Investigating PGCE pre-service teachers' level of understanding of life sciences as a scientific discipline

• Main Author: Ahanonye, Uchechi Agnes
• Format: Others
• Language: en
• Published: 2018
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10539/25027

A research report submitted to the Faculty of Science, School of Education, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa, in partial fulfilment of the award of Master of Science (MSc.) in Science Education. March 2017. === The aim of this study was to investigate PGCE pre-service teachers’ level of understanding of life sciences as a scientific discipline. The investigation was carried out at a Higher Education institution where Life science is studied. A questionnaire containing a Likert scale section with twenty two items, and open ended section with two statements was administered for this study. The participants were sixteen Postgraduate certificate in Education (PGCE) Life science pre-service teachers at a South African Higher Educational institute. Also, an interview was conducted with the participating students and two teacher educators who teach in the PGCE program. The theoretical framework adopted for this research is built on Bernstein’s legitimation code theory (LCT). The data was deductively analysed qualitatively by using the legitimation code theory (LCT) dimensions to answer the research questions posed for this study. The findings of this study revealed that PGCE Life science pre-service teachers show an understanding of their disciplinary knowledge in terms of its important knowledge content (specialization), diversified nature of the disciplinary knowledge (density) and the emergent and existence of the accumulated knowledge (Temporality). Also in their responses, it was evident that they recognize the place of Nature of science (NOS) as part of their disciplinary knowledge, that is, they have a better gaze of the need for SMK, inquiry based skills, and history of science (HoS). The educational implications as well as recommendations of this study were explained. The recommendation for this study is that, the nature of Life science as a discipline of knowing should be made explicit to students. === LG2018