Portuguese teachers’ perceptions of grammar teaching

Abstract

The teaching of grammar, as envisaged in the official curriculum, has been identified as challenging for many Portuguese teachers. In this paper, we present a study conducted with the aim of characterizing primary and middle school teachers’ perceptions about their own grammar teaching, utilizing Shulman’s model (1987) as adapted by Grossman (1990). We carried out a collective case study, using a questionnaire survey (n=200 teachers) to determine the importance teachers attach to teaching grammar, the degree of perceived adequacy of their knowledge and the difficulties they identify in this area of their teaching. The results reveal that teachers’ perceptions are shaped by multiple decisive factors including content knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge, knowledge of the curricula and general educational knowledge. Based on these findings, we advocate the need to rethink how teachers are trained and to (re) create awareness about the complexity of knowledge in grammar teaching and its role in effective student learning.