An analysis of the thoughts of religious education teachers

The purpose of this study was to examine the thoughts that experienced but untrained religious education teachers have while they are teaching. More specifically, it investigated: (1) the foci of their thoughts; (2) the cognitive levels of their thoughts, using Bloom's Taxonomy of the Cognitive Domain; (3) the levels of intentionality of their decisions.;Categories describing the foci of teachers' thoughts were identified. Levels of cognition identified in Bloom's Taxonomy were adopted for use in this study. Data regarding the focus of the teachers' thoughts, as well as the level of their cognitions, were recorded in a matrix when observed.;The subjects were Sunday School teachers of a suburban United Methodist Church in upstate New York. Sixteen teachers were invited to participate; nine accepted the invitation. They were distributed across all grade levels from Kindergarten through High School.;Each subject was videotaped while teaching. Subsequently, when the focus of the teacher thoughts were examined during the first phase of the study, the following six categories emerged: (1) Instructional Strategies, (2) The Students, (3) Themselves, (4) The Classroom Environment, (5) The Curriculum, and (6) Routine Processes. The cognitive level of the thoughts were examined and classified according to Bloom's Taxonomy. Additionally, the levels of the intentionality of teacher decisions were determined in terms of the level of "consideration" and the strength of determination demonstrated by the teacher making the decisions.;The following conclusions were drawn from this research: (1) The thoughts of the teachers examined in this study were not narrowly focused but extended across all six categories cited above. It was found that the most frequent focus of their thoughts dealt with the ways in which they taught, namely strategies (.425) and secondly, the recipients of their teaching, namely students (.267). (2) The teachers in this study operated at all six cognitive levels as identified by Bloom, and as a group operated at the higher levels of thinking, namely, analysis (.305) and evaluation (.253) most frequently, and comprehension somewhat less frequently (.211). (3) Twelve and a half percent of the teachers' thoughts related to decision-making. It was found that approximately 50% of the teachers' decisions were at a medium level of intentionality. Approximately 39% fell below that level, and 15% were above.;This research is significant because it is an exploratory effort to extend the knowledge about the thoughts that religious education teachers have while teaching. It provides preliminary data regarding the focus, cognitive level and intentionality of religious educators, and serves as a prototype for future research.