Pre-service Physics Teachers’ Metacognitive Knowledge about Their Instructional Practices

Abstract

Background:Teacher metacognition involves teachers' thinking about their teaching. This study aims to investigate pre-service physics teachers’ metacognitive knowledge about their teaching practices.Materials and methods:The participants included six pre-service physics teachers in an “instructional methods” course designed for pre-service teachers who were seeking a degree to become physics teachers. A framework of metacognition for teaching was developed to analyze the level of pre-service physics teachers’ metacognitive knowledge about their teaching practices. The sources of data used in this study were observations collected through pre-service teachers’ instructional practices, lesson plans, reflection papers, and interviews with pre-service teachers about their instructional practices. The data of study was analyzed using interpretivist qualitative methodology.Results:Analysis of data showed that pre-service physics teachers’ metacognitive knowledge about their content knowledge was quite satisfactory; however, their metacognitive knowledge about instructional methods, students’ pre-instructional knowledge, and the task of teaching needs to be improved.Conclusions:The results of the study provided evidence that metacognitive knowledge on teaching is a fruitful framework to generate interpretations about the participants’ instructional processes.