Abstract:
Pre-service teachers have learnt many important concepts in education throughout their years of study and training; however, true impact only occurs when they demonstrate theory-practice integration. The present project designs a class with the use of key learning principles to foster constructivist epistemic and teaching beliefs among a group of pre-service teachers. The project also aims at identifying critical incidents of the pedagogical design from the students’ perspective in order to inform and strengthen future designs and generalizations. Specifically, the four fundamental learning principles (activating prior knowledge, cultivating metacognitive abilities, providing collaborative learning opportunities and teaching with big ideas) grounded on the emerging field, Learning Sciences, will be used to design the course; while these learning principles will also be taught as content. It is expected that through first-hand experiencing the principles as process; and learning the learning principles as content, students will demonstrate greater propensity for theory-practice integration. Students’ epistemic beliefs and conceptions of teaching were measured both at the beginning and at the end of the course to allow comparison. Furthermore, selected students were invited to attend an in-depth interview regarding their perception of critical incidents in the course that best help them learn.
Code:
T0175
Principal Project Supervisors:
Keywords provided by authors:
Start Date:
01 Sep 2016
End Date:
31 Aug 2017
Status:
Completed
Result:
Two levels of results can be summarized. One relates to the critical incidents of using the four learning principles to promote theory practice integration and the other one relates to the fostering of constructivist epistemic beliefs and conception of teaching.
First, the four learning principles (activating prior knowledge, cultivating metacognitive abilities, providing collaborative learning opportunities and teaching with big ideas) when taught as content and used to design the learning environment, they yielded differential impact as experienced by students. Results from qualitative interviews showed that students learnt best about activating prior knowledge as form of content, but none of them noted it as the principle used to design the course; while students learnt best about providing collaborative learning opportunities as learning processes but none of them noted it as content being taught in the course. Second, the learning environment as designed with close reference to the four learning principles was effective in foster one dimension of epistemic belief change (development of knowledge); and one dimension of conception of teaching negatively (constructivist teaching). The dimension of justification of epistemic beliefs and the importance of negotiation in a constructivist environment predicted students’ academic performance of the course.
Impact:
Students perceived the learning environment constructed as informed by the four learning principles engaging. Particularly, they found the principle of activating prior knowledge and providing collaborative learning opportunities most valuable for their future teaching practices. Furthermore, students commended that there are presence of specific conditions affording discussion beneficial to their learning in the course. In sum, these conditions are: 1) discussion has to be sequenced well in-between content (but not as introduction or closing); 2) discussion has to have a clear objective and supported by artefacts or materials (but not simply an open-ended one-question discussion without support); 3) discussion has to have variation in group composition (but not random self-selected grouping) in order to generate meaningful yet diverse discussion. Students’ perspective of what remains critical for them to engage in discussion yields important impact to the design of collaborative activity at university context.
Deliverables:
Seminars/ Presentation/ Sharing Sessions
(2017, June). "Three Practical Tips about Using Collaborative learning Strategies in Higher Education Classroom: A Qualitative Study" presented by Dr Wincy Lee Wing Sze at Departmental Conference of Department of Curriculum and Instruction at The Education University of Hong Kong. (Number of participants: 36 participants) https://repository.eduhk.hk/en/publications/9674d0ec-586f-4645-83d4-73401d2387fd
(2018, March). "Practicing what one preaches: Using key learning principles to foster theory-practice integration: Results and reflections" presented by Dr Wincy Lee Wing Sze at the seminar at the The Education University of Hong Kong. (Number of participants: 7) https://repository.eduhk.hk/en/publications/70908e99-d85b-40ba-a34e-76f13f73fcf5
Teaching and Learning Resources/ Materials (including online resources)
(December 2017). Course book of “Teachers as Curriculum Planners (TLS3007).(please contact Dr Wincy Lee at wwslee@eduhk.hk for a full copy if interested) https://repository.eduhk.hk/en/publications/0d406bb6-700e-4bd7-8d18-f210...
Financial Year:
2015-16
Type:
TDG