Data analysis report by Vilnius Pedagogical University
The method of studies was quantitative method of triangulation using
questionnaires. The VPU team tried to evaluate the attitude of teachersmentors, future teachers and pupils towards educational reality and
possibilities of its improvement. Besides, there were open type questions in
the questionnaires helping to perfom the qualitative study – qualitative
content analysis.
The questionnaires were prepared and used for science students as future
teachers, teachers-mentors and the 7–10th grade pupils. Questions of
questionnaires for the study of students and teachers-mentors were divided
into eight spheres, while six spheres were used during the interview of
pupils. VPU team wanted to realize the learning environment at Lithuanian
schools, the usage of different teaching methods by practicing teachers and
students-teachers, paying attention to the problem based learning as one of
the main aims of the VPU team, different ways of encouragement of learning
motivation of pupils, the most efficient teaching methods, length of activities
during lessons, realization of integrative programs, usage of teaching
principles, and improvement of teaching subjects at the university level.
VPU team has realized that the learning environment was much improved at
Lithuanian schools during the last ten years. Schools were supplied with
computers having internet connection, and this technique was installed in
many classrooms where science subjects are taught (earlier, computers and
internet was mainly provided only in classrooms of Informatics).
Approximately 70-80 per cent of science teachers and students answered
that their classrooms have at least one computer and there is a possibility to
use internet in a classroom, and there are only small differences among town
and regions’ schools. There is quite a different situation with interactive
boards in a classroom – only few schools have it (~15 per cent of science
teachers answered that they have it in a classroom). 60-85 per cent of
respondents answered that it is enough visual aids, modern teaching aids,
didactic handouts and textbooks in a classroom. According to answers of
pupils, they like lessons where modern teaching equipment is used, and the
material is not static, but animated.
The realization of usage of different teaching methods by practicing science
teachers and students-teachers was a very important task of this study. The
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results of this sphere were different comparing three different groups of
respondents. As 12 different teaching methods were listed in the
questionnaire with a possibility to add more methods, from 10 to 30 per cent
of science teachers simply did not indicate as they use or do not use one or
another teaching method. We think that other answers of teachers were a
little bit exaggerated and subjective, e.g. about 40 per cent of teachers
indicated that they use problem teaching at least once per week, about 30 per
cent use creative conversation, search of information and discussions, while
explanations, performance of exercises, or narration was used rarely
(answers of 10-20 per cent of teachers). But the answers of practising
teachers to other groups of questions disclosed a little bit different situation,
e.g. 97 per cent of interviewed science teachers state that they often
encourage the learning motivation by clear explanation of teaching material,
and approximately 80 per cent of respondents expressed the opinion that
explanation and demonstration teaching methods always help them to
achieve the best results during a lesson!
Therefore, the answers of students performing pedagogical practice at school
and pupils helped to realize more objective reality in Lithuanian schools: the
main teaching methods commonly used during science lessons are
explanation, narration, performance of exercises and demonstration (70-85
per cent of answers by students-teachers), while the majority of pupils (~90
per cent) indicated that they hear explanation and perform exercises during
every lesson. Narration and demonstration are common as well (40-55 per
cent of answers), while problem learning, laboratory works, creative
conversation, or information search are rarely used (only 10-20 per cent of
positively answers that the latter methods are used during every lesson).
About 30-50 per cent of pupils say that they use search of information,
problem learning, creative conversation or laboratory works only once per
month. The interviewed pupils expressed opinion that they like lessons
where they observe and perform experiments, work in groups and hear
additional information that is not written in a textbook. In contrast, more
than 90 per cent of students think that explanation and demonstration helped
them to achieve the best results, while other methods were not very
effective. What concerns problem learning, approximately 80 per cent of
students could not describe typical elements of this teaching method. They
simply think that it could be described as explanation, demonstration and
discussion. The data shows that students simply are not familiar with the
usage and advantages of inquiry-based methods very well. The answers of
pupils concerning the length of different activities during lessons disclose
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that the biggest amount of time of a lesson is devoted to the listening to a
teacher‘s narration and explanation, summarization of a new material from a
blackboard and a textbook (approximately 60-70 per cent of pupils indicated
that each of the activities mentioned lasted 10-15 minutes during each
lesson).
We realized that the majority of future teachers know the main documents
regulating teaching. Opinions about teaching of integrated and nonintegrated science subjects were different. Practically half of the respondents
said that their opinion was positive towards integration of science subjects
and another half expressed negative opinion. The most common answer of
advantage of integration was better and broader understanding of different
science subjects, while the main disadvantages were too much information
and the lack of time to teach the material during a lesson.
Approximately 80 per cent of students answered that they rarely or never
used elements of mathematics. The majority of them answered that there
were few elements of mathematics or parallel integration with mathematics
was not possible. Students of chemistry saw more relationships between
chemistry and mathematics, while only few students of biology or natural
studies expressed similar opinion.
So these results reflect the problems disclosed by different national and
international surveys earlier, e.g. TIMSS or PISA: Lithuanian science
teachers usually transfer information written in textbooks to pupils by the
means of explanation, or pupils have to read textbooks of science subjects
during lessons. So pupils acquire some theoretical knowledge, but they
encounter problems performing practical tasks. Pupils do not have enough
abilities to plan and realize experiments, to read and analyse measurements,
to use different sources of information. Lithuanian pupils lack deeper
understanding of concepts, processes and phenomena, they meet difficulties
to use knowledge in practice. According to different surveys, quite a big
percentage of pupils state that they never or very rarely observe or perform
experiments or laboratory works, and do not formulate hypothesis.
The results described above clarify main problems for the VPU team: 1)
didactic problems in preparation of future science teachers (weak
competencies to use new teaching methods, as explanation and narration are
commonly used during lessons, and other methods are rare; weak
understanding of advantages and disadvantages of integration of different
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subjects and weak competencies to find relationships among science
subjects); 2) problems related to didactic competencies of practising science
teachers. So the modules prepared by the VPU team should be devoted to
help solving these problems, describing the usage of the inquiry-based
methods and creating clear examples. It is clarified by the questionnaires as
well: approximately 70-90 per cent of science teachers and future teachers
stated that the didactics and speciality subjects should be improved at the
university level.
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