Recent studies on human cognition have presented credible
evidence that learners are not tabula rasa as previously
conceived by traditional theorists, rather they enter new
lessons with some preconceptions, most of which are resistant
to change in spite of teachers' efforts to assuage them. As
such the challenges confronting science educators and
educational psychologists are to understand the nature of
learners' preconceptions, designing and implement appropriate
instructional interventions that would enable the learners
become aware of and reconcile their conceptions that are
inconsistent with accepted views of science.
Several perspectives have been advocated on how learners'
preconceptions can be modified through instructions. While
traditional theorists subscribe to substitution of inaccurate
conceptions with accurate ones, the constructivists identify
with giving the learners autonomy to inquire and re-evaluate
their own ideas. The former has been confronted with
widespread criticism and is becoming less and less tenable.
This research identifies with the latter.
Conceptual change entails restructuring of ideas. It is a
cognitive process that involves change in attitude toward
learning. Based on the theoretical assumption that learning is
facilitated through teaching that give the learners autonomy
search to new ideas, verify them, and restructure existing
ideas, I developed a model of conceptual change from where I deduced the four sub variables of the conceptual change that
this study explored. The sub variables include formulation of
ideas, search for new ideas, review of meaning, and transfer
of knowledge. My assumption was that conceptual change can be
facilitated through instructions that engage learners in
experiences relevant to the four sub variables that I have
mentioned. This conceptual framework served as my reference
point for the designing of the Constructivist Teaching Model
that consists of four instructional phases.
Judging that I was resident and working in Seychelles as a
teacher trainer at a time I developed the Constructivist
Teaching Model, I chose to implement and evaluate it first in
Seychelles. Hence this study is titled `The implementation and
evaluation of a constructivist intervention in secondary
school science teaching in Seychelles'.
The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of the
constructivist teaching model as an intervention to facilitate
conceptual change. Basically, there are two main aims of this
study. First, to investigate to what extent the constructivist
teaching model facilitates conceptual change. Secondly, to
investigate if the paradigms shift from the traditional method
to the constructivist method of science teaching is welcomed
in Seychelles.
This study was carried out in two phases Pretest and
Evaluation. Pretest was aimed at identifying the weaknesses of
the initial version of my model of constructivist teaching with a view to eliminate those weaknesses to further
strengthen the model. In a nutshell pretest was a step taken
to enhance the validity of the model. Evaluation on the other
hand was aimed at making a judgment whether a difference
actually exists between the learners that received
constructivist instruction and those that received traditional
lecture instruction in terms of the four sub variables of
conceptual change. To enable for this judgment necessitated an
experiment.
The experiment was conducted with a total of six secondary
schools selected from the ten secondary schools on the island.
The participants included 178 learners, 6 science teachers and
8 independent persons. The learners were constituted into
three Bands; 1, 2 and 3. Each Band consisted of a Control
group and an Experimental group. Altogether six groups were
formed, with 3 Control groups and 3 Experimental groups. There
were 59 learners in Band 1, comprising of 29 learners in the
Control group and 30 learners in the Experimental group; Band
2 comprised a Control group of 25 learners and an Experimental
group of 28 learners; and Band 3 consisted of 33 learners in
each group. The learners in Band 1 were used for pretest that
lasted for five week. The learners in Bands 2 and 3 were used
in the evaluation that lasted for thirteen weeks.
The groups were non-equivalent, suggesting that randomisation
was not possible as the learners were in intact classes.
Learners in the experimental groups received constructivist
instruction while their counterparts in the control groups received traditional lecture instruction. Both groups were
exposed to the same experimental conditions except in the
methods of teaching. Data was collected through teacher
interviews, independent observation, measurement of learners'
achievement, and analysis of documents. Quantitative data was
analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics.
Qualitative data was analysed on the basis of content or
meaning of the information given by the respondents. Following
the design of this study the performance and achievements of
learners that received constructivist instruction were
compared with their counterparts who received traditional
instruction.
Guiding this study are two main assumptions. The first is the
assumption of equality of the variance, and the second is the
assumption of normality of the distribution. The results of
Levene's test of equality of variances indicated a violation
of the assumption of homogeneity of the variances of TI and CI
groups while the results of test of skewness and kurtosis give
the indication of normality of distribution of scores in both
groups.
The results of descriptive statistics analysis showed that the
learners who received constructivist instruction performed
better than the learners that received traditional instruction
in terms of formulation of ideas, search for new ideas, review
of meaning, and transfer of knowledge. The results of
inferential statistics showed that the difference in the means
of the two groups on each of the sub variables of conceptual change is significant. This evidence indicates that my model
of constructivist teaching produced an effect measuring 0.86
and a power of 0.85 based on Cohen's Blueprint, and a
reliability of 0.72 based on Cronbach's test of internal
consistency. Besides statistical evidence, analysis of the
opinions of science teachers who implemented the
Constructivist Teaching Model in their respective classes and
the independent persons who observed teaching and learning in
both the experimental and control groups showed a preference
for the constructivist approach over the traditional approach.
On the grounds of the evidence gathered through observation
and measurement this study concludes that the constructivist
approach to science teaching is more effective than
traditional lecture approach in facilitating the ability of
secondary school learners in Seychelles to reconstruct ideas.
This study also found that science educationists in Seychelles
welcome the paradigm shift from the traditional approach to
the constructivist approach. / Educational Studies / D. Educ. (Psychology of Education)
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:unisa/oai:uir.unisa.ac.za:10500/2407 |
| Date | 31 August 2008 |
| Creators | Anyanwu, Raymond Ndubisi |
| Contributors | Mashile, Elias Oupa, 1963-, djagegjj@unisa.ac.za |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Dissertation |
| Format | 1 online resource (xxiv, 282 leaves) |
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