The Nature of Social Studies Teachers’ Beliefs About Teaching

Abstract

This article reports on teachers’ beliefs about teaching and the implications of these beliefs in the teaching of Social Studies. A case study design was adopted using a beliefs tool that was administered to a sample of 21 Social Studies teachers in junior secondary schools and five in-service Social Studies teachers enrolled at the national university. Data were analyzed against the Luft and Roehrig (2007) belief categories and the South African Norms and Standards for teaching. The findings showed that teachers have different beliefs about teaching: as a knowledge-based profession and as a community, citizenship, and pastoral responsibility.

Keywords

beliefs pedagogical content knowledge (PCK)subject-matter knowledge knowledge-based profession and context-bound conception of teaching

Beliefs form an integral part in supporting the formation of personal theories, which, in turn, inform practice (Magnusson et al., 1999). Teachers individually construct beliefs about teaching. These beliefs reveal how teachers view knowledge and learning, and suggest how they may enact their classroom practice (Luft & Roehrig, 2007). That is, a set of beliefs around a particular situation forms attitudes and these become action plans that guide decisions and behavior. Teachers tend to act upon what they believe. There is therefore a link between teachers’ beliefs about teaching and practices, and subsequently, their pedagogical content knowledge (PCK; Davidowitz & Rollnick, 2011; Pajares, 1992). PCK is considered as a foundational knowledge base for teaching and is described as an “amalgam” of content and pedagogical knowledge (Shulman, 1986). This knowledge is different from the knowledge of a disciplinary expert and also from the general pedagogical knowledge shared by teachers across subjects. Shulman (1986) argues that effective teaching involves knowing the appropriate teaching approaches that fit the content and knowing how elements of the content can be arranged for better teaching. PCK therefore emphasizes the understanding and representation of content knowledge for teaching purposes. It is the knowledge that teachers use in transforming content knowledge into forms that are comprehensible to students (Shulman, 1997).

Teachers are faced with the challenging task of selecting suitable teaching strategies that are appropriate to the content knowledge to be learnt and also meeting the needs of students. Some of the issues and concerns identified in the implementation of environmental education (EE) in Social Studies point to a problem with the teachers’ limited levels of content knowledge on certain EE topics (Ketlhoilwe, 2003, 2007; Mogotsi, 2007; Mosothwane, 2002, 2007). This article is part of a bigger study that sought to explore teachers’ topic-specific PCK in teaching Social Studies, orientations and beliefs about good practices of teaching of EE, and how these influence their approach to a topic on water resources and their management in Botswana. This article focuses on the research question that explores teachers’ beliefs about teaching in general and the implications of these beliefs on teaching of Social Studies, a subject that integrates EE.

The article explores teachers’ beliefs about teaching in general; therefore, exploring different literature on beliefs about teaching helps inform my theoretical framework and provides an organizing framework for my analysis. The article adopts the use of a Beliefs Tool and metaphors to unearth teachers’ beliefs about effective teaching; hence, the analysis was in two parts.

Literature Review

Beliefs play an important part regarding how teachers consolidate knowledge and information. They are crucial in helping teachers “adapt, understand, and make sense of themselves and their world. How and what teachers believe has a tremendous impact on their behavior in the classroom” (Moseley & Utley, 2008, p. 16). Beliefs as well as values are “. . . not minor, they are fundamental attributes in the teaching process. Beliefs and values provide the submerged ‘bulk of the iceberg’ upon which any particular teaching technique rests” (Moseley & Utley, 2008, p. 16). Teachers’ beliefs also influence and impact their goals for teaching. Depending on their beliefs about what constitutes good teaching, teachers may have different goals for teaching (Magnusson et al., 1999). Furthermore, student activities largely depend on the skill the teacher believes is important to develop. These goals for teaching could be student attitude and behavioral change, skills development, real-world connections, student development, transmitting facts or knowledge, learning, humanistic, improvement for pedagogy, or social reform/good (Magnusson et al., 1999).

According to the Report of the National Commission on Education (Botswana Government, 1993), teachers are perceived as agents of all curriculum implementation. They are entrusted to mold the character of the student, help students acquire useful knowledge, be good role models, be intellectually capable, be competent in their field, possess mastery of the subject matter and pedagogical skills, have educational understanding, and have an appropriate personality for teaching (Botswana Government, 1993). The characterization of the teacher by the Botswana Government is in sync with the South African education policy, which also describes the roles, associated set of applied competences, and qualifications for the development of educators. These also serve as a description of what it means to be a competent educator (see Table A1: Summary Roles of a teacher [“South African education Policy; Norms and Standards for educators,” 2000]).

