Browsing by Subject "teacher education"

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Open Access
An analysis of student perceptions and teacher intentions of blended learning in Computer and Instructional Technology Teacher Education Program
(2011) Azgur, Mehmet Serhat
One of the key concerns of teacher education is to facilitate the development of the teaching talents of pre-service teachers with scaling technologies and pedagogy of the 21st Century. Teacher educators also need to enhance pre-service teachers’ curriculum by modeling good teaching methods. This study explored another side of blended learning methods and tried to uncover students’ perceptions of what their instructors are practicing. Social relations that are created by blended learning methods are also explored. Instructors of Computer and Instructional Technology Teacher Education Department (CTE) and their respective students were participants in the study to investigate the departmental use of blended learning methods. Total of 44 students and 12 teachers participated in the study. Only students of preparatory school and freshmen are not included because of their lack of sufficient number of courses where blended v learning methods are used. Data collection tools in the research included interviews and questionnaires aimed to assess students’ perception of blended learning methods together with the interviews and questionnaires of the instructors of the CTE Department in order to understand what blended learning methods were practiced. The data collected from both interviews and questionnaires were analyzed using qualitative and quantitative techniques. The findings revealed that although 4th and 5th year students are aware of the different applications of blended learning and the intentions of teachers who used this approach, we cannot generalize and say the same for all CTE students. Yet another finding is that participants thought that Learning Management Systems (LMS) improve the student-to-student and teacher-to-student relations in instructional settings. Additionally, the majority of the students think that computer literacy affects the success of blended learning applications unlike the beliefs of instructors.
Open Access
Comparing peer and self observation conducted by university preparatory school EFL teachers
(2008) Şen, Öykü
This study was designed to investigate the similarities and the differences between the types of information provided by peer and self observation conducted in Turkish university preparatory school classrooms by Turkish EFL instructors, as well as the extent to which peer and self observation contribute to reflective thinking in this setting and whether there are any differences in their contribution to reflective thinking. Six teachers, two of whom were focus teachers (FTs), as self observers, and the rest as peer observers (POs) participated in this study. From these participants, two groups, with one focus teacher and two peer observers, were formed. Data were collected through four types of observation instruments completed during or after the teacher observations: observation forms, checklists, open-ended questions and reflective writings. In this study, one lesson of each focus teacher was video-recorded, and both these focus teachers, as self observers, and two of their peer observers were asked to evaluate the videotaped lessons using the observation tools they were provided with. Each group’s documented information collected through observation forms, checklists and open-ended questions were compared to explore the similarities and differences between the types of information provided by peer and self observation. In addition to this, each group’s reflective writings were compared to explore to what extent peer and self observation contribute to reflective thinking and whether there are any differences in their contribution to reflective thinking. All the data in this study was analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively. In the analysis of the observation forms, checklists and open-ended questions, the categories were developed by the researcher using the general inductive approach described by Thomas (2006), and in the analysis of the reflective writings, a framework for levels of reflective thinking devised by another researcher (HasanbaĢoğlu, 2007) was used. The findings of this study suggest that there are similarities and differences between peer observers and focus teachers in the documentation and interpretation of teacher actions, evaluation of what is observed, suggestions and ideas given, and specific information (via the checklist) about what is the focus of the observation. However, the similarities and differences are affected not only by the type of the observation, but also by variables such as the personal characteristics of the observer, the observation instruments and even the type of lesson observed.