Investigating the in-service teachers’ contents and sources of personal practical theories
Aroona Hashmi
Institute of Education and Research. University of the Punjab, India
Email: [email protected]
Published: February 22, 2023
Abstract
The present study was conducted to investigate the contents and sources of in-service teachers’ Personal Practical Theories. The objectives of this study were to identify the contents of Teachers’ personal practical theories, find the sources of these PPTs, and to explore the reflection of these PPTs in their classroom Practices. The research paradigm of this study was pragmatist. The nature of the research was a mixed method. Convergent parallel research design (QUAN+QUAL) was used. For quantitative data collection, a self- made classroom observation checklist and a questionnaire was used, the name of the questionnaire was PPTMS while for qualitative data collection a self -developed interview protocol was used. For quantitative data collection census sampling technique was used and 232 college teachers were selected as sample of the study, quantitative data was collected through questionnaire and the data analysis was done by descriptive statistics (frequency, mean, standard deviation) and inferential statistics (independent samples t-test) was applied. For observation, 10 lectures were attended as a passive observer and the frequency of the items was obtained. For qualitative data collection snowball sampling technique was used and 10 teachers were selected for interviews from 10 colleges. The data was analyzed by doing thematic analysis. Quantitative findings revealed that the majority of the teachers agreed with the contents of the PPTs. Classroom Observations helped the researcher to identify the reflections of teachers’ PPTs in their classroom practices. Observation frequency revealed that the majority of the teachers plan the activities for learning a given topic, provide an outline for the class session, show collegiality and serve as facilitator and motivator and observe discipline for effective classroom interaction. Qualitative findings explored that religion, family, field experiences, colleagues, personal learning experiences, workshops; refresher courses, teacher education course work, newspaper, media and internet are the major sources of college teachers’ PPTs.
Keywords: contents, sources, personal theories, practical theories
DOI: 10.23918/vesal2023v06