This chapter considers some further analyses that were undertaken to provide deeper insights about the impact of the ITEd initiative. First, it describes some examples of pedagogical use that were observed during the School Visits, in order to give a more in-depth picture of some of the practices that are currently occurring. The second section describes some further quantitative analyses that were conducted to explore relationships between key variables identified in the Theoretical Framework, with a particular emphasis on teachers’ pedagogical practices and student learning.
8.1 Examples of pedagogical use of IT
In addition to what was reported in Chapters 6 and 7 about the pedagogical use of IT, the Classroom Visits provided further evidence of teachers’ pedagogical use of IT in class. A deeper level of understanding of what teachers are actually doing can be obtained from examination of these observations. It must be emphasised that the intention here is to describe how IT is used by teachers and how students react rather than assess the effectiveness of individual teachers or their practices in enhancing students’ learning outcomes, as it is not possible to make judgments from this kind of one-off classroom observation without a deeper investigation of student learning outcomes.
In the literature review presented in Chapter 2 there were three main ways described of utilising IT in education. These were teaching with IT, learning from IT and learning with IT. This section will describe some examples of each of these approaches that were observed during the Classroom Visits.
It is important to note that these three approaches all have their uses for different purposes and hence we are not claiming that one is necessarily better than the other in terms of teaching or learning experiences. It is also important to be aware that these three approaches are not directly related to teacher-centredness or student-centredness. As will be illustrated by some of the examples here, depending on the focus of the pedagogical strategy and instructional design, it is feasible to have learning that is teacher-centred, student-centred or some combination of these within any of the approaches of teaching with, learning from and learning with IT.
Teaching with IT
Most of the examples of teaching with IT were concerned with using it for presentation. Of the 74 primary school classrooms visited, IT was used in 66. In the Secondary School Sector, IT was used in 89 of the 123 classes visited.
A breakdown of classes observed by subjects is shown in Tables 8.1 and 8.2.
Chapter 8: Further Analyses
Table 8.1: Breakdown of classes observed by subject (primary schools)
Subjects No. of classes
observed
No. of classes observed with use of IT
English 19 19
Chinese 15 13
Mathematics 15 13
General Studies 5 4
Computer/IT 4 4
Art 7 4
Music 2 2
Putonghua 2 2
Physical Education 1 1
Reading 1 1
Moral and Civic 3 3
Total 74 66
Table 8.2: Breakdown of classes observed by subject (secondary schools)
Subjects No. of classes
observed
No. of classes observed with use of IT
Accounting 3 0
Art 3 3
Biology 5 5
Chemistry 4 4
Chinese 17 13
Chinese History 5 4
Chinese Literature 7 3
Commerce 1 1
Computer Applications 2 2
Computer Literacy 2 2
Design and Technology 2 1
Economics 2 1
EE 1 1
English 22 15
Geography 6 5
History 3 1
Home Economics 1 1
Integrated Science 4 4
Mandarin 3 3
Mathematics 16 9
Mathematics and Statistics 1 0
Music 2 2
Physical Education 3 0
Physics 4 3
Principles of Accounting 1 1
Pure Mathematics 2 2
Religious Studies 2 2
Use of English 1 1
Total 125 89
There was a wide range in use, from minimal to more active, but the observations confirm further that it was mostly teacher directed. In 42 of the 66 observed primary classes and 70 of the 89 observed
secondary classes in which IT was used the teacher was the only person to touch the computer. There were 24 primary classes and 19 secondary classes in which the students had some hands-on IT use, but the lesson was still very much controlled by the teacher at the front. In 15 and 16 of these classes in primary and secondary schools respectively, the whole class was using computers while in the other 9 (primary) and 3 (secondary) the student use mainly involved them coming out to click the answer, use the visualiser to demonstrate their work or help the teacher to set up the computer. There was some indication that teachers tried to be adventurous in using IT in their teaching in primary schools and even more so in lower secondary levels, both in classes and in project-based learning. In higher forms, however, pressure from public examinations has reduced such usage.
