Teachers' conceptions of knowledge, skills, and dispositions to teach meaningful social science: A qualitative study of teachers in Bengaluru, India

This is a qualitative study which explores teachers’ conceptions of meaningful social science (MSS) and their conceptions of the knowledge, skills, and dispositions (KSD) needed to teach MSS. Teacher standards in India, which are designed in generic, subject-free, and linear terms, form the backdrop of this study. The conceptual framework positions the teacher as a “silent witness” in policy discourse. However, teachers are “overlooked knowers”, who are anchored to subjects and have distinct perspectives of their work. This can significantly impact the effective implementation of educational reform.

This study reports the findings of 28 social science teachers from Bengaluru, India. Each of them participated in three semi-structured interviews. Written and graphical elicitation tasks, transcribed interview data, and curriculum documents on social science serve as primary and secondary data collection.

The findings are as follows: teachers’ conceptions of MSS reveal five orientations: Conservative, Normative, Pragmatic, Humanistic, and Transformative. Teachers’ conceptions of MSS subscribe to social education with a functional character. Orientations reflect teachers’ preferences through the selective (re) activation (Emirbayer & Mische, 1998) of their career trajectories, personal motivations, and the constraints and enabling aspects of their milieu. It displays qualities of reaction, response, and adaptation which are not premeditated or explicitly anticipated. Teachers’ subject conceptions uncover how cognitive conceptions blend with projections of embedded images of self, and the relationship between the two.

Teachers’ conceptions of knowledge are grouped into five main categories: (a) subject related facts and information (b) subject content knowledge (c) subjective knowledge (d) knowledge of learners and (e) knowledge for teaching. Conceptions of skills comprise (a) instructional didactic, (b) instructional experiential, and (c) instructional inquiry skills. Conceptions of dispositions are classified as: (a) intellectual dispositions (b) social and emotional dispositions and (c) personal values. Conceptions of KSD are arrayed into four “Constellations of Practice”: Protean, Formalistic, Design, and Personalistic. Teachers’ conceptions of KSD are multivalent and not static, and are assigned asymmetrical priorities. In doing so, they rely more on personal interpretations and practical experiences, and less on curricular expectations.

The findings are discussed in the context of teacher standards. Firstly, a cautionary note is issued for generic standards as it further threatens a marginalised subject like social science, by rendering invisible the rich expressions of subject conceptions, which showcase teachers’ embedded images of self. Secondly, constellations of practice indicate decentred and diffused ways to examine teacher practice, in contrast to universally-worded standards. Finally, while standards tend to be linear and static, teachers’ subject conceptions, and their conceptions of KSD to teach their subjects help us understand how they sieve subject matter, which substantiates their professional and personal identities. The conceptual framework is revisited by demonstrating that standards are a project of re-socialization where teachers are asked to adopt new KSD as part of their assigned professional identity. This urges us to interrogate the internal world of teachers and place them at the centre of the teaching learning process. It underscores the need for policymakers to engage with teachers in constructive ways to understand their lived experiences.