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Mozambique is among the poorest countries in the world in such a way that many schools lack essential resources (electricity, chairs, internet, computers, water, and others). As a result, the traditional model is still the most used one in subjects related to programming in different courses where the teacher presents new content during face-to-face sessions and students take assignments and exercises to complete at home. This subject is still new for many students, so, they find it challenging to complete the tasks at home. Furthermore, programming is taught only at the university level, so, students find it difficult to understand it for the first time, resulting in a motivation decrease as well as the increase of drawbacks in programming subjects. In this way, methods like the cognitive apprenticeship model (Collins, Brown, Newman, 1989), extreme programming (Beck & Fowler, 2001), gamification (Deterding, Dixon, Khaled, & Nacke, 2011), and flipped classroom (Lage, Platt, & Treglia, 2000) could be used or combined to motivate students and overcome these challenges. Since programming consists of a set of sequential steps and procedures, Gamified Flipped Classroom (GFC) seemed to be an appropriate method as it could be easy to demonstrate the “how to” procedures to students, letting them work on them at home (video lectures, links, documents). The teacher would act as a guide and facilitator for both home and in-class sessions, supported by gamification elements. Nevertheless, the thesis aimed to design a GFC learning environment adapted to the Mozambican context, investigate the student’s perception regarding this combination and analyse motivation and learning outcomes regarding day and night shifts. The research was conducted through Design-Based Research (DBR) for the learning environment design as well as student perception analysis and through a quasi-experiment for motivation and learning outcomes processing. The results indicate that The GFC learning environment for the Mozambique context should rely on three core aspects: A low-cost approach, availability of institution facilities and a proper curriculum plan adaptation. Furthermore, student’s perceptions were mostly positive, despite the occurrence of some negative ones related to connectivity problems. Lastly, generic data indicates that GFC did not significantly impact students’ motivation, however, separate analysis indicates that students from the day shift tended to feel more motivated than the day shift ones. Results also indicated that both shifts tended to increase their sense of competence and interest/enjoyment during the GFC learning environment but their sense of pressure was almost the same. Regarding learning outcomes, students scored higher marks during the traditional learning environment than in GFC, nevertheless, day-shift tended to have higher scores than night ones. So, it can be concluded that students from the day-shift felt more motivated and had better outcomes than the night ones.
The present thesis served as a starting point for promoting a change of paradigm in teaching programming, especially in countries with limited access to technology like Mozambique by adapting methods like GFC to its context.
The Kingdom of Bhutan’s development philosophy of Gross National Happiness (GNH) emphasises the need to balance sustainable economic growth with environmental conservation, promotion of cultural heritage, and good governance. In consonance, Bhutan’s Constitution entrusts every citizen with the sacred task of protecting the natural environment and preventing all forms of ecological degradation. Moreover, given the increasing global crisis of degrading the earth, climate change, resource depletion, and species extinction, the urgency of nature conservation in school education cannot be ignored. The need to articulate clearly how nature conservation education should be promoted in Bhutanese primary schools is, therefore, becoming increasingly urgent.
While some elements of nature conservation education are included in the school curriculum, not much is known about educator perceptions, school curricula, teaching and learning processes, and the role of school concerning nature conservation. Hence, this empirical study was necessary and timely to understand how nature conservation was perceived, taught and practised in Bhutanese primary schools. Social constructivism with an ethnographical research design was employed for this study. Relying on participant observation techniques for data collection, perspectives of 15 educators and 105 students of four Bhutanese primary schools were gathered. Three data collection tools, namely, a semi-structured interview, an open-ended questionnaire and field notes were used.
The study brought out a number of significant findings. Although Bhutan’s unique features, such as being heavily forested, traditional farming practices and spiritual practices, are advantageous to nature conservation education, gaps and inconsistencies were seen in the school curriculum and practices. Firstly, the educators and students who participated in the study misunderstood nature conservation as environmental conservation. Secondly, the curriculum textbooks on nature conservation generally represent Western perspectives of nature conservation rather than the Bhutanese spiritual and cultural beliefs that are primarily influenced by Buddhism. Findings also showed that children in the four primary schools had limited opportunities for direct experiences with nature during their lessons on nature. Lastly, the role of schools in nature conservation education lacks clarity.
The findings from this study have direct implications for the Ministry of Education, teacher education colleges, and other primary education stakeholders in the country. Several strategies are suggested to address the gaps identified. These include professional development programmes for teachers to enhance their knowledge about nature conservation education. The next strategy is reviewing the science and social studies curriculum to integrate the Buddhist values of interdependence and harmonious living with nature. The study also flagged the need to create rich natural environments on school campus, including using the community forests for children to play, study and develop connection with nature. Lastly, the study recommends developing reading materials for children on themes of nature.
