Teaching Methods in ninth grade Finnish Comprehensive school: A Survey of Student Expectations

1
Teaching Methods in ninth grade Finnish
Comprehensive school A Survey of Student
Expectations

• Jari Lavonen, Kalle Juuti, Reijo Byman, Anna
  Uitto and Veijo Meisalo
• Department of Teacher Education, University of
  Helsinki, Finland

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The purpose of the research is to determine

• how science is taught today in comprehensive
  schools in Finland (evaluated by the students
  and by the teachers),
• how students and teachers would like science to
  be taught

3
Background

• Students decreasing interest in science,
  especially in physics.
• Typically, student interest has been explored by
  looking at their interests towards
• (i) the domains of science or content,
• (ii) the context, where a certain scientific
  domain is met,
• (iii) the activity, the type teaching methods
  (Fairbrother, 2000, pp. 16-17 Sjøberg, 2000
  Hoffman, 2002).
• Osborne (2003) argue that more research is needed
  to identify the aspects of science teaching that
  would most effectively engage pupils in school
  science .

4
Teaching method

• Teaching method is used as a synonym for a -
  learning or instructional method/model/strategy,
  - student activity or classroom practice.
• Use of a teaching method helps students to
  acquire - concepts, ways of thinking, - skills,
  and - values.
• Teaching methods are - goal-oriented and -
  emphasise social interaction among students and
  between students and the teacher.

5
Method

• A questionnaire was designed based on previous
  research on students attitudes or interest in
  teaching methods (Donnelly Jenkins, 2001)
• 75 Finnish comprehensive schools were selected
  randomly in each 65 pupils at the 9th grade
  level and their teachers (3626 pupils, 178
  teachers)
• The questionnaire was distributed to participants
  in spring 2003 (two reminders) as an appendix of
  Finnish ROSE questionnaire.

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Students (nStudent 3626) evaluations of how
often teaching methods are currently used in
science classroom
Teacher presents new material
1 never
Teacher presents/ solves problems
2 rarely (1-4 times a term)
Practical work in small groups
Reading a textbook
Teacher presenting demonstrations
3 sometimes (2-4 times a month)
Teacher leads discussion
Work with tasks individually
4 often (2-3 times a week)
Work with tasks in small groups
Project work in small groups
Teacher uses students' ideas
5 daily
Teacher presenting network presentations
Making network presentations
Discussion in small groups
Learning by writing essay, referats
Visit to industry
Reading an encyclopedia or a paper
An expert visit our lesson
Visit to science centre or museum
0
20
40
60
80
100
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Students (nStudent 3626) evaluations of how
often teaching methods are used in science
classroom (means)
Teacher presents new material
1 never
Teacher presents/ solves problems
2 rarely (1-4 times a term)
Practical work in small groups
Reading a textbook
Teacher presenting demonstrations
3 sometimes (2-4 times a month)
Teacher leads discussion
Work with tasks individually
4 often (2-3 times a week)
Work with tasks in small groups
Project work in small groups
5 daily
Teacher uses students' ideas
Teacher presenting network presentations
Making network presentations
now
Discussion in small groups
Learning by writing essay, referats
Visit to industry
Reading an encyclopedia or a paper
An expert visit our lesson
Visit to science centre or museum
8
Teachers (nTeacher 178) evaluations of how
often teaching methods are used in science
classroom (means)
Teacher presents new material
1 never
Teacher presents/ solves problems
Practical work in small groups
2 rarely (1-4 times a term)
Reading a textbook
Teacher presenting demonstrations
3 sometimes (2-4 times a month)
Teacher leads discussion
Work with tasks individually
Work with tasks in small groups
4 often (2-3 times a week)
Project work in small groups
Teacher uses students' ideas
5 daily
Teacher presenting network presentations
Making network presentations
Discussion in small groups
Teacher, now
Learning by writing essay, referats
Visit to industry
Teacher, wish
Reading an encyclopedia or a paper
An expert visit our lesson
Visit to science centre or museum
1
2
3
4
5
9
Students and Teachers evaluations of how often
teaching methods are currently used in science
classroom (means)
Teacher presents new material
1 never
Teacher presents/ solves problems
2 rarely (1-4 times a term)
Practical work in small groups
Reading a textbook
Teacher presenting demonstrations
3 sometimes (2-4 times a month)
Teacher leads discussion
Work with tasks individually
4 often (2-3 times a week)
Work with tasks in small groups
Project work in small groups
5 daily
Teacher uses students' ideas
Teacher presenting network presentations
Making network presentations
Student, now
Discussion in small groups
Learning by writing essay, referats
Visit to industry
Reading an encyclopedia or a paper
An expert visit our lesson
Visit to science centre or museum
10
Students and Teachers evaluations of how often
teaching methods should be used in science
classroom (means)
Teacher presents new material
1 never
Teacher presents/ solves problems
Practical work in small groups
2 rarely (1-4 times a term)
Reading a textbook
Teacher presenting demonstrations
3 sometimes (2-4 times a month)
Teacher leads discussion
Work with tasks individually
4 often (2-3 times a week)
Work with tasks in small groups
Project work in small groups
Teacher uses students' ideas
5 daily
Teacher presenting network presentations
Making network presentations
Discussion in small groups
Student, wish
Learning by writing essay, referats
Visit to industry
Reading an encyclopedia or a paper
An expert visit our lesson
Visit to science centre or museum
1
2
3
4
5
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Factor analysis students' (n 3626, grade 9)
opinions on how they would like to study science
during their lessons

