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Asia-Pacific Forum
on Science Learning and Teaching, Volume 13, Issue 2, Article 10 (Dec., 2012) |
Contexts are real or virtual setting in which learners develop understanding. From the analyses of the teaching designs, it was discovered that all the contexts were determined by the teachers according to the curriculum and textbooks. None were pupil-determined or negotiated. Only Teacher C had incorporated some current issues in the context. She explained her rationale,
- The textbook doesn’t go deep into the topic of global warming but I believe this issue is directly related to the pupils so I arranged a session to investigate it with the pupils. (Teacher C)
The teachers believed that the contexts they determined were of an appropriate level to the pupils. For example,
- The lesson went on as planned. I was worried about not having enough guidelines but the pupils turned out to be able to master the skills during inquiry. (Teacher B)
In general, the pupils found the learning topics interesting despite some challenges they had encountered while interacting with the online resources and completing the learning activities.
Online resources lie at the heart of the RBeLEs framework. Content analyses of the teaching designs showed that Teacher A and Teacher C used both dynamic and static resources from different sources, from government bodies to non-governmental organisations and from business corporations to educational organisations.
- Most of the resources are dynamic because weather information changes all the time. (Teacher A)
- I selected both dynamic and static resources for this topic. The weather news video, for example, is considered to be dynamic since it’s updated twice a day. Others such as text and data are static, I think. (Teacher C)
Teacher B used only static resources ’ videos. She talked about her choice of resources during the interview.
- I would like pupils to understand how the bones inside the body can be seen, for example, with X-rays, and how the bones are connected. I think the videos I found on the Internet can show these things to the pupils clearly. (Teacher B)
All the teachers said that based on their observations, the online resources were able to raise pupils’ interest in learning. However, the teachers had also observed some difficulties encountered by the pupils when dealing with the online resources. For example,
- The pupils found it difficult and confusing to switch between different websites. They expected to find all the information needed from one website. (Teacher A)
- I thought they [the pupils] could learn by just watching the videos and simply ignoring the English or Putonghua voice-overs. But, I ended up having to give them more time to watch the videos because they kept telling me that they couldn’t understand. (Teacher B)
The pupils in the classes of Teacher A and Teacher B mentioned the difficulties they encountered while using the online resources, which were similar to those observed by the teachers. For example,
- We didn’t know where to find the weather information of different cities in China. (Student_A02)
- We didn’t know we had to look for the information from different websites until the teacher told us. (Student_A05)
- The video [about the connection of bones] was in English, I couldn’t understand it. (Student_B02)
Moreover, Teacher C expressed difficulty in finding suitable online resources for the topic. She said,
Many of the resources I found were in English or Simplified Chinese; even if the content was appropriate pupils would find it hard to read. Some videos I found were also not in Cantonese, pupils would not understand. (Teacher C)
To foster pupils’ learning, the teachers adopted different tools for various tasks, including tools for processing information, searching and seeking, collecting information and data, organising, collaborating and integrating, and communicating.
It was shown from the content analyses that all the teachers used printed worksheets as tools to support pupils in processing information. Discussion questions and spaces for recording information, writing down answers and composing drawings were included in the worksheets. Teacher B said,
- Worksheets can help students integrate what they have learned from the online resources.
All the three teachers provided specific websites or videos for the pupils to look for the information needed, except Teacher A, who also asked his pupils to look for the altitudes of different Chinese cities using Google Maps. Teacher A described how the activity went during the interview,
- Each group of pupils had to look for the altitudes of several cities in China with Google Maps and by comparing these altitudes they tried to explain why the cities from different parts of China show different weather patterns. (Teacher A)
Information and data collecting
Among the three teachers, only Teacher B planned a learning activity that involved pupils using the integrated webcam of the notebook computer to record a short video of their inquiry experiment. The video was later uploaded to an online video sharing platform so that pupils could watch the inquiry experiment done by different groups. Neither did the teacher observe nor did the pupils mention having difficulty in video shooting. Teacher B said,
- The pupils have experience of using the video shooting function of the notebook computer so it wasn’t a problem for them except the shooting time was a bit longer than expected. (Teacher B)
Teacher C helped pupils to organise their ideas by asking them to create concept maps on paper. By comparing the concept maps drawn by pupils before and after learning, changes in pupils’ learning could be made explicit to the teacher. Besides, drawing concept maps allows pupils to think about, organise and visualise ideas and their connections, and reflect on their understanding (Vanides, Tomita, & Ruiz-Primo, 2005).
In Teacher B’s class, the teacher designed two activities that required pupils to work together and connect their existing and newly gained understanding. In the first activity, the pupils were asked to complete a skeleton puzzle in groups by matching different parts of the human skeleton to their functions. The completed puzzle was an artefact that represented pupils’ understanding. In the second activity, the pupils worked in groups to make a model of the elbow joint with the materials provided by the teacher and record a short video to show their model and how the two pieces of bones were connected and how movements were allowed. At the interviews, the pupils talked about the difficulties they experienced when creating the model. For example,
- We didn’t know which materials we should use and how to connect the bones to one another. (Student_B04)
- The experiment was very difficult. We tried to tie the bones with rubber bands, we used a lot of them but it didn’t work. (Student_B07)
From a social constructivist point of view of learning, understanding is socially constructed through dialogical processes. In this study, all the teachers provided opportunities for pupils to communicate within groups, between groups and with the teacher. Both individual and group presentations were used by the teachers. Apart from face-to-face communication, Teacher B also had the videos produced by different pupil groups uploaded to an online video platform for sharing.
As evident from the interviews and content analyses, different types of scaffolds were designed and adopted to support pupils in asking and discussion, searching and selecting, doing and observing, and summarising and conceptualising while learning in the RBeLEs.
Questions were used extensively by all the three teachers. There were questions printed on the worksheets to guide pupil inquiry and discussion, there were also questions asked orally by the teachers to probe pupils’ existing knowledge and stimulate pupil thinking. Major guidelines for learning activities were also found on the worksheets while more detailed instructions were given by the teachers during the lesson to the entire class or to individual groups or pupils.
Being able to search and select appropriate information from the Internet is one of the important and essential skills that pupils of the 21st century should possess. However, the pupils involved in this study were still relatively young and their Internet searching skills were not very well-developed. Therefore, to avoid pupils from being diverted to irrelevant information, all the teachers limited pupils’ search of information to the designated online resources they considered relevant and appropriate. Clear instructions were also given so pupils knew exactly what they had to look for from the online resources. Yet, as aforementioned, some pupils found searching for information from the online resources challenging.
The process of searching and selecting information by itself would not lead to learning unless pupils actually study and work with the information. It is shown from the content analyses and teacher interview that the three teachers required pupils to observe, read and study the information from the online resources and work on the information to construct understanding. As for “doing” the pupils in Teacher B’s class carried out a hands-on modelling experiment after watching several online videos that described the structures and movements of joints.
Summarising and conceptualising
All the teachers involved in this study acknowledge the importance of summarising and conceptualising in supporting pupils to consolidate their understandings. For different sections of the lesson, the teachers helped pupils to summarise and conceptualise with different methods, such as fill-in-the-blanks, question-and-answer, multiple choice questions, drawing, and group discussion. And with these methods, the pupils worked on tasks like decision making, model creation and categorisation by applying their newly gained understanding.
