Educators’ perceptions of using knowledge integration for teaching natural sciences in the senior phase

Abstract

The knowledge integration perspective has been used mainly in analysing and describing students’ learning of science and other subjects, this principle of knowledge integration determined how subject content knowledge should be taught, no longer in the heterogeneous or multi-disciplinary manner employed from 1994 during the post-apartheid curriculum reformation. Knowledge integration identifies links that allow teachers and learners to apply their knowledge flexible and allowing rich descriptions and comparisons of learners’ identification of mechanisms or processes that support learning. The study is important for science teacher educators because it illustrates educators’ perceptions on using knowledge integration for teaching Natural Sciences in the Senior Phase. Therefore, this research aimed at exploring how educators perceive knowledge integration in their teaching of senior phase Natural Sciences school curriculum. The qualitative research design in the form of case study was adopted on a purposively sampled two educators who teach natural sciences in grade 9 at two schools. Schools were selected based on their location in socio-economically disadvantaged context and an ex-model C school which is relatively located in an affluent area. One school is categorised as quintile 1 school, which is a disadvantaged school which does not require learners to pay school fees and hence operates through government subsidy. The second school is categorised as a quintile 4 school, which requires learners to pay fees in addition to obtaining minimal government subsidy and hence having a better economical status compared to lower quintile schools. In-depth interviews and documents analyses were used as data collection methods. Data collected were coded and analysed thematically. Findings were generated from the emerging themes. This study unveiled that grade 9 educators teach reduced content in the grade curriculum through using textbook-based methods because of the alleged overloaded curriculum. If the principle of knowledge integration were to be adopted when teaching natural sciences subdisciplines, educators would be able to make links between knowledge in the subjects that form a multidisciplinary subject. In this case, teaching subjects through themes could assist educators to trim or condense the curriculum that appears to be cumbersome. The second major finding of this study is the fact that educators are unwilling to teach natural sciences as an integrated subject due to their passion of their specialisation which leads to over-teaching aspects of the content which teachers are comfortable with while ignoring those that they are not familiar or competent in. If this situation prevails, learners are unlikely to proceed with the science stream as they get to enrol in grade 10 to 12 subjects. This perpetuates the notion of science subjects being viewed as being difficult leading to low enrolments in the science subjects. The resultant effect of this situation is the snowballing lack of critical skills in science-based degrees and career. This study argues against the intervention of Curriculum Advisors who could spearhead the training and retraining of educators on exploring models of knowledge integration and monitoring the success of adoption of such models or lack of success thereof. Among the findings of the study is the voice of educators regarding lack of resources for teaching natural sciences. If knowledge integration was given a space in the natural sciences curriculum, the challenge of lack of resources would be overcome trough integration of ICT knowledge and skills in the curriculum. The world has shifted into the fourth industrial revolution and therefore the sooner the laboratory skills are sourced digitally if they are not available physically would liberate educators to employ Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge to better address a challenge of lack of resources. Learners are technologically savvy and therefore it is recommended that educators must rethink their pedagogical strategies to teach school natural science curriculum through integrating various sub disciplinary knowledge with technological skills. The advent of Covid-19 has made researchers to think of novel ways of teaching and learning and integration of knowledges and repacking content in science disciplines has be at the forefront of the research agenda, globally and locally.