The quality of education in Mozambique has been faced with several challenges and criticisms. This situation comes from a long time ago. In many studies, it has been revealed that the quality of education is rather low, and there is evidence that students have difficulties in reading, writing, and calculating, especially in primary education. Also, there are weak links between theory and practice in secondary education. These difficulties negatively affect the development of skills and students’ profiles. In addition, this significantly delays the country's scientific, technological, and socio-economic development. The problems of education and other sectors in Mozambique could be solved by creating synergies and establishing joint approaches or actions involving all collaboration partners and as a system.
Aware of this, reforms have been carried out in the field of educational sciences to adopt innovative learning approaches through improving learning methodology and promoting contextualized learning according to the authentic needs of society. To enhance the knowledge and understanding of natural sciences and thus improve the quality of education, an interventional study was carried out based on an innovative learning theory made up of a cluster of connectivism, constructivism, and cognitivism.
Theory into practice was organized as a systemic approach based on contents found in the Mozambican curricula (teacher education and secondary schools) and integrating science-technology-society approaches. The research was devoted to analysing relevant core elements, institutional preconditions at schools and the university, and pre-service teachers’ pre-conceptions about these approaches and finding out outcomes that can enrich curricula and improve the quality of education in Mozambique.
This study was designed to involve pre-service teachers of chemistry and other natural sciences (Biology and Physics) from Púnguè University working together with students of grades 8, 9, and 11 from all (seven) secondary schools existing in Chimoio. These groups would be supported by lecturers and researchers from the university, secondary school teachers, specialists, technicians from partner companies, and communities or individuals belonging to the community who together could contribute to solving a problem in a systemic approach.
Because of the Pandemic COVID-19 situation in the country, the sample had to be slightly modified and structured according to the three different stages, organised in the following way:
Stage I (preparatory): one hundred and eleven (111) chemistry’s pre-service teachers from three different branches (Manica, Tete, and Sofala) of the Pedagogical University participated and applied a questionnaire. This stage took place in 2019 after the documentary study. It aimed to ascertain the pre-service teachers' preconceptions to understand their preparedness before the fieldwork.
For comparative reasons, six questions from the validated VOSTS instrument (Views on Science-Technology-Society) of Aikenhead, Ryan, and Fleming (1989), which is used widely internationally also, were incorporated into this questionnaire. The codification of students´ views was newly adapted to four scores, namely: Realistic (R), Has Merit (HM), Naïve (N), and Neutral (Ne).
Stage II (fieldwork/practical work): Sixty-six (66) chemistry pre-service teachers from Manica and Tete participated. This stage took place in 2020 after the restructuring of the former Pedagogical University when the Manica and Tete branches were joined together to create the Púnguè University (UniPúnguè).
In this stage, three lecturers from UniPúnguè (two in organic chemistry and one in environmental chemistry) also participated in monitoring and support.
Three external people also participated: a building engineer and a pipe connection specialist (representing the water supply company/FIPAG), and the municipal councillor for education and culture (representing the municipality);
Two secondary school teachers also participated in the study (one in chemistry and one in agriculture and cattle breeding);
Stage III (Science Motivation Questionnaire): the original questionnaire questionnaires from Glynn, Taasoobshirazi, and Brickman (2009) and Sotiriou, Mordan, Murphy, and Lovatt (2017) were in English, and it was necessary to translate them into Portuguese to apply to the chemistry´s pre-service teachers (main group). For this reason, the questionnaire was translated by fifty-three (53) pre-service teachers of English courses in a pilot study before administering it to the main group.
After checking the reliability of the translation (Cronbach´s Alpha = .928), the sixty-six (66) pre-service teachers who participated in practical activities filled in the questionnaire. This questionnaire intends to assess intrinsic motivation and personal relevance; Intrinsic motivation and personal interest; Perceived Competence; Effort/Importance; Value/Usefulness, and Collaborative Work Relatedness.
The outcomes from local interventions were collected by mixed methods research involving qualitative (documentary study, participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and participatory-based research) and quantitative (questionnaires and interviews with fixed questions) methods. Data collected by quantitative methods were processed using the statistical package SPSS versions 20.0 and 25.0.