Within this category, there was a considerable amount of variation in the way the computers were used, ranging from simple PowerPoint presentations to use of the computer in ways that other media could not have achieved as effectively. The most common use of IT in the observed classes in both primary and secondary schools took the form of expository teaching in which teachers gave presentations to the whole class making use of their own PowerPoint slides or publishers’ pre-prepared slides. In fact there was quite a lot of use observed of the latter. This again reinforces the perception that the paradigm has not yet changed drastically despite the fact that the EMB Document Analysis has revealed quite a large number of professional development activities, workshops and exhibitions that were concerned with promoting the use of IT in teaching and learning. Occasionally, websites, browsers, ETV or video files/clips were used. Some teachers used IT as a tool to illustrate some abstract concepts, for example in Mathematics. The observations described in this section are all examples of the teachers teaching with IT.
In some of these lessons the teacher was in control of the computer and there was very little engagement with students. Even for those lessons where there was more use, in terms of time, the activity was usually teacher-centred and there was very little opportunity for the students to interact with the computer or their peers. As mentioned above, the only hands-on use made by students in general classrooms was very minimal, such as coming out to make a selection and click a button.
Many teachers are using PowerPoint as they previously used the blackboard, and often make use of the blackboard as a supplement to PowerPoint.
In the expository teacher-centred types of lessons there were some examples of poor instructional design. For example, in one primary school case, a teacher taught an environmental topic by showing the classes an ETV programme in digitised format using PowerPoint for 25 minutes continually without a break and without any questions for the children to focus on. The whole class just sat and watched without anything to do and they appeared to be extremely bored (although they were still paying attention). In many of these classes observed, students were found to engage in private conversation or even fall asleep during the teacher’s PowerPoint presentation. Sometimes as many as 10 students were observed sleeping while the teacher was playing a long video. Students’ interest was clearly a consequence of the teacher’s ability to engage them in the lesson through effective pedagogical design, not a direct consequence of the IT itself.
In some cases, in both primary and secondary schools, where IT was being used for presentation purposes, it was observed that the best use of the presentation software was not made. Sometimes, too many lights were left on and the projected image from the LCD projector was difficult to read. On other occasions some teachers put too many words (or even an entire essay) on a single PowerPoint slide so that the words were too small to read except for the handful of students sitting in the front rows.
On the other hand, some of the lessons observed, even where the IT was used solely as a presentation tool, used more effective instructional design than described above, and encouraged more interaction and thinking on the part of the students. This often involved an interactive question-and-answer approach incorporating the presentation software, where the information was presented in sections and questioning techniques were used to encourage the children to think. Whenever this kind of involvement occurred, the class atmosphere became more lively and less boring. Students appeared to
Chapter 8: Further Analyses
be more attentive and enthusiastic, although we were not able to measure from the observations whether they were actually learning better. For example, in contrast to the case described above in which the teacher used an ETV in a not very effective manner, another teacher in a different school taught a very similar environmental protection topic also by using an ETV programme. However, in this case the ETV programme was cut into several short clips and embedded in a PowerPoint presentation. After showing a short clip for 2 to 3 minutes, the teacher posed some questions on the main theme for the class to discuss thoroughly and then moved on to the next clip. The whole class participated in the discussion actively. As the story of the ETV programme unfolded progressively in the several short clip sequences, the students seemed to have developed a firm understanding of the subject and appeared to be enthusiastic and motivated throughout the whole class period. These two contrasting cases illustrate that, with more or less the same hardware and software, and the same topic, the teaching effects can be very different depending on the pedagogical design.
In the secondary schools there were some cases observed in which the IT was used to achieve effects that could not have been achieved by other media. This suggests some interface between students learning from IT and beginning to learn the subject matter with IT. In one Integrated Science lesson the teacher used PowerPoint and video to stimulate the students’ interest in space and explain how a water rocket works. After viewing the presentation the students were required to answer questions. In this case the IT was able to demonstrate the subject matter in a way that other media could not have done.
Similarly, in a Mathematics lesson on trigonometry the teacher made use of a simulation to demonstrate the three-dimensional concepts so as to enable the students to understand the abstract concepts more easily. In another observed lesson the teacher used computer animation to illustrate the concept of gene forming, growing and spreading in a Biology lesson. This appeared to enhance the students’ understanding.
