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Reflections of Science Teachers in a Professional Development Intervention to Improve their Ability to Teach for the Affective Domain

This paper reports on key aspects of a short in-service programme improving science teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge to teach for the affective domain. The affective domain refers to outcomes that involve changes in feelings, values, appreciation, interests, motivations or attitudes that might result from a learning experience. The intervention adopts a socio-scientific issues instructional strategy aimed at enhancing the participants’ capacity to promote these attributes in their teaching practice. Twenty-two science teachers from seven public schools in Johannesburg participated in a short intervention programme that explored creative ways of highlighting the practical relevance of science content, especially for the learners. Data were collected through questionnaires, interviews and observations and analysed qualitatively using Krathwohl’s taxonomy of affective learning outcomes and Saldana’s code-to-theory model. The emerging themes suggest that the intervention enabled the participants to develop more nuanced understandings and capabilities for privileging the needs of the affective domain in the teaching of science. The paper argues that, in the design and teaching of science lessons, the core content could be wrapped in contemporary social issues which learners can readily relate to and presented in ways that deliberately aim to excite students in order to promote their sustained engagement with both the content and social issues in more meaningful ways.