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Asia-Pacific Forum on Science Learning and Teaching, Volume 17, Issue 2, Article 13 (Dec., 2016) |
This research has its roots in an interpretive paradigm. The researchers attempted to understand and explain the ways PSTs used SSIs in science classrooms during the 2015 academic year. The participants in this study were 52 PSTs in the fifth year of a B.Ed. (Teaching Science) program who were doing teaching practice in 17 partnership schools. There were 10 males and 42 females. The age range was 21–23 years old. There were 13 studying chemistry teaching, 13 studying physics teaching, and 26 studying biology teaching. They had learned about SSI-based teaching in some program courses, such as seminars and science teaching methodology and communication courses.
During practicum, they were asked to select one grade level from lower elementary level to the secondary level for their teaching practice. In addition, they were required to teach science 6–8 hours per week for 1 year (2 semesters). Cooperating teachers and university supervisors provided front-line advice, support, and critically reflective feedback to PSTs on developing classroom management skills, lesson plans, and teaching practices. Each semester, PSTs were also required to attend four seminars at the university and submitted their entire lesson plan to the university supervisor at the end of their teaching practice.
To answer the research questions, the researchers asked seven university supervisors to observe each PST’s teaching practice randomly four times during the first semester of 2015, jot down what they observed in field notes, and collect PSTs’ lesson plans. Beforehand, the researchers told them the objectives of classroom observations and made clear what they should observe, such as the focus of the teaching, characteristics of instruction, role of the teachers, role of the students, and the learning environment. The researchers also asked the PSTs to participate in focus group interviews four times during teaching conferences. At the end of their practicum, the researchers asked PSTs to complete an open-ended questionnaire to elicit their use of SSIs in their teaching during the practicum and to identify the problems encountered and their SSI-based professional development needs. There were three sections in the questionnaire: personal information, use of SSIs in classroom, and need for professional development in SSI-based teaching. In the personal data section, there were five open-ended items related to sex, age, major fields, grade point average (GPA), and SSI-based teaching experience. In the section on the use of SSIs in classroom, there were six open-ended questions related to the definition of SSIs, whether the PSTs bring SSIs into their lessons, how they use SSIs in the classroom, what media they use to bring SSIs into their classrooms, the role of students in SSI-based teaching, and the problems with SSI-based teaching. The section on professional development for SSI-based teaching had two open-ended questions on PSTs needs and the characteristics of the professional development program in which they would like to participate.
To confirm their questionnaire answers, two cooperative teachers per school and six university supervisors were asked to conduct semi-structured interviews to identify whether PSTs used SSIs in their teaching practice and to identify the problems PSTs faced when using SSIs in their classrooms.
For data analysis, all data collected from PSTs, cooperative teachers and university supervisors were analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively to understand PSTs’ use of SSIs in their classrooms, their difficulties in using SSIs, and their need for professional development in SSI-based teaching. Quantitative data analysis involved using descriptive statistics to identify which categories were most commonly answered. For qualitative data analysis, the questionnaire answers were analyzed through content analysis. The interviews were first transcribed verbatim. Then, the researchers read all data to seek relationship patterns. After that, the data were open-coded to look for emerging categories. Furthermore, relationships and patterns among all categories were interpreted and themes or general statements were created to represent PSTs’ use of SSIs in their classrooms, their difficulties in using SSIs, and their need for professional development in SSI-based teaching.
With regard to confirmability, details about the data collection, coding, and analysis were examined and reviewed by experts in science education, who provided the researchers feedback on the accuracy of the process.