The roles of the teacher establish the key strategic objectives for the development of learning programs, qualifications, and standards for educators. These roles and competences must be integrated in the learning program and should inform the exit level outcomes of a qualification as an educator (“South African education Policy; Norms and Standards for educators,” 2000). They also describe what it means to be a competent teacher. These roles provide a broader picture of the roles of a teacher. In consideration of all the different definitions and perceptions on teacher beliefs from different authors, the article considers teacher beliefs as teachers’ ways of thinking and understanding of their practice that enable them to mediate learning in effective ways (Luft & Roehrig, 2007; Morrow, 2007; Ramsden, 2003).

Theoretical Framework

Beliefs, as personal constructs, can provide an understanding of a teacher’s practice, guide instructional decisions, influence classroom management, and serve as a lens of understanding for classroom events. Luft and Roehrig (2007) identify five kinds of beliefs: traditional, instructive, transitional, responsive, and reform-based. These beliefs constitute a spectrum, with traditional and instructive categories representing teacher-centered beliefs, whereas responsive and reform-based responses represent student-centered beliefs. The transitional category reflects a view of students that is primarily focused on the behaviorist and affective attributes of students, but not the cognitive involvement. The traditional responses are based on facts, rules, and methods that are transferable (Luft and Roehrig, 2007). The traditional and instructive categories could be related to the traditional approaches to EE, whereas the transitional and responsive could be associated with the progressive approaches to EE. Table B1 summarizes the five belief categories.

The Luft and Roehrig (2007) beliefs categories framework was very instrumental in the analysis of the questions in the beliefs tool that sought to unearth teachers’ beliefs about teaching. The study also adopted the use of metaphors as an additional means of accessing how people understand complex concepts through the way one mental domain is conceptualized in terms of another (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980; Rusznyak & Walton, 2014). The use of metaphors plays a central role in enabling abstract thinking and exposing tacit assumptions (Lakoff, 1993). In the study, the metaphors helped to explore teachers’ beliefs about teaching. In the beliefs tool, teachers were asked to identify a job that they felt was similar to teaching and give reasons why. This was done to have an insight into what teachers believed about teaching and how they perceive teaching in their comparisons as illustrated in Figure C1.

Method

The beliefs tool used in this study is an adaptation of Luft and Roehrig’s (2007) Teacher Beliefs Interview (TBI). The tool consisted of nine questions, all of which sought to uncover teachers’ beliefs about teaching using five categories. Although the TBI was originally an interview designed for preservice science teachers, in this study it was adapted and used as a questionnaire with in-service Social Studies teachers. The original TBI is explicitly about exploring beliefs about teaching the subject. More questions that explore teachers’ choice for teaching as a career, what they love about their job, and challenges in their job to explore teachers’ beliefs on teaching in general were included in the tool. The idea of metaphors, where teachers liken their job to any other and explain why they believe teaching is similar to that other job is used in the study. Metaphors reveal the “‘joint influence’ of ‘personal, linguistic, cognitive, affective and social, variables’” (Gibbs & Cameron, 2008, p. 67). Metaphors have cognitive, social, and affective dimensions (Gibbs & Cameron, 2008; Rusznyak & Walton, 2014), and these were used to allow for deeper exploration of what the teachers believe about teaching.

Study sample

A beliefs tool was administered to a sample of 26 respondents, 21 of whom were Social Studies teachers in junior secondary schools, while five were in-service Social Studies teachers who were enrolled at the national University, upgrading to degree level (BEd Secondary). The beliefs tool consisted of nine questions. The tool attempted to uncover the teachers’ reasons for their choice of teaching as a career, what they love about their job, what they find challenging, what they consider as the most important things that make someone an effective teacher, and how they maximize student learning in their classrooms.

