Abstract
Ph.D.
For this study, I have used the technique for conceptualising design research developed by Sandoval (2014), which he calls conjecture mapping, in order to meet the two methodological concerns about design research, namely that design research lacks an “argumentative grammar”, and cannot meet its commitment to the simultaneous evaluation of designs and testing of theory. I undertook to investigate student teachers’ discursive practice in a designed online learning environment.
The main research question of this study was:
What are student teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge for the teaching of science concepts to foundation phase learners, which includes their knowledge of learners’ conceptual development and science content knowledge, with some reference to ‘floating’ and ‘sinking’?
With this aim in mind, several objectives were written for the study. The first objective was to study the literature on science teacher education, specifically with regard to science learning as conceptual change in the early grades and the teaching thereof. The starting point for the literature study was a model for foundation phase teachers’ PCK. This model, based on Henning (2013), forms a framework for the knowledges to be developed by foundation phase student teachers for science education, namely science content knowledge, knowledge about the child and knowledge about how to teach science to young children (figure 2.1). The literature study found that science is not taught to a great extent to foundation phase learners in South African schools, and that one of the reasons is that foundation phase teachers do not have science content knowledge (par 2.2). This study found this to be the case for the 2015 cohort of second year foundation phase student teachers of UNIZULU. During the capture of science schooling background it was found that only half of the students had studied life sciences to matriculation level, most students did not study physical sciences to matriculation level (par 4.3). Further, the discourse analysis of online group transcripts showed that the students have some science misconceptions (par 4.2.3). In particular, one of the objectives was to describe foundation phase student teachers’ conceptual knowledge of floating and...