Evaluation of EFL teachers’ knowledge bases and classroom practice: upper primary schools

Abstract

AbstractThe study was conducted to assess and evaluate the upper primary English teachers’ status of content knowledge, pedagogical knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge and classroom practice. The factors that affected a classroom practice were explored in three dimensions: the students’ factors, the teachers’ factors, and the institutional factors. Mixed method approach was employed to triangulate numeric and textual data obtained through questionnaires and semi-structured interviews. There were a total of 158 participants from which the sample size was determined. Considering the population size, comprehensive sampling technique was implemented to gather numeric data. For textual data collection, purposive sampling was employed. The data obtained through the questionnaires were analyzed with percentage, mean, standard deviation, correlation, one-way analysis of variance, and post hoc test. The interview data were analyzed thematically. Accordingly, the results revealed that the participants had poor content knowledge whereas their classroom practice was relatively the highest. They held moderate pedagogical knowledge in assessing students’ performance whereas they owned inadequate knowledge in classroom management and organization. They had intermediate pedagogical content knowledge in designing the instructional objectives and the context of learning environment, but their knowledge of students’ understandings and misapprehensions of a lesson was inadequate. The correlation analysis indicated that there was strong and positive relationship between content knowledge and classroom practice. Conversely, pedagogical content knowledge and classroom practice did not correlate completely. The problems of the teachers’ classroom practice were raised from the students’, the teachers’, and the school factors. The students’ factors were found to be the most to hamper EFL teachers’ classroom practice and it was followed by the teachers’ and then the school factors. Overall, the participants were not responsible for their careers since their status of knowledge bases and classroom practice were inadequate to practice the EFL curriculum successfully and to achieve the desired goals.

Keywords

• Content knowledge
• pedagogical knowledge
• pedagogical content knowledge
• classroom practice
• EFL teachers
• Sammy King Fai Hui, The Education University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong