Activities where all or most students were actively involved, such as hands-on activities, group discussions, brainstorming, creative writing and peer learning were coded as hands-on activities were carried out by an individual student or group activity’. When of students before the whole class as a demonstration, the activity was coded as the students were any input from since actually playing teacher’s role without themselves. Orientation directions about how to do an activity were coded as Orientation can Teacher’s ‘orientation’. be on how to do a hands-on activity, how to complete a worksheet or to clean up and get ready for the next activity. Non-instruction Activities that did not include any academic content were coded as such as ‘non-instruction’, interruption of the lesson by a disruptive behavior or extended amount of waiting. Limitations The main limitation of this study was that the sampling of each classroom was done only once. The goal of this study was to reach as many classrooms as possible in order to examine the trends in primary science teaching. The types and durations of activities might be content specific and may not represent the general trend in each classroom. The goal was to obtain the broadest range of teachers in a single subject area. Repetition of sampling of a particular set of classrooms was sacrificed for sampling of increased numbers of different classrooms. Another limitation was that the teachers and students in the classrooms might not have behaved naturally due to the observer effect. This is the main limitation in all observation studies (Daymon & Holloway, 2011). During a video recording, participants may be more anxious about the camera. This anxiety might be reduced by fixing the camera in one place rather than moving it around (Hancock, Ockleford, & Windridge, 2009). This procedure was employed in the present study. Data Analysis For data analysis, descriptive statistics, paired sample t-test and bivariate correlational analysis were conducted using SPSS 18. The effectiveness scores of and activities rated by primary teachers were compared through paired samples t-test.
Activities where all or most students were actively involved, such as hands-on activities, group discussions, brainstorming, creative writing and peer learning were coded as activity’. When hands-on activities were carried out by an individual student or group of students before the whole class as a demonstration, the activity was coded as since the students were actually playing teacher’s role without any input from themselves. Orientation Teacher’s directions about how to do an activity were coded as ‘orientation’. Orientation can be on how to do a hands-on activity, how to complete a worksheet or to clean up and get ready for the next activity. Non-instruction Activities that did not include any academic content were coded as ‘non-instruction’, such as interruption of the lesson by a disruptive behavior or extended amount of waiting. Limitations The main limitation of this study was that the sampling of each classroom was done only once. The goal of this study was to reach as many classrooms as possible in order to examine the trends in primary science teaching. The types and durations of activities might be content specific and may not represent the general trend in each classroom. The goal was to obtain the broadest range of teachers in a single subject area. Repetition of sampling of a particular set of classrooms was sacrificed for sampling of increased numbers of different classrooms. Another limitation was that the teachers and students in the classrooms might not have behaved naturally due to the observer effect. This is the main limitation in all observation studies (Daymon & Holloway, 2011). During a video recording, participants may be more anxious about the camera. This anxiety might be reduced by fixing the camera in one place rather than moving it around (Hancock, Ockleford, & Windridge, 2009). This procedure was employed in the present study. Data Analysis For data analysis, descriptive statistics, paired sample t-test and bivariate correlational analysis were conducted using SPSS 18. The effectiveness scores of and activities rated by primary teachers were compared through paired samples t-test.
05-Aug-2015_06-14-34_p243_Revised_05.08.2015.docx