EVALUATION OF THE PRE-SERVICE TEACHERS’ TEACHING VARIATIONS IN ONLINE LEARNING

Abstract

Variations in teaching episodes have empirically exhibited positive impacts on students’ attention, motivation, enthusiasm, satisfaction, and achievement. However, the issue associated with student teachers’ variations in online teaching and learning context remains underexplored. The present study focuses on gauging pre-service teachers’ skill of variability by addressing four research questions: 1) How are teacher’s style variations realized in online learning of the pre-service teachers?; 2) How are instructional media and materials variations realized in online learning of the pre-service teachers?; 3) How are interaction variations realized in online learning of the pre-service teachers?; 4) How do the pre-service teachers perceive the implementation of the teaching skill of variability in an online learning context? This qualitative research with a case study design involves 30 semester-6th-students majoring in English education. The data were gathered through virtual classroom observation, document analysis, and interviews. Virtual classroom observation was conducted synchronously during the pre-service teachers’ teaching practice. In addition, the document analysis method was employed to investigate the realization of the teaching skill of variability utilizing teaching scripts. Interview data were used to confirm the observation and document analysis findings. Framework Analysis by Ritchie and Spencer (1994) comprising five stages – familiarisation, identifying a thematic framework, indexing/coding, charting, and mapping and interpretation was adopted as a method of analyzing data. The findings reveal that in terms of teachers’ manner and teaching style, the student teachers have varied their teaching practice through voice, gesture, eye contact, pausing and focusing but not a movement. Concerning instructional materials and media, both visual and aural can be well-performed but not tactile ones. Teaching and learning practice mainly used video conferences so that they could not perform tactile variations. With online learning, there was no opportunity for students to touch or manipulate objects or materials of instruction. Teachers’ activity and interaction variations can be accomplished through various activities such as questioning and responding even though student-student interaction involving physical movement is limited. The participants perceived positively that the use of technology enables them to vary their teaching through technology-based classroom language, various internet-based media and learning resources, authentic materials, and the use of applications to encourage teacher-student and student-student interaction.