Influence of Teaching Option and Teaching Experience on Science Teachers' Pedagogical Content Knowledge of Environmental Education

Abstract

Environmental education is usually taught across the curriculum in most of the countries. This teaching approach has been a challenge for teachers to implement it especially in the Malaysian curriculum context. Thus, science teachers require effectual Pedagogical Content Knowledge of Environmental Education (PCK-EE). The purpose of this study was to explore the influence of teaching option and teaching experience on science teachers' PCK-EE. Five components of PCK-EE were investigated in this study, which were: a) knowledge of curriculum, b) knowledge of content, c) knowledge of student, d) knowledge of teaching strategies, and e) knowledge of evaluation. 347 secondary science teachers from the state of Selangor have participated in this survey study. The questionnaire used had 60 items. The findings revealed teaching option has a significant influence on science teachers' knowledge of content (p=0.000); knowledge of student (p=0.000) and knowledge of teaching strategies (p=0.016). In the case of teaching experience, it was found that there is a low correlation on knowledge of content (r=0.174) and knowledge of evaluation (r=0.170) only. Implication of this study leads to the suggestion in enhancing teachers' service training to improve their PCK-EE and subsequently their ability in teaching environmental education across curriculum.