Instruction of learning strategies: Effects on conceptual learning, and learning satisfactions

This study provides some evidence of the positive effects of using summarizing instruction in an introductory physics course on student teachers’ conceptual learning. For the participating students, summarizing learning strategy instruction was more effective than traditional instruction in terms of improving conceptual learning in physics. Furthermore, it was noted that when teaching with traditional methods, the teaching of summarizing strategy did not affect students’ learning satisfaction at all.

By teaching summarizing strategies, the students were encouraged to actively participate in the activity. Thus, the researchers made a great contribution to the students learning as they have become able to better comprehend a subject in physics through summarizing, and as a result of which they have also become able to differentiate between relevant and irrelevant inputs, and have turned out to be outstanding individuals who are really aware of what they are learning and can use strategies properly.

Although the students have improved their conceptual learning skills, it has not affected their learning satisfaction. The reason for this could be the fact that the students in both groups were taught through traditional methods. In the strategy group, the researchers spent rather less time on summarizing activities in comparison with the time spent on traditional methods. So, it is very normal to say that there was no improvement on the components describing the students’ satisfaction with the quality and methods of the teaching. Besides, the fact that the all the experiments were conducted in a limited time frame of only in six weeks might be another reason for having little effect on learning satisfaction.

The fact that the study was carried out within a regular teaching program has limitations on this study. Firstly, the study has been conducted within a six-week period. It is thought that any long term future studies on the same theme may prove to be useful in producing more positive effects on the results. Secondly, in this research, instead of overtly attempting to develop the students’ learner satisfaction, a strategy instruction program providing the students with the opportunity to actively participate in the summarizing sessions, emphasizing the importance of summarizing strategies usage would be beneficial. Thirdly, there were only 36 participants in the complete study. Being conducted with a small group poses a threat to the external validity to research. Thus, we may not be able to generalize the findings. This study must be conducted on the same subject, but with a larger sample so as to obtain results that can be generalized. Moreover, in further research, by supporting a strategy instruction program combined with a satisfaction improvement program which can be applied in addition to a normal instruction program, more effective results could be obtained.

On the basis of the findings, it is recommended that physics instructors should use summarizing learning strategy instruction in their lessons to develop students’ learning to learn skills and the related outcomes such as conceptual learning. In addition, the factors affecting students’ learning satisfaction during physics courses should be researched thoroughly through some more studies. Following that, depending on the findings, some of the teaching methods and activities used might have to be changed and adapted so as to increase students’ level of satisfaction with the courses. Research where the effects of instruction of different learning strategies in different grade levels on a physics course and different effective characteristics (e.g. learning approaches and anxiety) are investigated should also be done. Learning strategies and courses intended to instruct these strategies should be added to the curriculums of the institutions involved in the education of teachers.