Page 206 - Innovative Professional Development Methods and Strategies for STEM Education

Impact of a Professional Development Programme

I believe that I have to use games, songs, visuals and physical activities because I have learned to do so
in one of my methodology classes, Teaching English to Young Learners. I am aware of the advantageous
and disadvantageous of teaching young learners.

Using such activities also contributed greatly to promoting students’ motivation and managing the
lesson effectively, as she reflects in an interview:

I managed to capture their attention with different activities, colourful pictures, songs, etc… As I stated
earlier, taking their characteristics into account helped me to involve them. Of course there were slight
distractions during the classes, but they weren’t really problematic; I could maintain it by moving from
activity to activity. Students were active and took part in games and activities that I’m very proud of them.

In the following section, changes in Özge’s belief system in three areas discussed in the preceding
section are illustrated by means of a lesson observation.

Lesson Observation

The lesson observation with following stimulated recall interviews documented changes in Özge’s belief
system. During the stimulated recall, the trainee was asked to stop the videotape every time she recalled
what she had been thinking and she was encouraged to share everything she could recall at that point
(Meijer, Zanting & Verloop, 2002). As a further data collection tool, the observation notes of the researcher
revealed reflection on or modification of beliefs that Özge had mentioned in the previous interviews.
In the first example, Özge prepared a lesson plan to teach foods and drinks for students in grade 2
(age six). The following extract comes from the author’s observation notes:

First, she posted pictures of items of foods and drinks, vegetables and fruits on the board. She pointed to
each of the pictures and pronounced their names and asked the students to pronounce all together. The
next activity involved “Match the names with the pictures”. For this, she mixed the names of the items on
the pictures and posted them on the board randomly and wanted students to stick the right name under
the right item. The next activity “Putting pictures under the right super ordinate”, the trainee posted
the pictures without their names and wanted students to put appropriate names under the right super
ordinate by saying its name and the super ordinate. (i.e., this is an apple. It is a fruit).

Özge commented on this teaching episode in the following stimulated recall interview as follows:

First of all, I knew that I had to be prepared before the lesson. I believed that I had some extra techniques
in my mind in order to use when I could not attract students’ attention or when they made a lot of noise.

The teaching episode below illustrates how Özge implemented extra techniques to attract students’
attention:

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