Respondents also had to identify and describe a job that was similar to teaching and explain their analogy. They were given 14 statements about effective teaching and were to decide whether they agreed or disagreed with these statements. If they did not agree with any of the statements, they had to state their reason(s). They then ranked these statements from most to least important. The teachers also had to say how they knew when their students understood something and how they learnt best. Four questions examined general beliefs on teaching, while five specifically targeted the teaching of the subject and four were adapted from the TBI. The rubric by Luft and Roehrig (2007) was used to analyze the questions adapted from the TBI. To analyze the questions that are not adapted from the TBI, the seven roles of teaching, as per the South African Norms and Standards for Educators, were used to categorize the data.

Results

Teacher’s Beliefs About Effective Teaching

The results are guided by the identified research objectives/questions for the study as presented in the introduction.

What do you love about the job?

The data showed that respondents loved their jobs for more than one reason, which was a mixture of two of the categories. Respondents articulated how they are able to make an impact on the lives of their students, how they love to interact and socialize with other teachers and their students, and how they helped young people realize their dreams by changing the behavior of the students and transforming them into better persons. Such responses relate to the community, citizenship, and pastoral roles as they are motivated by concern, devotion, interests, and the welfare of students. An example is that of GM2 who indicated that she loves “to socialize with students and teachers and I love to counsel children, give/suggest solutions to their problems, help them and convert them to Christianity.” Although the country where the study was conducted is predominantly Christian, it is secular. This could have influenced the perception of the respondent.

Other responses about why teachers love their job included “Changing their lives and being there for them in all ways, guiding and shaping them” (Irene) and “producing great people in the society” (Boitshepo). According to the South African Norms and Standards for Educators,

The teacher must be seen as a role model at school and surrounding community. The teacher has to uphold the values of the constitution and must be seen to be honest, reliable and dignified. Teachers must have a concern for the care and welfare of students and young people in their care. (Robinson & Lomofsky, 2010, p. 49)

It is clear that these teachers are mostly fulfilling their pastoral role, whereas other roles seem unrepresented. Although caring is an essential ingredient in education, it must extend “. . . beyond a mere personality trait of the teacher, or images of a teacher as nurturing, supportive, patient kind and nice” (Petersen & Osman, 2010, p. 24). Teaching has to be most importantly central to enabling learning.

What are the most important things that make someone an effective teacher?

Effective teaching is reliant on a rich body of content knowledge. Shulman (2004) identified three categories of content knowledge: subject matter content knowledge, PCK, and curricular knowledge. The quality of learning opportunities that a teacher can create is dependent on the teacher’s conceptual understanding of what is to be taught and his or her ability to make appropriate pedagogical choices, or PCK. The responses of the teachers were viewed in relation to what the teachers expressed as important things that make for an effective teacher, such as knowledge of content, knowledge of students, general pedagogical knowledge, and knowledge of teaching and learning methods. The data showed that teachers believe that, to be an effective teacher, one needs good personality traits, such as passion, patience, empathy, compassion, and enthusiasm, which are representative of community, citizenship, and pastoral roles of teaching. This somehow equates teaching to caregiving and therefore undermines the nature of teaching as a knowledge-based profession. On the contrary, there are those who acknowledge the importance of knowledge as playing a role in teaching, which is encouraging for PCK. However, this falls short of acknowledging other aspects of PCK, such as knowledge of context, curriculum, students, and teaching methods. Furthermore, there are those who believe that a combination of both pastoral roles and knowledge would make one an effective teacher (see Table D1).

What are the challenges faced by teachers

Challenges identified by teachers include issues on curriculum (congested syllabus that is relatively new and challenging to the teachers), student diversity, undesirable student behavior and attitudes, large classes and teaching loads, and lack of resources. Most of the above problems are more focused on resources, teacher welfare and development, and lack of parental support. These challenges reflect more on the issues of context, which is an attribute of PCK and can impact the way the teachers teach.

The questions adapted from the TBI were analyzed using the belief categories by Luft and Roehrig (2007), which constitute a spectrum of 1 to 5. These are as follows:

Traditional;

Instructive;

Transitional;

Responsive; and

Reform-based.

Although the categories were used in Luft and Roehrig (2007) to establish the belief pattern of individual teachers, they were used, in this study, to help explore teachers’ beliefs about subject-specific teaching. The findings suggest that most of the responses by the teachers center on responsive beliefs while there was an almost equal representation for the instructive and transitional beliefs. Overall, the data indicate that the teachers acknowledge to a certain extent the need to involve the students in the learning process. They believe in teacher–student relationships, subjective decisions, or affective responses, as well as in collaboration, feedback, or knowledge development, that is, designing the classroom environment to enable the students to interact with each other and their knowledge (Luft & Roehrig, 2007).

