Chatree Faikhamta's Action Planner

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Chatree Faikhamta, Kasetsart University: Action Planner

1. What do I want to improve?

I would like to improve my own beliefs and practice in terms of PCK for teaching teachers. By action research, I will inquire into how I improve my PCK to support my students’ PCK for teaching science. I need to articulate these ideas for myself, to clarify what I am attempting to do, to better support my student teachers’ teaching approaches in the context of the chemistry methods course. 

2. Why do you feel that something could be improved in what I am doing?

I have been a science teacher educator at a university in Bangkok, Thailand for five years. Before completing my Ph.D. in science education, I received a Bachelor of Science in chemistry and graduate diploma in teaching chemistry. I received a scholarship supported by Institute of Promotion of Science and Technology Teaching (IPST), the Ministry of Education for studying the bachelor degree to the Ph.D. for 10 years. According to the goal of the scholarship, I was being prepared to be a leader in science education in Thailand. During my Ph.D., I worked with my supervisors both at Kasetsart University, Thailand and the University of Waikato, New Zealand. My career path is typical of most other science teacher educators in the context of Thai educational system who are trying to help science teachers shift to a constructivist-based teaching approach from the traditional didactic teaching that formed the historical landscape of teaching in my country. As a scholarship student and teacher educator, I believe that I can be a good teacher and will do all my best to develop my students’ learning.

When I was a science student, I had struggle in my learning in that I forgot what I have learned very quickly. I was taught by giving a lecture year by year. I think this was a traditional teaching strategy that could not help me to learn chemistry effectively. Then I became a pre-service chemistry teacher in the graduate diploma program. During this program, I felt I did not understand how to teach chemistry. What I had learned was content-free teaching strategies which lecturers only told me what they are. They did not give me examples and hardly provided me opportunities to learn how to teach specific topics to students.  Surprisingly, when I was a Ph.D. student I had learned different things from my advisor. She gave me examples and taught me how to teach specific concepts. The way she advised and taught me was not telling but demonstrating and modeling it. She had many techniques driving me to be successful in both teaching and research. I was very impressed with her strategies. At that time, I did not know the way she’s done to me is “a transformation of her spiritual and knowledge to make me understand teaching and research’ which I think now this is pedagogical content knowledge (PCK). She so much inspired me to be a good teacher educator who should be a good role model. According to this experience, I believe that teacher educators need to demonstrate their own vulnerability in teaching and willingness to learn about teaching if they expect their student teachers to consider doing the same in their classes, including expressing their own reflections on teaching.

When I have a science teacher educator, I have been trying to bring what I have learned from what I have learned from my advisor into my teaching career, especially developing my won PCK for teaching my student teachers. In the next semester, I will be assigned to teach a chemistry methods course for the pre-service teachers in a one-year graduate diploma in teaching programme. I have the challenging job of teaching pre-service teachers who have backgrounds neither in education nor teaching, and making a connection between theories and practices accessible for student teachers. I now begin asking myself what the goals and framework of the course were, what content student teachers needed to learn to teach specific subjects, in what ways I should encourage my students to reach those goals, and whether I accurately assess their learning. As my experiences, I have taught a science methods course for three years but it is my first time for teaching a chemistry methods course. Even these two courses share a common goal that is to enhancing pre-service teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge (PCK), chemistry methods course, in my point of view, must be more specific and should have some things different. Besides, in a science methods course, I have faced many problems in their teaching. For example, student teachers’ teaching in schools has been mostly based on traditional didactic approaches, in which students in their classes rarely had active roles in science activities. Further, science has been taught as a body of knowledge, rather than a process of inquiry into the nature of science itself. The students’ prior knowledge and their individual differences were rarely taken into account in the student teachers’ teaching and learning activities. Importantly, all science content was taught in the same way. All these problems drive me to pose questions to myself “How I do improve my PCK in order to enhance my students’ PCK?”

3. What could I do that might improve what I am doing?

To improve my PCK, I think firstly I have to understand my current beliefs and PCK for teaching science teachers. To know my own PCK, I might look back what I have done in the course I taught in the last semester. I have to analyze my weaknesses and strengths of my own teaching. I will ask my colleagues to share and critique my teaching. Then I will search for new teaching materials and read research articles related to PCK and teaching methods. I believe these materials will help me to get some ideas of teaching and learning activities. I will bring these teaching activities to the methods class. While I am teaching I will videotape and ask my friends to observe my teaching. After the class I will immediately reflect on my teaching by asking myself as follows: “What have I learned from this period teaching?, What did my students still not understand? What are my strengths and weaknesses of my teaching? What are my plans for the next class?” I will also collect the student teachers’ journals and their class assignments. I believe that reflection is a key idea to help me improve my own PCK.  I will also bring these reflections to discuss with my colleagues. They will give me feedback and suggestions about my teaching practice. After getting all feedback, I will design next class learning activities, which are built from the reflection and suggestions. Then I will implement it and see what happen. I will do the same way as I mentioned above. I will do like this again as a cycle - week by week.