An Empirical Enquiry Into The Teachers’ Philosophical Beliefs And Their Actual Classroom Practices: A Case Of Pakistan

Abstract

The purpose of the current study is to determine whether teachers’ philosophical beliefs about teaching and their classroom practices are aligned. Further, the focus is on the prevailing educational theories i.e., perennialism, essentialism, reconstructionism, and progressivism. Philosophical beliefs of the conservative, i.e., the perennialist teachers who believe that human nature remains the same everywhere hence education system needs to be the same in different eras and places while the essentialist teachers believe that the purpose of education is adjustment with existing society by learning essential knowledge and skills. Unlike the progressivists, teachers believe that education is an ongoing process which changes with changing needs with human beings’ new experiences. Similarly, the reconstructionist/critical theorists believe that purpose of education is to rebuild societies based on democratic values through social consciousness and creative dialogue. The study is descriptive, and the survey method was used to collect the data. The population of the study consists of all primary and elementary school teachers working in Gujranwala, Pakistan. A stratified random sampling technique was used through which 150 teachers were selected. The researcher developed two instruments, i) Teachers’ Philosophical Beliefs Inventory (TPBI) and Teachers’ Classroom Practices Observation Checklist (CPOC). Frequency, percentage, mean and standard deviation were used as descriptive statistics while Chi-square correlation was applied to find out the association between teacher's philosophical beliefs about teaching and their classroom instructional practices. Results of the study revealed that the majority of teachers prefer philosophical beliefs having an orientation in Progressivism and Perennialism. This research also found that most school teachers are practicing Essentialist classroom instructional practices during their classroom interaction with students.