The results of the six questions taken from the VOSTS instrument show that most pre-service teachers do not present a realistic view (R), but rather a view with some legitimacy/merit (HM) in most questions (four) and with a cumulative average of about 54%, and in the case of the other two questions, the results indicated for an inappropriate view (Naïve/N) with the cumulative average of 49%.
With respect to science motivation, it was found that after practical activities, pre-service teachers have developed high levels of motivation, with the subcategory "the value/ usefulness of practical activities" scoring highest (80%) and the subcategory "collaborative work-relatedness" scoring lowest (49%).
These findings may be the result of ethnic and tribal conflicts that negatively interfere in the friendship between people, but also of the traumas caused by unpleasant and shocking memories of the use of technology in the war that lasted for about sixteen years and the repeated armed conflicts, kidnappings, and murders where science and technology have not been able to bring solutions.
This study also revealed that the pre-service teachers could not put these new approaches into practice right from the beginning, and almost none of them had heard of the systemic approach before. Additionally, in the practical activities, it was found that despite the lack of knowledge about how to design and carry out learning activities using Science-Technology-Society integration and the systemic approach, all students (100%) were satisfied.
The practical activities carried out show that applying knowledge collaboratively and by a systemic approach to solve everyday problems in communities promotes the development of skills and makes knowledge lasting, establishing contextualized, effective, and emotional learning.
In practical activities, several projects were developed, such as the production of soap based on ash as a saponification agent and other products such as lettuce, cabbage, alcohol, etc. Both the knowledge and the products resulting from these projects have been presented at national and international public events (conferences, workshops, seminars, etc.)
Further education of university students on the job led to several individual qualifications as bachelor's degrees (Licenciatura), of which five of them have already been defended with relevant monographs.
Finally, it is concluded from the findings that it will be possible to transfer this approach to other universities and schools in Mozambique and elsewhere, contributing, therefore, to help develop communities, improve learning and the profile of both students and teachers, as well as the profile of universities and schools.
How to improve science teacher effectiveness? In order to find answers to this question a first step in this study is a close observation and critical reflection on the level of science teacher training courses. During an international science teacher training course, which had been previously developed in a three-year European project (CAT4U), informal conversations of the participants were recorded and analysed allowing genuine insight in the ways that teachers exchange about profession-related content among themselves. This work is a first exploratory step into a fairly new field of professional development research, which hopes to come up with some reasonable hypotheses gained from the combination of current research literature and from deeper analyses of field data, that hopefully serves as an inspiration for teacher trainers in practice as well as for further educational research.
ABSTRACT
The problem that prompted this study is the absence of modern approaches and methods of teaching and learning science in Mozambican educational system. Currently, the science curricula in Mozambique can be characterized as: organized in separated disciplines, based on canonical science content, and teaching practices that are based on a teacher-centered approach using traditional methods of teaching.
On the other hand, there is an approach of teaching and learning which focus on the relationship between Science, Technology and Society (STS) that is well established in science education since the late 80s. This approach of teaching is claimed to be one of the best ways to achieve scientific literacy, promote decision-making and active citizenship of students in social issues pertaining the society where they live, and it had been used in many developed and developing countries.
Taking into account this discrepancy, and trying to find a solution for the problem the following research questions were posed:
1. What are Mozambican university students' views about the relationship between science, technology and society?
2. Does an STS approach of teaching involving inquiry type of laboratory work using an open-ended approach contribute to change students' views and beliefs about STS issues?
3. Could an STS approach of teaching be successfully implemented in Mozambican educational system at secondary and tertiary level?
In order to answer these questions and in a quest to find solutions for the problem posed a mixed-method approach was used, combining both qualitative and quantitative methods. There was a survey carried out in all branches of the Pedagogical University of Mozambique, covering all provinces of the country, and there was an intervention process implemented in iterative way in two tiers in two consecutive years.
The main instrument used to gather data, both in the survey and in the intervention process were 19 VOSTS item selected from a pool of 114 multiple choice items developed in Canada in late 80s to assess students' "Views on Science - Technology - Society" (VOSTS). The 19 VOSTS items selected for the study, after translation from English to Portuguese were adapted and adopted as the main research instrument. The questionnaire administered to students both in survey and intervention consisted of 13 VOSTS items, of which only 7 were identical. The 6 VOSTS items used in the survey were focusing on views of science in medias and science class and aspects related to the technology development and implementation, while the 6 other different used in the intervention process were focused on the nature of science (epistemology).
