The role of teaching experience in shaping university lecturers’ enacted TSPCK in electrochemistry

Abstract

In higher education, lecturers shape learning through various teaching methods, which rely on pedagogical expertise, especially for difficult topics such as electrochemistry. Therefore, it becomes important to investigate whether pedagogical expertise develops with teaching experience and how that experience influences lecturers’ teaching practices. This study compared an experienced and a novice lecturer by analysing their teaching practices using the enacted topic-specific pedagogical content knowledge (enacted TSPCK) model. The study followed an exploratory qualitative case study design. Data were collected through lecture observations, audio-recordings of lectures and post-lecture interviews. The analysis involved deductive coding of lecture observations, audio-recordings and teaching materials to identify instances where two or more TSPCK components interacted; these instances were referred to as TSPCK episodes. Post-lecture interviews were then analysed to substantiate and contextualise the findings from the classroom data. The TSPCK episodes were classified into three categories reflecting increasing levels of advancement: simple, proficient and sophisticated. The experienced lecturer demonstrated a greater number of sophisticated TSPCK episodes, indicating more advanced enacted TSPCK. Interviews further revealed that the experienced lecturer’s use of representations, analogies and real-life examples was closely linked to teaching experience. An analysis of the frequency of occurrence of TSPCK components within the exhibited episodes for each lecturer was also conducted. Results revealed that the novice lecturer’s episodes showed a more even distribution of TSPCK components compared with the experienced lecturer. The implications of these findings are discussed, including the possible relationship between teaching experience and the quality of enacted TSPCK episodes overall.