Teachers’ Beliefs About Maximizing Learning

The following sections provide an insight into the teachers’ beliefs about maximizing learning, how the teachers know whether students understand, and how they learn best.

How do you maximize learning in your classroom?

Several theorists have described different ways in which learning takes place. Examples include observational learning theory (Bandura, 1977), constructivism (Bruner), learning by doing (Dewey), behaviorism (Pavlov, Piaget, Thorndike, and Skinner), and many others (Papalia & Olds, 1989; Wals, 2007). Most of these learning theories advocate learning situations in which students do not remain passive recipients of information but also require to be involved in the learning process. Preference is given to student-centered, over teacher-centered, approaches to teaching and learning. Teachers were asked to describe ways in which they maximized learning in their classrooms. To classify the response of the teachers, the question map by Luft and Roehrig (2007) was used.

The majority of the responses pointed to the responsive beliefs that are characteristic of interactive learning and the involvement of students through group work activities, presentations, panel discussions, and debates. There were very few instructive responses. The transitional beliefs were lower than the responsive ones although a significant number of responses indicated that some teachers had transitional beliefs. Examples of transitional responses for maximizing learning included humorous lessons; democratic classrooms; very minimal punishment, especially corporal; and using different student-centered methods. Some teachers maximize learning by giving notes in advance and using assignments. It is apparent from the data that most of the respondents maximize learning in their classrooms by creating a classroom environment that involves the students. They believe in a classroom situation that allows the students to interact with each other and their knowledge.

How do you know whether your students understand?

This question has a lot to do with the ways in which teachers ascertain student understanding, that learning has occurred in their classrooms. Subject matter knowledge (SMK) plays a large part in producing suitable assessment tasks (Rollnick et al., 2008). Thus, the teacher needs a rich knowledge of the content taught to be able to develop sound assessment activities. In the study, the dominant responses reflected instructive and transitional beliefs. Teachers ascertain students’ learning through assessment tasks such as tests and assignments that they give to the students or by measuring their level of participation in the classroom activities. Most of the responses (17) reflected instructive beliefs on ascertaining that students understand, which is more teacher-focused.

From their responses, teachers know that their students understand when students give precise answers; when they score high marks in exercises and tests; when they do well in the exercises they are given; when they can put in their own words what they learnt, not just regurgitating what they were told; and when they pass quizzes and tests given by the teacher.

A good number of responses (12) reflected that teachers also had transitional beliefs about finding out whether their students understood. They knew that their students understood when they became quite enthusiastic, participated in class discussions and were able to make additional contributions, questioned the content and sought clarity, and critically analyzed the implications of what they learnt on themselves, their immediate environment, and the outer environment.

Only one response corresponded with the reform-based category. The reform-based beliefs are more student-focused and become evident when the students can apply knowledge in a different setting or construct something innovative that is related to the knowledge. An example of such a response is that the teacher would know whether the students understood “When they can apply what they learnt in real life situations, for example, whether they can interpret things from the theoretical to the practical, for example, through projects in their environment.” Good teachers use frequent formative assessments to map progress and to build new learning; furthermore, they use assessment strategies that call for evidence of deep understanding, not superficial recall. On the contrary, the responses in this study are more instructive and gauge learning through recall and comprehension, which are at the lowest level in Bloom’s taxonomy. This limitation could be attributed to insufficient SMK or deficient PCK.

How do your students learn best?

There are several ways in which students learn but it is evident from the teachers’ responses that their students learn best when they are involved in the learning process by encountering and interpreting phenomena (Luft & Roehrig, 2007). This involves students interacting with each other in trying to explain data and create their own understanding of the facts, that is, responsive teaching. A very small number of teachers argue for the traditional, instructive, and reform-based beliefs as the best way in which their students learn. The majority of responses favored responsive beliefs that are more student-focused.