The survey was carried out by administering the 13 VOSTS items questionnaire in all ten provinces of the country with branches of the Pedagogical University, using 832 second year students enrolled in four science or science related courses of: agriculture, biology, chemistry and physics. The aim of the survey was to establish a baseline situation of the country about STS issues, since the study was the first of its kind in the country.
The intervention process was made in two tiers in two consecutive years, involving 59 second year chemistry students of one branch. The intervention process was implemented in 12 weeks and the design consisted of four different stages: (1) pretest, consisted of administering the 13 VOSTS items questionnaire; (2) seminars about STS issues, STS approach, and about inquiry type of practical work using open ended approach; (3) students performing experiments to solve problems posed using the knowledge about STS issues. During this process field notes and some videotapes were made; (4) post-test at the end of the process using the same instrument administered in the pretest, and (5) post-intervention interview with selected students who participated in the study to evaluate the process in which they were involved.
To assess students' responses to the questionnaires administered both in the survey and in the intervention, a panel of 10 experts was assembled as judges, all of them university lecturers with PhD Degree and more than 15 experience teaching biology (1), chemistry (5), physics (1); mathematics (3) and French teacher (1). Their task was to categorize the options of each VOSTS statement and classify as Realistic, and other options could be classified as many times as possible as Has Merit or Naïve. The last three options that were common to all VOSTS items were considered Passive. After analyzing the classifications of every expert, an effort was made to find consensus and come up with one final categorization that could be used a scoring scheme to assess students' responses to the questionnaire. In those VOSTS items where there were discrepancies in selecting the Realistic view it was solved by adopting categorization made in other studies using the same VOSTS items made by people acquitted with STS issues, unlike the experts used in this research (only one was acquitted with the approach). G
The underlying assumption in this study is that the ultimate goal of science teaching is to change students' opinions progressively “from Naïve” to “Has merit”, and from there to a “Realistic” view about the relationship between science, technology and society. Taking this into consideration the following conclusions were inferred:
1. Mozambican students' views and beliefs about the relationship between science, technology and society are positive, they correspond to what is commonly accepted in the scientific community about the STS issues assessed in this study.
2. The results from the baseline study, besides being considered positive showed that students irrespective of the course that they are enrolled (agriculture, biology, chemistry and physics), have no significant difference on the STS issues assessed.
3. An STS approach of teaching implemented through inquiry type of practical work using open ended approach during twelve (12) weeks suggests that students' views are positive and are more in line with what is accepted in the scientific community about the 13 VOSTS items assessed in the intervention process.
4. Based on the results of the intervention process with the experimental group in two different years it can be concluded that the STS approach of teaching proposed and implemented though inquiry type of practical work using open ended approach did not contributed to change students' views and beliefs about STS issues from pretest to post-test, except in two of the 13 VOSTS items assessed.
5. By comparing students' responses to the seven common VOSTS items in the baseline study and in the intervention process, in both years and pretest and post-test, the answer pattern are similar. These findings show, on one hand that all science students share the same views about science, and on the other hand that irrespective of the intervention made students did not change their views.
6. Based on the results of the baseline study, the results of the intervention process and taking into account the evaluation of the blue print documents about Mozambican educational system and the socio-politic context of the country it can be concluded that the STS approach of teaching can be implemented in Mozambique.
Finally, it is worthy to consider that taking into account the study design made, the sample size used, and the rigor in controlling variables, it is believed that the results of this study are valid and can be generalized to other Mozambican students with the same science background. Furthermore, when considering science as universal irrespective of the place where it takes place, some of the findings of this study can be generalized to other places in world.
Individuals differ in their timing of sleep (bed times, rise times) and in their preference for morning or evening hours. Previous work focused on the relationship between academic achievement and these variables in secondary school students. The main aim of the study is to investigate the relationship between chronotype and academic achievement in 10-year-old children (n = 1125, 536 girls, 584 boys and 5 sex unspecified) attending 4th grade of primary school. They filled a cognitive test (Culture Fair Intelligence Test, CFT 20-R) and questions about rise times and bed times, academic achievement, conscientiousness and motivation. We implemented questions about wake times and bed times, academic achievement (measured by grades in Mathematics, German, English and Nature & Culture), ‘‘scales for the assessment of learning and performance motivation’’ (SELLMO; Skalen zur Erfassung der Lern- und Leistungsmotivation for motivation), the short version of the Five-Factor Personality Inventory Children (FFPI-C) to measure conscientiousness, and the Composite Scale of Morningness (CSM) to assess morningness-eveningness. Mean CSM score was 37.84 ± 6.66, midpoint of sleep was 1:36 ± 00:25 and average sleep duration (time in bed) was 10:15 ± 0:48. Morningness orientation was positively related to intelligence, conscientiousness and learning objectives. Results showed that boys and girls did not differ in chronotype. There were significant differences between girls and boys in academic performance but the direction was subject-specific: Girls did better in languages (German, English) and Nature & Culture, but boys had better scores in Mathematics. Overall, there were no gender differences in grades. There were significant gender differences in midpoint of sleep with girls sleeping later and showed higher social jetlag. Eveningness orientation was related to avoidance performance objectives and work avoidance. Early midpoint of sleep, conscientiousness and intelligence were associated with better grades. The multivariate model showed that intelligence was the strongest predictor of good grades. Conscientiousness, motivation, younger age and an earlier midpoint of sleep were positively related to good grades. This is the first study in primary school pupils, and it shows that the negative relationship between evening orientation and academic achievement is already prevalent at this age even when controlling for important predictors of achievement.
