 |
Asia-Pacific Forum on Science Learning and Teaching, Volume 13, Issue 1, Article 9 (Jun., 2012) |
This study was designed according to pretest–posttest experimental design without control group model.
The study group of the research consists of 31 primary education pre-service teachers attending Department of Primary Education of Education Faculty at Aksaray University in the fall term of 2009-2010 academic year. 67.7 % of the students of the study group are females (N=21) and 32.3% of them are males (N=10).
Application Steps of the Research
In the present study, TV program simulation to be used in environmental education was designed in accordance with the methods and techniques of microteaching. After providing necessary information about the program for the students, they were asked to prepare a course in the format of a TV program as microteaching. In the stages of preparation and presentation of the course, the following application steps of microteaching technique defined by Büyükkaragöz & Çivi (1999) were followed;
a. Preparing a lesson plan lasting 5–10 minutes.
b. Designing special evaluation forms in order to evaluate the lesson.
c. Teaching the lesson within the pre-determined time period, recording it on the camera.
d. Watching the video-recordings of the lesson.
e. Evaluation of the course by teacher and other persons in the audience using evaluation forms; doing corrections in light of the suggestions, criticisms, and contributions made.
f. Preparing and teaching the lesson again by taking into account the suggestions, criticisms and contributions
g. Evaluation of the lesson again by the audience and making suggestions if any.
Introduction of TV program simulation
TV program simulation prepared in the framework of environmental education course was designed in accordance with the microteaching technique. In the beginning of the term microteaching technique was introduced, sample applications were demonstrated. Then the students were divided into 6 groups, 5 groups of 5 persons and 1 group of 6 persons. The topics about environment were delivered to 6 groups according to their interests. The topics distributed to the groups are air, water and soil pollution, nuclear energy and wars, global warming and climate change and sustainable development. The pre-service teachers were asked to design a TV program about the topic assigned to their group in the form of microteaching. In this regard, during the times given to the students, they were asked to decide what the speaker, the audience and all the program team’s duties would be. In the design of their program, the students were only limited to their creativity. The students designed the class like a TV studio. The class design, poster, decoration, etc. and all the other arrangements were left to the students’ discretion. The speakers presented the program in accordance with the format of the program, and the others acted like guests in different roles such as academic persons, villagers, Presidents of the Environment and Forests, Middle East Expert and Japan Ambassador. The other students of the class acted like the audience of the program. All the tools such as computer, overhead projector, volume system etc. were provided. Each group was given 50 minutes, 10 minutes for per student. All the activities carried out were recorded on the camera and photos were taken. After the recordings were watched, the lesson was evaluated by applying ‘Microteaching Evaluation Forms’, which was developed by Karadeniz (2009). After this evaluation, firstly the chance of self-criticism was given to the group members carrying out the applications. Then the opinions of the watchers were taken. The TV program was presented again after criticisms, contributions and suggestions made were taken into consideration. The conditions of microteaching techniques were repeated again as it had been done in the first step. Thus, ‘TV program’ was developed to be used in environmental education as a microteaching application (Appendix 1).
In the study, the questionnaire developed by Külahçı (1994) and re-arranged by Görgen (2003) entitled as ‘The Views and Opinions of Teacher Candidates About Lecturing in the Classroom’ is used. The questionnaire is developed as three-point Likert scale containing 31 items, ranging from Yes (3 points), Partially (2 points) to No (1 point). The study of questionnaire’s validity and reliability were already established the original study. In this study, the validity of the content and appearance was established through expert opinions and the Cronbach alpha coefficient for reliability was found to be .96.
The data gathered from the questionnaire was analyzed with SPSS program on computer environment. Paired Samples t-tests were used in order to compare the pre-test and post-test scores of the pre-service teachers taken from the questionnaire aiming to elicit their opinions about lecturing based on a TV program.