Examples of responses that argue for responsive teaching are as follows: student-centered activities, such as “Involving learners in learning i.e. demonstrations, debate, panel discussions etc.”; another respondent asserts that students learn best through “Interactive learning when they are given work to tackle in groups, for example, group discussions and presentation.” Other ways in which students learnt best included student-centered methods such as role-play and group presentation. For other teachers, a combination of the responsive and reform-based beliefs is reflected as the best way for their students to learn, like, for example, when learners “are the ones providing the information after undertaking their own research. They also learn by engaging in independent group discussions where everyone can bring in their own views.” The literature agrees that the students learn best when they are given an opportunity to also play a part in the learning process. How then can teachers come up with sound teaching methods if they have insufficient content knowledge? Morrow (2007) argues that one big problem is that teaching is construed as generic activities, that is, coming up with different activities to be done by the students as learning activities, without much consideration of the content.

Metaphorical Comparisons With Teaching

The use of metaphors has been identified as a means of accessing how people understand complex concepts through the way one mental domain is conceptualized in terms of another (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980; Rusznyak & Walton, 2014). The use of metaphors therefore plays a central role in enabling abstract thinking and exposing tacit assumptions (Lakoff, 1993). Metaphors were therefore used to explore teachers’ beliefs about teaching. In the beliefs tool, teachers were asked to identify a job that they felt was similar to teaching and give reasons why. This was done to have an insight into what teachers believed about teaching and how they perceive teaching in their comparisons. The respondents likened the teacher to personnel such as nurse, social worker, pastor, mentor, parent, counselor, guardian, shepherd, tour guide, artist, manager, and bus driver. Most of the careers in this list are motivated by concern and devotion for the welfare and interests of humans—the community, citizenship, and pastoral roles. This indicated that teachers seem to be overly focused on the “child-caring” aspect of teaching but underestimating the role of knowledge mediation. The fact that most of the responses (18) were aligned to the community, citizenship, and pastoral role indicates to a certain extent that teachers are more concerned with child support than knowledge and skill acquisition. Similarly in their study, Rusznyak and Walton (2014) found that the highest number of metaphors “depicted the most salient aspect of ‘being a teacher’ as nurturing students” (p. 9). They argue that although some of the personality traits mentioned in the “Teachers care” metaphors certainly describe valuable qualities that teachers could bring to their practice, these qualities do not identify someone who can effectively enable learning.

Teachers’ Perceptions About Effective Teaching

Teachers were given a list of 14 statements about effective teaching and asked to indicate whether they agreed, partially agreed, or disagreed with statements. These statements represented a mix of beliefs. The statements were classified according to the different beliefs category using the Luft and Roehrig’s spectrum (see Figure E1).

Although the responses are a mixture of different beliefs categories, the most important statements about teaching, as indicated by the teachers, were representative of instructive beliefs. The least important statements included mostly the traditional and instructive category of beliefs. This suggests that teachers, to a certain extent, acknowledge the need for the student to be involved in the learning process as they disagreed with the traditional teaching strategies where the teacher is the sole custodian of the teaching and learning process.

Despite their disagreement with the teacher-centered beliefs approaches to teaching and learning, as per the ranking for the least important statements about effective teaching, the teachers’ responses indicated that attributes of PCK such as knowledge of the students, assessment, and reflection are not highly considered by the teachers. This is shown by their disregard for statements that focus on student-centered beliefs, particularly knowledge of how students understand and misunderstand a topic, and reflection on how each lesson went, to learn from experience.

Discussion

Beliefs reveal how teachers view knowledge and learning, consolidate knowledge and information, and suggest how they may carry out their classroom practice (Luft & Roehrig, 2007; Moseley & Utley, 2008). Teachers may have different goals about teaching, depending on their beliefs about what constitutes good practice. Furthermore, the activities provided for the students largely depend on the skill the teacher believes is important to develop (Magnusson et al., 1999). This article sought to explore teachers’ beliefs about teaching in general and about the subject Social Studies. Unearthing the teachers’ beliefs would illustrate to a greater extent what some of their goals for teaching could be: student attitude and behavioral change, skills development, real-world connections, student development, transmitting facts or knowledge, improvement for pedagogy, social reform/good citizenship, or knowledge acquisition (Magnusson et al., 1999).

The findings from the analysis on general beliefs about teaching indicated that teachers were mostly motivated by community, citizenship, and pastoral roles to choose teaching as a career. This also applies to what they love most about their job. They also joined the profession for reasons that related to their well-being or welfare. There is little mention of any love for their subject and working with knowledge. Many scholars have maintained that SMK is a prerequisite for teaching (Cochran & Jones, 1998; Morrow, 2007; Shulman, 1986). It is arguably one of the knowledge bases required for teaching, making the mastery of subject matter one of the essential aspects of teacher capacity. The little regard and lack of representation for knowledge, which characterizes teaching, in the teachers’ responses could have negative implications on effective teaching in the classrooms. Teaching has been argued to extend beyond being nurturing, supportive, patient, and kind (Petersen & Osman, 2010). It should most importantly be central to enabling learning.

