Research Article
Elizabeth Csikar, Jill E. Stefaniak
CONT ED TECHNOLOGY, Volume 9, Issue 1, pp. 42-60
ABSTRACT
Conveying scientific information with high intrinsic cognitive load to students is a challenge. Often, students do not have the existing schema to incorporate the information in a comprehensive manner. One method that has shown promise is storytelling. Storytelling has been successfully used to convey public health information to non-experts. Therefore, it was of interest to determine whether storytelling could be used in the classroom to present information with high intrinsic load to students in a meaningful manner. This study used a post-test only quasi-experimental study design to explore the utility of storytelling as an instructional strategy in anatomy and physiology classes at a community college. Students in the treatment group received instruction that used storytelling to present examples of application. Both control and experimental groups were assessed through the use of a proximal formative quiz, distal multiple-choice questions, and a novel critical thinking exercise administered after the instruction. Results suggest that storytelling was as effective as the instructional methods delivered to the control group. These findings suggest that storytelling may be used as a means to convey complex scientific information in the classroom.
Keywords: Story telling, Instructional strategies, Problem solving
Research Article
Dabae Lee, Yeol Huh
CONT ED TECHNOLOGY, Volume 5, Issue 4, pp. 286-301
ABSTRACT
Effort to determine teachers’ effects on student has been continuously made with national data. However, paucity of research has been conducted on how teachers’ instructional strategies impact on student learning with national data, although instructional theories suggest a direct relationship between instructional strategies and learning outcomes. Therefore, the relationship between teachers’ use of instructional strategies and learning outcomes should be examined with national data. This study investigates how much teacher’s instructional strategies explain student learning in mathematics and what instructional strategies are positively related to student learning outcomes. Revised Bloom’s taxonomy was used to define instructional strategies that support different levels of cognitive processes. The U.S. 8th grade mathematics data from the 2007 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study was analyzed using multilevel modeling. As results, teachers’ instructional strategies explained approximately 12% at the individual level and 17% at the teacher level of the learning outcome. Also, asking student to write equations and functions to represent relationships and to decide on their own procedures for solving complex problems were positively and significantly related to student learning outcomes.
Keywords: Instructional strategies, TIMSS, Mathematics education, Academic achievement, Multilevel modeling
Research Article
Bahadir Eristi, Celal Akdeniz
CONT ED TECHNOLOGY, Volume 3, Issue 2, pp. 141-161
ABSTRACT
The present study aimed at developing a scale for diagnosing instructional strategies to be used to determine the instructional strategies applied in the instructional process. In the process of the scale development, first the related literature was reviewed. Following this, field experts were asked for their views, and the instructional activities to be carried out in the instructional process were identified. Afterwards, considering the similar and different features of the instructional activities, they were grouped by associating them with instructional strategies. The draft scale, which made up of a total of 291 items in the beginning, was exposed to a four-phase application process prior to the actual application. At the end of this process, it was transformed into a 70-item scale applied to 614 home teachers and field teachers. For the content validity of the scale, field experts were asked for their views. Data collected were analyzed with the methods of principle components analysis and exploratory factor analysis. As a result of the exploratory factor analysis conducted to determine the construct validity of the scale, the factor load of each item in the scale was found over .30. In order to determine the factors involving the items in the scale, the orthogonal rotation was applied with the Varimax technique to the data collected. The scale included two sub-scales. The rate of the factors in the sub-scale of meeting the total variance was 43% for the sub-scale of focus strategies and 62% for the sub-scale of process strategies. The value obtained by testing the internal consistency for the whole scale was found as α=.964. With respect to the item-whole scale correlational consistency, the items in the scale ranged between.406 and .816. The findings obtained in the process of developing this five-point Likert-type scale demonstrated that the scale could be used successfully in determining the nature of instructional strategies applied in the instructional process.
Keywords: Instructional strategies, Instructional methods, Instructional tactics, Instructional approaches, Scale development