Analysis of Middle School Science Teachers' Orientations toward Teaching Science based Instructional Strategies

Abstract

The purposes of this study were to analyze instructional strategies of science teachers, science teachers' orientations toward science teaching by the reason which instructional strategies was used in middle school science classes, and the relations among PCK elements for suggesting a direction of improvement of PKC models. For this purpose, we selected three of middle school teachers as participants who had various teaching experience periods. Semi-structured interviews and classroom observations were gathered for data. From the data collected, we analyzed the type of instructional strategies of science teachers. On the base of these, we identified characteristics of the teachers' orientations toward teaching science. From the reason that instructional strategies was used, we could ascertain that knowledge of science curriculum and knowledge of students' learning which was component of PCK crucially affected instructional strategies of science teachers. Therefore we assured that analysis of practical instructional strategies of science teachers that showed through science instruction was the most effective method that could find out science teacher's orientation of teaching science internalized, and that knowledge of science curriculum and knowledge of students' learning was the basic component of PCK that formed instructional strategies of science teachers. On the basis of the result, a necessity for improvement of PCK models was presented.