Teachers believe that, to be an effective teacher, one needs qualities such as patience, empathy, compassion, and enthusiasm. The aforementioned are more characteristic of the community, citizenship, and pastoral role of teachers. This thinking and belief about teaching equates teaching to caregiving, and therefore somewhat undermines the nature of teaching as a knowledge-based profession. The job of the teacher is not mainly about caring for others, but to mediate learning (De Beer & Gravett, 2010). There is an indication from the data that some of the teachers indeed misunderstand the nature of teachers’ work, which is to teach (Morrow, 2007).

Some of the teachers concentrate on the peripheral goals of the teacher and do not look at making knowledge accessible to the students as their primary goal. They focus on the interpersonal qualities of the teacher and the emotional needs of the student and not the students’ knowledge (Morrow, 2007). There is an indication from the data that some of the teachers surely misunderstand the nature of teachers’ work. The respondents were motivated to be teachers so as to assist, serve, guide, mold, and help students meet their needs and goals. A significant number of responses also pointed to the importance of knowledge as playing a role in teaching. This acknowledgment is positive for PCK. There was acknowledgment of the importance of some components of PCK, such as knowledge of subject matter and general pedagogical knowledge, thus indicating a sophisticated understanding of teaching as a knowledge-based profession. However, their responses did not adequately represent other aspects of PCK, such as the knowledge of the students, context, and pedagogic knowledge. There were some teachers who believed that a combination of both pastoral roles and knowledge would make one an effective teacher.

Teachers gave examples such as group work, presentations, panel discussions, debates, and discussions as ways of maximizing learning in their classrooms. They explained that their students learn best when they are involved in the learning process through student-centered activities, such as group work, discussions, and presentations; thus, their responses tended to have beliefs that were responsive. This is an indication that the teachers, to a certain extent, acknowledge the need to involve the students in the learning process. There was also an illustration of the instructive and transitional beliefs by the teachers. They believe in teacher–student relationships, subjective decisions, or affective responses, and also in collaboration, feedback, or knowledge development. They favor designing the classroom environment to enable the students to interact with each other and their knowledge (Luft & Roehrig, 2007).

It is evident from the data that teachers do have different beliefs with regard to teaching. Entities can

. . . hold beliefs that are independent of one another and have a varied impact in actions and cognitive processes. This means that individuals can hold beliefs that are in conflict with one another, that have different representations, and that are generalizable and context specific. (Luft & Roehrig, 2007, p. 40)

This finding also suggests that teachers believe that they can choose methods irrespective of content, that is, generic methods that can be randomly selected. This totally undermines the importance of PCK in teaching and implies that one can just choose effective strategies, although they do not have content knowledge and PCK.

Although beliefs are important in helping educators understand how teachers view knowledge and learning, and their decisions about classroom practice, it is important to also consider these beliefs alongside research trends on effective teaching generally. Social Studies, as a subject, aims at developing the student’s awareness, understanding, and skills through student-centered methods. It is therefore paramount that the teachers have a profound PCK that allows them to achieve this aim. In the study, the questions adapted from Luft and Roehrig are more fine-tuned and subject-specific. It is interesting that only a few responses reflected subject-specific knowledge and roles for teaching.

Reform-based teaching is set in constructivism and characterized by enabling the construction of learning goals, evaluating the effectiveness of instruction, focusing student inquiries, and coordinating dialogue and interaction among students about various ideas. This also includes supporting students to develop responsibility for their own learning by encouraging the skills of scientific inquiry and curiosity (Park et al., 2011). This kind of teaching is reliant on a rich knowledge of the subject matter. Reform-based beliefs focus on mediating student knowledge or interactions, and are highly student-centered (Luft & Roehrig, 2007). Very few, or none, of the responses by the teachers reflected reform-based beliefs about learning. Few responses acknowledged the importance of the knowledge of subject matter and student interaction with various ideas to supporting the development of the skills of scientific inquiry.

