Studying teacher cognition: The interplay of literature teachers' beliefs, instructional practice and decision-making process

• Main Author: Gutierrez, Marianne Rachel C.
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 2003
• Subjects: Literature teachers; Literature—Study and teaching; Education
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etd_doctoral/946
• Institution: De La Salle University

This study examines four secondary school teachers' teaching of literature in relation to their underlying cognition. Grounded on what current research on teacher education reveals--that what teachers do, and how they approach instructional decision-making are influenced, if not shaped by what they know and what they believe in--it described the pedagogical activities and classroom discourses that make up the literature classroom, through the use of the case study approach and the ethnographic method. The interplay of the teachers' beliefs about literature, learning and teaching, with their instructional practice and decision-making process was inferred from videotaped classroom sessions, lesson plans and notes, as well as interviews. Analysis of data consisted of three stages: the description of the instructional practice and decision-making process of each of the teachers the abstraction of the teachers' underlying beliefs about literature, learning and teaching and the discussion of the interplay of the beliefs and practices of the teachers. The findings reveal that the teachers integrated the teaching of literature with language, but they have different understandings of the concept of integration. Moreover, the study reveals that the teachers' instructional practice and decision-making process were shaped by their beliefs system. In particular, their beliefs about literature determined the materials they used and the focus of their discussion in the classroom their beliefs about learning dictated their methodology and their beliefs about teaching shaped their choice of classroom set-up and organization. Also, the teachers made teaching decisions according to course goals (or curriculum) and structures (or lessons) borne out of previous decisions. Finally, the possible implications these findings may have for teacher education in the country, as well as issues and avenues that future research on teacher cognition in the Philippines may take, were discussed.