Technologies based on Geographic Information System (GIS) are widely used in society and are increasingly being integrated into school curricula and practice. Many claims have been made that the use of GIS in class has positive effects on a wide range of achievement and affective variables. However, empirical evidence for that, especially in the German situation, has been scarce.
Systemic thinking has been central to the guiding objective of German geography education for many years and constitutes an important contribution to prepare students for life in a complex world. Yet, so far, specific test instruments and studies elucidating factors that help students improve this competency have been far from extensive.
This dissertation aims at exploring the influence of a short ‘working with GIS’ vs. ‘working with maps’ unit on students’ achievement in geography, specifically, the systemic thinking competency. Based on literature a definition of geographic systemic thinking and an associated competency model were developed. In total, three one test time and two pre-/posttest with control group studies were conducted to develop test instruments and a treatment as well as to study the question at hand. The treatment used the topic ‘tourism in Kenya’. Partly Desktop-, partly Web-based GIS versions were used. In study 5, there were two different types of materials, which contained parallel contents/tasks. While one used an overview sheet of relevant GIS functionality (‘old’), the other integrated more step-by-step instruction directly into the text (‘new’). Variables included were systemic thinking, sex, age, stream/type of geography study/pre-score, grade/semester, language and migration background, pre-experience, affective variables, pre-basic spatial thinking skills, treatment and material type. Not all variables were used in every study.
The largest study (study 5) used the results of 932 seventh grade students for analyses. The sample contains both high and middle stream students from three German federal states. The study highlights issues such as e.g. test time constraints, open task coding, partly ceiling effects and item difficulties partly deviant from the model expectations. For the analyses, both raw average scores and WLE estimates obtained by a Rasch analysis are used. Additionally, based on the WLE scores, HLMs are calculated.
Overall, in study 5 GIS students do not improve pre- to posttest in systemic thinking. Consequently, GIS has no positive, and partly a significantly negative impact compared to maps, e.g. in a HLM with all other variables having significant effects included. Results for material type are mixed. For instance, on the one hand, t-tests show no significant difference in pre-posttest-change between students working with ‘old’ and ‘new’ WebGIS materials. On the other
hand, the overall HLMs with other variables included show a significant negative effect only for the ‘old’ but not for the ‘new’ WebGIS materials.
Only 23 students could be included in the ‘having already worked with an educational GIS’-sub-group (vs. 520). The improvement of these students pre- to posttest is not significant, but has an effect size above 0.2. A calculation with the ‘no pre-experience’ sub-group being reduced to students with similar characteristics (e.g. in terms of stream, GIS type) leads to 19 vs. 84 students and similar results. In both cases, students with pre-experience perform not significantly, but with an effect size above 0.2, better than students without pre-experience. Overall, the results could hint at students needing more pre-experience so as to not have so much mental capacity tied to getting used to the software and being able to concentrate more on the system interrelationships. However, due to the sample characteristics and study design, this cannot be proven by the present data and thus needs to be explored in further studies.
Other variables (age, sex, migration and language background, stream, pre-score, pre-spatial thinking score) show mixed results depending on the analysis method used. This underlines the impact of methodological choices and the need for large sample studies in order to be able to take a closer look at individual sub-groups. Furthermore, the HLM results point to not all influencing variables having been included. In general, the impact of variables such as pre-achievement/ stream and sex on pre-posttest change evident in some of the analyses points to the need for more research to develop differentiated learning materials.
The conducted studies also show, e.g. through deviations from the assumed model of systemic thinking, that there is still a great need for more studies in terms of test- and model development for systemic and spatial thinking in a geographic context.