A Comparative Study of Technological, Pedagogical and Content Knowledge of Secondary Science Teachers of Purba Medinipur District, West Bengal with regards to Gender

This paper portrays a structure for teachers’ knowledge for technological reconciliation called technological pedagogical and content knowledge (TPACK) with regards to gender. This structure expands on TPACK Scale developed by Hemant Lata Sharma and Leena Sharma to assess technological, pedagogical and, content knowledge among teachers. The development of TPACK is basic to teaching effectively with technology. This study was done in the Purba Medinipur District of West Bengal. As the schools were closed due to COVID-19 lockdown, and the teachers were taking online classes from home, the researcher did not have any knowledge about the number of secondary science teachers taking online classes, the population was considered as infinite. To determine the sample size, the Krejecie and Morgan formula was used. As per the formula, 384 is the minimum required size of the sample for an infinite population. As the researcher was unable to locate the population due to the lockdown, a list of secondary schools of Purb Medinipur district was prepared and 100 schools were selected randomly from the list. The school management and administration was contacted and requested to grant permission for data collection and also to provide contact details of the teachers who are taking online classes. The TPACK tool was sent to the science teachers of these selected schools through email/whatsapp, urging them to provide information as asked. A total of 395 secondary science teachers responded to the tool. The single factor ANOVA statistics was used to analyze the data. The results revealed that the female secondary science teachers were found to have more technological, pedagogical, and content knowledge in comparison to male science teachers in Purba Medinipur District of West Bengal. Female secondary science teachers were found significantly better in comparison to male secondary science teachers in terms of technological knowledge and technological content knowledge. But, there was no significant difference between pedagogical knowledge, content knowledge, technological pedagogical knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge, and technological, pedagogical content knowledge of female and male secondary science teachers as describe on the TPACK scale.