• Promax with Kaiser Normalisation -Rotated factor
  loading matrix for Maximum Likelihood Factoring
  was calculated for items measuring students' (n
  3626, grade 9) opinions on how they would like to
  study science during their lessons.
• Several analysis were done with SPSS and the
  comprehensibility criteria were used and the
  number of factors was limited to five (? 2
  409,3).
• The factor analysis make it easier to describe
  how these 3626 students classify the different
  teaching methods used in a classroom.

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Factor loadings 1 2 3
4 5 F1 Interaction with society F1I1
Visit to science centre or museum
.900 F1I2 Visit to industry .813 F1I2
An expert visit our lesson .813 F2
Interaction with learning material F2I1
Making network presentations
.782 F2I2 Learning by writing essay.
referats. .758 F2I3 Teacher
presenting network presentations
.571 F2I4 Reading an encyclopedia or a
paper .370 F2I5 Reading a
textbook .313 F3 Interaction with a
teacher F3I1 Teacher presents new
material .869 F3I2 Teacher presents/
solves problems .809 F3I3 Teacher leads
discussion .313 F4 Interaction in a small
group F4I1 Work with tasks in small
groups .729 F4I2 Discussion in
small groups .720 F4I3 Project
work in small groups .543 F5
Interaction with nature F5I1 Practical work
in small groups .822 F5I2 Teacher
presenting demonstrations .628 of
total variance 30.6 11.0 5.4 3.7 2.3
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Classification of interactions in science and
technology education

• It is useful to classify teaching methods based
  on different interactions (a teacher can plan
  teaching in a versatile way)
• Social interactions
• F3 Interaction with a teacher
• F4 Interaction in a small group
• Interaction with a source of information
• F5 Interaction with Nature
• F2 Interaction with the learning material
• F1 Interaction with the society

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Sources of informationin science and technology
education
Sources of information
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Regression analysis

• How background variables (gender, nationality and
  interest variables) account for the variance in
  different factors.
• The same group of predictors were used for
  explaining the variance in all five dependent
  variables in the regression analysis.

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Interaction
with
society



1)

b

t

G
ender (1 girl, 2 boy)



Int
erest
in nature
(
1

very uninte
restin
g
)

,05

2,6

Science hobbies

(
1
very
uninte
restin
g
)

,09

5,0

Further studies
(
1

very
uninte
restin
g
)



Occupation

(
1

very
uninte
restin
g
)



Studying easiness

(
1
very easy
)

4,4

,11

I
nterestingness
of
instruction


(
1
no
)



Q
uality of instruction

(
1
very poor
)

-
,06

-
3,3

W
orkload

(
1
very small
)



S
uccess

in science

(
1
very poor
)



Grade

(
4 10)



R

,19

2
R

,04

F

11,1


ns
1)
p gt 0.05, p lt 0.05, p lt 0.01, p lt 0.00
1
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Discussion

• The results indicate that students and teachers
  prefer more versatile teaching methods in their
  science classes
• A teachers should pay more attention to teaching
  methods when planning science instruction-
  there are different learners in the classroom-
  there are different goals (knowledge and skills
  to be learned)
• It would be interesting to confirm this result by
  case studies.

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Thank you!
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Students (nStudent 3626) evaluations of how
often teaching methods are currently used in
science classroom (means)
Teacher presents new material
1 never
Teacher presents/ solves problems
2 rarely (1-4 times a term)
Practical work in small groups
Reading a textbook
Teacher presenting demonstrations
3 sometimes (2-4 times a month)
Teacher leads discussion
Work with tasks individually
4 often (2-3 times a week)
Work with tasks in small groups
Project work in small groups
Teacher uses students' ideas
5 daily
Teacher presenting network presentations
Making network presentations
Discussion in small groups
Learning by writing essay, referats
Visit to industry
Reading an encyclopedia or a paper
An expert visit our lesson
Visit to science centre or museum
21
Students (nStudent 3626) evaluations of how
often teaching methods should be used in science
classroom
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Teachers (nTeacher 178) evaluations of how
often teaching methods are currently used in
science classroom