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Asia-Pacific Forum on Science Learning and Teaching, Volume 16, Issue 2, Article 3 (Dec., 2015) |
Context of Study
The two-year master’s degree in science education program is under the management of the Project for the Promotion of Science and Mathematics Talented Teachers (PSMT), which is supported by IPST in order to produce high quality science teachers for teaching in Enrichment Science Classroom of secondary school. In this program, pre-service science teachers take courses not only about teaching methods but also about research before doing action research in the classroom context. The curriculum of the master’s program in Science Education consists of 47 credits.During the master’s program, the pre-service teachers are required to study coursework for three semesters and then participate in teaching practice for two semesters. These pre-service teachers attended educational courses such as Research Methods in Education, Foundations of Education for Science Teachers, Science Curriculum Development, Development of Teaching and Learning (Chemistry or Biology or Physics), Assessment in Science Education, Psychology of Learning and Teaching, Language and Culture for Science Teacher, Construction and Utilization of Science Instructional Media and Innovation, and Seminar. Some courses relate to SSI-based teaching such as the Seminar where students has to present a topic that interests them, and some pre-service science teachers have presented on SSI-based teaching. In the Development of Teaching and Learning course, they learned SSI-based teaching in the classroom as only a strategy for teaching. Typically, teaching practice is one of the indispensable parts of teacher preparation programs, which gives pre-service teachers opportunities to practice teaching, and develop their understanding about teaching and learning (Poster, 1996). Therefore, in the fourth semester, which is focused of this study, the pre-service science teachers have study field experiences and do classroom research.
Before the field experience, the pre-service teachers attend an orientation program to gain information about schools to help them know what they should do in schools. To prepare themselves for teaching and be familiar with school students and teachers, the pre-service teachers observe classroom teaching and learning one week prior to their teaching practice. Cooperating teachers and university supervisors support the students and track their progress while giving feedback on the strengths and weaknesses of their teaching. Typically, the pre-service science teachers who take these courses spend four days a week in a local school and practice teaching for 8-12 hours per week. Pre-service science teachers who were interested in SSI-based teaching could practice it in the real science classroom context.
Research Participants
For the first phase of this study, the participants were 37 pre-service science teachers who were studying at a teacher education institution that has a commitment to generating and developing pre-service science teachers of high quality. These participants received scholarships from the Thai government to study in the two-year program of master’s degree in Science education. Twelve of the participants were male and twenty-seven of them were female. The range of their age was 23-34 years old. Fifteen of them were studying chemistry education, thirteen of them were studying physics education, and eleven of them were studying biology education. Prior to this master’s program, they had earned a bachelor's degree in science, majoring in chemistry, biology, or physics and had no teaching experience.
For the second phase of this study, the participants were two pre-service science teachers who had become our subjects because they met three criteria: (1) they volunteered to be research participants; (2) they were interested in SSI-based teaching; and (3) they identified issues in the classroom related to SSI-based teaching. William and Nancy, their pseudonyms, were selected to examine the influence of classroom action research on understandings and practices of SSI-based teaching and students’ learning outcomes resulting from SSIs-based teaching. We assigned the pseudonyms William and Nancy for ethical reasons.William was twenty-six-years old, and his GPA was 3.93 when the study began. He did not have any experience in SSI-based teaching. His inspiration for implementing SSI-based instruction in his action research resulted from his experience of students rarely sharing their ideas or opinions in the classroom. When the students discussed SSI, they used emotional reasons more than scientific reasons to support their ideas. He thought that he had to promote his students’ arguments by using SSI-based teaching. Before his teaching practice in the school, he worried whether SSI-based teaching would be appropriate for students. Typically, his students were used to learning with lecture-based instruction coupled with tutoring in preparation for the national test.
The second case study was Nancy. She was twenty-three years old, and her GPA was 3.86. She did not have any experience with SSI-based teaching. She described her students as passive and hardly involved in higher practice skills such as argumentation, reasoning and decision making. They always kept quiet during discussion. Therefore, she thought that SSI-based teaching might promoting her students’ higher practice skills. Before her teaching practice in the school, she was not confident teaching and needed more advice.
Data Collection
For the first phase of this study, I wanted to elicit pre-service science teachers’ perspectives about professional development in SSI-based teaching and using social media as a tool for promoting their SSI-based teaching. I collected data using a questionnaire at the end of the second semester of the 2013 academic year before their practicum in the first semester of the 2014 academic year. The questionnaire was framed in two parts and included demographic questions and individual perspectives on SSI-based teaching. In the section on demographic information, there were five open-ended questions related to gender, age, major fields, grade point average (GPA), and SSI-based teaching experience. In the section of perspectives of SSI-based teaching, there were four open-ended questions. These questions were about the need for professional development for SSI-based teaching, the strategies for professional development about SSI-based teaching, using mentoring as a professional development strategy for SSI-based teaching, and using social media as a professional development strategy for SSI-based teaching (Appendix).For the second phase of this study, we used an action research cycle composed of plan, act, observe, and reflect (Kemmis, 1990). This cycle was an ongoing process for me as a self-investigating practitioner, and I logically and systematically examined what I should use as a research adviser for our two cases. During this time I was a visiting scholar in the University of Missouri and studying under a well-known expert in SSI and SSI research. For this planning step, the decision was made to use social media such as e-mail, Facebook, and the Line cell phone application as communication tools to provide advice about lesson planning in SSI-based teaching. Since pre-service science teachers are young people who are very comfortable with social media and see social media as a natural form of communication, they would be comfortable communicating with us as their mentors, as well as their cooperative teacher and their peers about their teaching experiences.
When I used these social media platforms, I identified the problems that I found while mentoring William and Nancy within social media and developed an action plan concerning strategies that could solve these problems. I also shared action plans specifically designed to support both Nancy and William as well as my other mentees. The action plans consisted of effective strategies for implementing SSI in the classroom. In this step, I collected data from our conversations recorded on social media such as Facebook message or Line message. I also observed and videotaped their teaching practice and reviewed the class documentation (e.g., weekly journal entries, course outlines, lesson plans, and worksheets, etc.) that William and Nancy posted on social media. Additionally, I used an informal interview via social media to gather data from them with the aim of eliciting answers on the topics that are not clear or when I wanted more detail about SSI-based teaching. I asked them for their permission to tape record the interview, and each interview took approximately 20 to 30 minutes. For the reflection step, co-author and I considered data that I gathered from William and Nancy about whether these strategies affected their changes based on SSI-based teaching.
Data Analysis
We analyzed data about pre-service science teachers’ perception about using social media as a tool for promoting their SSI-based teaching both in quantitative and qualitative terms. Quantitative data analysis involved using descriptive statistics to identify which categories were most commonly answered in the questionnaires. For qualitative data analysis, the answers in the questionnaire were analyzed through content analysis. We started this analysis by reading raw data to interpret and construct categories that would capture relevant characteristics of the documents’ contents. My co-author validated the coding. In the second phase, we analyzed all collected data from William and Nancy by qualitative content analysis. We started analyzing data by reading their posting on social media and then interpreted and constructed categories to capture the relevant characteristics of the postings’ contents. We open-coded data looking for emerging themes linked to the research questions about how mentors can use social media for enhancing the advisees’ implementation of SSI-based teaching.
