Science Teachers Understanding and Practices in the Context of Collaboration

Abstract

This study is aimed to determine the understanding and practice of science teachers on intercollaboration and intra-collaboration. The study was conducted using a questionnaire developed by researchers and has high reliability with Cronbach’s alpha value of 0.945 and 0.922 for inter-collaboration and intra-collaboration items respectively. A total of 867 science teachers responded to the questionnaire. Descriptive statistic, independent sample t-test and the Pearson Correlation test were used to analyse the data. The findings revealed that science teachers understand and practiced of intra-collaboration and inter-collaboration were in medium level. The finding shows that there is a significant moderate positive correlation between the understanding and practices of teachers on inter-collaboration (r=0.67, p=.00). While for correlation between the understanding and practices of science teachers on intracollaboration, the results shows that there is a significant high positive correlation between the understanding and practice of science teachers on intra-collaboration (r= 0.734 and p = .00). Therefore, if teachers give collaboration as their ultimate goal in pedagogical knowledge that is to be distributed among them as oppose to being held by individual they can better prepare to work as a team. However, trust, open-mindedness and a high tolerance for ambiguity are necessary characteristics of the collaborative team.