Conclusion

This article unearths teachers’ beliefs about teaching in general. It sheds light on how these beliefs could ultimately influence the teaching of Social Studies. Literature has strongly indicated that, for a teacher to be able to organize and foster systematic learning, he or she needs a good basis of content knowledge and a developed PCK. The findings show that teachers have different beliefs about teaching, that is, teaching as a knowledge-based profession and as a community, citizenship, and pastoral responsibility. Furthermore, it also explores what teachers believe to be the contextual variables influencing teaching. Bandura (1977) asserts that teacher efficacy is context- and subject-matter-specific. Thus, teachers “feel efficient for teaching particular subjects to certain students in specific settings, and they can be expected to feel more or less efficacious under different circumstances” (Moseley & Utley, 2008, p. 16). The issues identified as challenges influence teacher thinking and practice.

The findings strongly suggest that most of the teachers were motivated by the teachers’ community, citizenship, and pastoral roles to teaching. Very few teachers actually mentioned the love for their subject and working with knowledge. The other roles, such as interpreter and designer of learning programs and materials; scholar, researcher, and lifelong student; and learning area/subject specialist, are not reflected in the responses. It can have negative implications on effective teaching in the classrooms if teachers have little regard for knowledge that many researchers have explicitly indicated as paramount and a prerequisite for good teaching. This knowledge is inclusive of content knowledge, PCK, knowledge of the students, educational contexts, ends, purposes, and values (Shulman, 2004). This teacher knowledge characterizes teaching and it is inappropriate for teachers to be motivated only by other things.

Footnotes

Appendix A

Table A1.

Summary Roles of a Teacher (“South African Education Policy; Norms and Standards for Educators,” 2000).

Roles of the teacher	Description The educator will:
1. Learning mediator	- Mediate learning in a manner sensitive to the diverse needs of student construct learning environments that are appropriately contextualized and inspirational - Demonstrate sound knowledge of subject content and various principles, strategies, and resources appropriate to teaching
2. Interpreter and designer of learning programs and materials	- Understand, interpret, and design original learning programs - Design original learning programs - Identify the requirements for a specific context of learning and select and prepare suitable textual and visual resources for learning
3. Leader, administrator, and manager	- Make decisions appropriate to the level; manage learning in the classroom
4. Scholar, researcher, and lifelong student	- Achieve ongoing personal, academic, occupational, and professional growth through pursuing reflective study and research in their learning area, in broader professional and educational matters, and in other related fields
5. Learning area/subject/discipline/phase specialist	- Be well grounded in the knowledge, skills, values, principles, methods, and procedures relevant to the discipline, subject, learning area, phase of study, or professional or occupational practice - Know about different approaches to teaching and learning, and their use in ways that are appropriate to the student and the context
6. An assessor	- Have an understanding of the purposes, methods, and effects of assessment and be able to provide helpful feedback to students - Design and manage both formative and summative assessment in ways that are appropriate to the level and purpose of the learning, and meet the requirements of accrediting bodies - Keep detailed and diagnostic records of assessment - Interpret and use assessment results to improve learning of programs
7. Community, citizenship, and pastoral role	- Practice and promote ethical attitude, respect, and responsibility toward others - Uphold the constitution and promote democratic values and practices in schools and society

Appendix B

Table B1.

A Summary of the Beliefs Categories by Luft and Roehrig (2007).

Category	Code	Description
Traditional	1	Focus on transmission of information and structure
Instructive	2	Focus on providing experiences and monitoring of students actions or behaviors during instruction (teacher-focus, or teacher decision)
Transitional (cognitive and affective)	3	Focus on teacher–student relationships, subjective decisions, or affective response
Responsive	4	Focus on collaboration, feedback, or knowledge development (designing the classroom environment to enable the students to interact with each other and their knowledge)
Reform-based	5	Focus on mediating student knowledge or interactions

Appendix C

Appendix D

Table D1.

Summary for Most Important Things That Make for an Effective Teacher (Anonymous, 2015).

1. Teachers’ community, citizenship, and pastoral roles	16
2. Learning mediator	14
3. Interpreter and designer of learning programs and materials	10
4. Scholar, researcher, and lifelong student	9
5. Learning area/subject specialist	7
6. External to teaching	5
7. Leader	3
8. An assessor	1

Appendix E

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Ludo Mphathiwa

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