Learning from IT
As mentioned above, learning from IT involves the use of activities that require students to learn from technology-based resources or materials such as web-based resources, computer simulations or other computer-based learning software or programs. Most of them involved the students in hands-on activities.
Of the 15 lessons observed in the primary schools in which the whole class had access to computers, most of them involved the pupils engaging in information searching activities on the Internet. However, in many cases, there has been a lack of clear purpose and minimal teacher guidance about what to look for or how to use the information obtained when it has been found. In some English classes the pupils were observed reading and listening to stories, but again they were left much to their own devices with little teacher facilitation to encourage any particular focus or thinking about what they were doing.
An example of students interacting with computers and each other at secondary level was a class in which the students worked on a web-based self-learning platform to answer some multiple-choice questions to revise the basic concept of Chinese grammar. It appeared that the students were interested in the exercises and the participation level was high. The students engaged in active discussion about the answers to the questions. The teacher then explained the results and answers and was able to ask those students who had mistakes to re-do those questions.
One of the observed secondary school teachers made good incidental use of IT to obtain up-to-date information. This was in a Religious Studies class. One of the students raised a question about racial discrimination in Hong Kong and a quick search on the Internet by the teacher found a suitable video clip to address the question.
Learning with IT
There were some cases observed at both primary and secondary school levels in which the students appeared to be using the IT as a tool to facilitate learning about some subject matter, such as using the
software to create or compose, as a basis for peer review and critique or for searching for information.
In the primary schools there were three cases where children were involved in using the technology as a tool to facilitate learning. In one of these cases the class was using Word to create poems which they then shared and discussed with their peers. After they had done this the teacher reviewed the use of the software “Print Image”, a DIY artwork software package, and then showed his own product to the whole class. He pointed out to the students the design features he wanted them to be aware of. After that, the students designed their own greeting cards by creating their own pictures or choosing their favourites from the sample and incorporating the poems they had written. Another example of student engagement at the primary school level was a case in which the teacher used IT to promote instant sharing between peers of their work. In this case, the teacher used some special control software to select some students’ work for display on the LCD projector so that the whole class could read (and hence share) the writing done by some of their classmates. In the third example, the class provided survey data about their means of transport to school, then used Excel to create graphs to represent these data. The teacher showed them how they could create different types of graphs using Excel and some students tried representing their data in different graph formats.
In the secondary schools there were a few good examples of students learning with IT. These mostly involved the use of the IT as a means to facilitate student-centred learning which often occurred in small groups of students sharing a computer. One example was in the Design and Technology area, in which students were divided into groups, with each group sharing a computer to do 3-D modelling and design. Another class was observed working in groups of 4 to collect information and prepare a PowerPoint presentation, with each group’s presentation contributing a part of the topic to be covered in the lesson. One teacher of a Form 6 English class used a video of the previous students’ oral presentations and asked the students to critique them according to a set of given criteria.
One school reported, during the School Visit, a QEF-funded Science project with the objective of building a collaborative learning environment for students (using IT) that would facilitate the development of student interest in science and technology, project-based learning, ability to use IT for self-learning, teamwork and communication skills, and higher order thinking and creative problem solving abilities. This project involved some specially designed projects (e.g., to design a sewage treatment plant), with different students taking on different roles in the group, such as engineers and government officers, to simulate the process of building a sewage treatment plant.
Other uses of IT for improving student learning
There were some cases reported in the teachers’ focus group interviews of innovative use being made of IT for assessment and communication. One teacher had set up a webpage where he would share syllabuses, markers’ reports and teaching materials for the students to download. He had also tried to collect assignments via email but he found that this was problematic because students sometimes claimed they had already submitted their work and there was no way for him to verify whether this was true. He also found it difficult to mark assignments electronically because this required a lot of typing and he was not skilful in Chinese input. In another example, a school had obtained QEF funding to set up students’ Chinese compositions on the Web as a means of encouraging the students to read and write. Another school keeps electronic portfolios of students’ good class work, which is presented to them when they graduate.
Summary and discussion
From the examples described above, a number of general observations can be made:
Ÿ Much of the IT-related activity that was observed was teacher-centred, in the sense that the teachers controlled the directions and flow of the lesson,