Knowing Process of Rural Secondary School Science Teachers: A Case of Rakai District in Uganda

Abstract

The study was an investigation of the Knowing Process of rural secondary science teachers in Uganda. The problem of the study was the poor performance of students in sciences in the rural secondary schools in Ugandan Certificate Examinations (UCE). The central point was to find out the beliefs of the rural secondary science teachers about how the educators come to know anything. A non-experimental research design was employed in the study. The research was carried using a purposive sampling technique. Regarding data collection, the researcher administered fifty (50) questionnaires to fifty (50) teachers; interviewed ten teachers and carried out classroom observations often live lessons. The findings of the study revealed that teacher’s conceptions about the mode of knowing to fall under three sources of knowledge, namely, authority, sense-perceptual experience, and reason. It was clear that teachers assume that learners do not have knowledge; hence the Bucket theory of mind is central in their teaching-learning process. Many teachers appeared to do things the way they were taught; in other words, a number of rural science teachers tended to be doing activities whose underlying assumptions they were not clear of. A functional approach to the teaching of Philosophy in Educational programs is recommended.