Contribution
Description: "Practical knowledge" has been a key framework for studying teacher thinking processes. A core assumption behind such research is to emphasize teachers' legitimacy to understanding their experiences in such a way to construct their own knowledge. Concerns regarding the validity of teachers' practical knowledge (Fenstermacher, 1994) can be examined within the theoretical framework so called personal epistemology. Epistemic theories (Hofer, 2004), which is a paradigm to personal epistemology, suggests that individuals' epistemological understanding involves a set of multidimensional beliefs organized into theories, operating at the metacognitive level, and situating in the context. In term of Justification for teachers' practical knowledge this theory suggests that teachers' pedagogical thinking involves the processes by which teachers justify their practical knowledge, and then evaluate their justifications. Researchers in the filed of educational psychology (Varaki, 2003; Chan& Elliot, 2004; Saintra & Kardash, 2004; Braten & Stromso, 2004) have studied teachers' personal epistemology in a de-contextualized manner by which a propositional view of knowledge is held. Such studies mostly hold a positivistic perspective investigating personal epistemology as predictors of other teachers' characteristics. In addition, interpretative studies on Finnish teachers (e.g. Husu, 2000) examine teachers' epistemological understanding regarding practical knowledge. Such studies reflect an interpretative tradition of the epistemology of teachers' pedagogical thinking; however, they still focus on the epistemic level. Given previous studies, important problems remain to be negotiated: on the one hand, positive-orientated research sees knowledge as propositional: in such studies, no evidence exists about the epistemology of teachers' practical knowledge. On the other hand, in interpretative-orientated study how the multidimensionality of teachers' epistemic understanding operates in regard to practical knowledge is not known. In addition to these gaps of our understanding, we need know more about the degree of "sophistication" or "superficiality" of teachers' epistemological justifications: how are they evaluated, monitored, and weighed as warranting practical knowledge? Accordingly, this study targets these research questions: (1) how do teachers justify their practical knowledge; (2) how do teachers evaluate their justification for practical knowledge; (3) and what is the role of personal epistemology when teachers justify their practical knowledge and then evaluate their justifications?
Methodology: DesignThis study is a qualitative and quantitative study: the main goal of qualitative methods, grounded theory, is to find out the substantive theory about the epistemic nature of teachers' practical knowledge; and the quantitative procedure address the verification of emerged theory. Participants I will have a "theoretical sampling" (Glaser & Strauss, 1999, 45). In the first step, I will initially choose a total of 10 "experienced teachers". For data collection regarding to the second part of research, that is, quantitative I will select a total of 166 experienced teachers. MaterialsI will interview teachers following their lessons. The interviews will target the specified educational episodes in the lessons. Moreover, an "in depth narrative interview" will later be held aiming at construction universal stories regarding the research questions. Based on interviews and qualitative data, I will develop a questionnaire for further verification.
Conclusions: Expected resultsWe anticipate that findings would lead to a substantive theory describing the epistemic nature of teachers' practical knowledge that includes the following: 1. Teachers' Practical knowledge is validated at the cyclic process. This process includes three levels of cognition: teachers construct their practical knowledge at the cognitive level; they justify their practical knowledge at the epistemic cognitive level; and evaluate their justifications at the epistemic metacognitive level. Each of these levels constitute distinctive conceptual framework that are interrelated. 2. Teachers hold tacit beliefs about the nature of knowledge and knowledge acquisition that are integrated and interrelated with the mentioned processes in number 1.
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