersection.
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15% of the teachers are in type 1 of initial PCK or PCK is an intersection of content, pedagogy, and culture knowledge, while there are 35% of teachers with type 1 of final PCK. This improvement of type 1 PCK are in line with the definition of PCK by Van Driel, Verloop and De Vos (1998), Baxter and Lederman (1999), Loughran, Berry and Mulhall (2006), Krauss et al. (2008), Park and Oliver (2008), Park, et al. (2010), also Park and Chen (2012) that PCK encompasses various aspects such as pedagogy, students characteristic, content, curriculum, and context. Teacher J1 is on type 1 of initial and final PCK. Her content, pedagogy, and culture knowledge are at a low level that affects her initial PCK, but there is an improvement in content, pedagogy, and culture knowledge that also encourages her final PCK.
Table 2. The comparison of teachers’ initial and final content, pedagogy, culture knowledge, and PCK Teachers
Scores
PCK Types Content Pedagogy Culture
Pre Post Pre Post Pre Post Pre Post J1 50,0 72,9 37,2 67,9 52,5 70,0 Type 2 Type 2 J3 50,0 75,0 43,6 66,7 60,0 80,0 Type 1 Type 1 J4 58,3 75,0 34,6 65,4 75,0 80,0 Type 1 Type 1 J5 47,9 72,9 41,0 64,1 65,0 75,0 Type 1 Type 2 J6 52,1 70,8 26,9 65,4 68,0 73,0 Type 1 Type 2 J7 31,3 75,0 30,8 51,3 60,0 85,0 Type 1 Type 1 J8 58,3 79,2 44,9 62,9 67,5 87,5 Type 1 Type 1 J9 56,3 79,2 47,4 74,4 85,0 92,5 Type 1 Type 1 J10 58,3 83,3 50,0 76,9 73,0 88,0 Type 1 Type 3 J11 58,3 79,2 44,9 66,7 75,0 87,5 Type 1 Type 1 J14 60,4 79,2 55,1 75,7 77,5 87,5 Type 3 Type 3 J15 58,3 77,1 47,4 91,0 90,0 90,0 Type 3 Type 3 S1 50,0 89,6 50,0 73,1 80,0 90,0 Type 3 Type 4 S2 56,3 89,6 47,4 80,8 92,5 92,5 Type 1 Type 3 S3 64,6 85,4 48,7 85,9 78,0 83,0 Type 4 Type 2 S4 60,4 83,3 34,6 82,1 80,0 95,0 Type 3 Type 3
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Scores
PCK Types Content Pedagogy Culture
Pre Post Pre Post Pre Post Pre Post S5 50,0 89,6 47,4 84,6 75,0 85,0 Type 3 Type 2 S6 56,3 85,4 50,0 82,1 98,0 98,0 Type 3 Type 2 S7 79,2 93,8 37,2 87,2 70,0 87,5 Type 3 Type 2 S8 58,3 85,4 51,3 76,9 67,5 82,5 Type 1 Type 3
Figure 1. The types of teachers’ PCK intersection; (a) type 1, PCK is an intersection of content, pedagogy, and culture, (b) type 2, PCK is an intersection of content and pedagogy, c) type 3, PCK is an intersection of
content and culture, (d) type 4, PCK is not an intersection of content, pedagogy, and culture.
Teacher J1’s PCK is strongly influenced by content, pedagogy, and culture knowledge. Furthermore, the seven teachers in type 1 of final PCK are who were in types 2 and 4 of initial PCK. The type 1 PCK is the most ideal type because PCK is a blend or unification of content, pedagogy, and culture knowledge. The culture knowledge is also prior knowledge that supports learning and becoming an inseparable source of knowledge of material content.
55% of teachers are in type 2 of initial PCK or PCK is an intersection of content and pedagogy knowledge, while there are 30% of teachers are in type 2 of final PCK. This finding conforms the definition of PCK by Shulman (1986), Wilson, Shulman and Richert (1988), Glatthorn (1990), and Magnusson, Krajcik and Borko (1999) that PCK is an intersection of content and pedagogy knowledge, and it can be interpreted also as
P K
B
P K
B
P K
B
K P
B
a. b. c. d.
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knowledge that results from a transformation of other domains of knowledge signals that it is more than the sum of its parts, more than simply fitting together bits of knowledge from different domains. The high score of culture knowledge evidently have not support the PCK improvement. Two teachers switch from type 2 to type 1, their PCK is an intersection of content, pedagogy, and culture knowledge. This transition demonstrates that culture can encourage teachers to combine their knowledge. Three teachers switch from type 2 to type 4 of final PCK or PCK is not an intersection of content, pedagogy, and culture knowledge. These three teachers have high scores of content, pedagogy and culture knowledge, but this high knowledge does not encourage PCK improvement. There is a non-linear increase in content, pedagogy, and culture knowledge with PCK improvements. The content knowledge that includes facts, concepts, principles, laws, and theories, taught by teachers through various strategies that can help students learn and solve the physics problems. Thus, teachers will consider and apply conceptual knowledge, knowledge of the material structure, and knowledge of the specific content orientation when teaching (Gess-Newsome, 1999). Culture knowledge is not a part of the PCK compiler because in carrying out its duties as teachers, they perform representations of facts, concepts, principles, laws and theories in ways of presenting and formulating concepts in order to be understood without using culture as one of the strategy to help students.
There is one teacher, S3, with type 3 of initial PCK or PCK is an intersection of content and culture knowledge.
This intersection reflects on language, culture, gender, motivation, or knowledge and skills that also influence student learning activities. PCK is about the importance of engaging learning activities with culture as students’ prior knowledge. Teacher S3 is a senior teacher with more than twenty years of teaching experience and from a culture group that very obey their customs. Teacher S3 has already integrated culture in his physics teaching, by using examples of traditional units and measurement, and traditional medicine that are in line with the principles of science. However, the strategy of culture integration into learning activities has not been precisely correct, because teacher S3 only chose such examples when students find the difficulties, without a careful planning in lesson plan. There is only one teacher, teacher S1, with the type 3 of final PCK. The teacher S1 realized the importance of combining learning activities with culture as the most appropriate medium to facilitate student learning.
There are 35% of teachers with type 4 of initial PCK or PCK is not an intersection of content, pedagogy, and culture knowledge, while 30% of teachers are in type 4 of final PCK. There is a decrease in the number of teachers who are in type 4 who switch to other types of PCK. Most teachers switch to type 1 or PCK is an intersection of content, pedagogy, and culture knowledge. Contrary to the idea of PCK is a combination of content and pedagogy knowledge (Shulman, 1986; Wilson, Shulman & Richert, 1988; Glatthorn, 1990;
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Magnusson, Krajcik & Borko, 1999), and PCK is an intersection of content, pedagogy, and culture knowledge (Van Driel, Verloop & De Vos, 1998; Baxter & Lederman, 1999; Loughran, Berry & Mulhall, 2006; Krauss, et al., 2008; Park & Oliver, 2008; Park, et al., 2010; Park & Chen, 2012 ), each content, pedagogy, and culture knowledge did not directly unite the teachers’ PCK. PCK has not been structured in teacher knowledge and is described as an intersection of subject matter, pedagogy, and context (Gess-Newsome, 1999; Rollnick, et al., 2008). When teachers do their teaching activities in classroom, the each PCK components are only integrated when teachers need to create effective learning in the classroom. The content, pedagogy, and culture knowledge develop independently and can be integrated at a later stage. However, teachers may never see the importance of an integration of this knowledge and they are less prepared to integrate the PCK components.