Chapter 5 Conclusion and Recommendations
5.1 Discussion
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CHAPTER 5 CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS
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from the questionnaire and the interview questions did answer this research question. The data revealed that educators suffered in finding the means and tools to assess their students’
attainment of scientific skills. This alarming result shows that science teachers could not maintain the same teaching level and pace in online education compared to face-to-face. The data also exposed that students struggled to maintain their focus and attention while learning remotely. This result supports the study’s findings of (Macias et al, 2022) that revealed that science educators suffered to keep students engaged which affected the science learning throughout the whole first year. Educators had expressed that they experienced low motivation among their students and they did not have the tools or training to elevate and ensure students’
continuous engagement. Interviewed science teachers revealed that they lacked professional development and that they believed it is vital for them to be trained on new online strategies and resources that would improve online science education. Those educators also complained about workload during online education and how the leadership neither contributed to easing the transition to online education nor in looking out for the wellbeing of their teachers.
On the other hand, leaders had misaligned perceptions about the practice of online science education. Even though the perceptions of science leaders did not disagree with those of educators, however, the positioning of priority of those ideas revealed the gap in the visions of leaders compared to educators. Data collected from the interviews with science leaders revealed that leaders seemed to stress the importance of assessing students’ progress and understanding to check if the learning process is evident. Leaders considered the major challenge to be assessing students’ progress and attainment and finding the right tools to measure students’
progression and understanding of the science content. The difference between the perception of science teachers and those of science leaders is evident where teachers considered there was a lack of strategies and a lot of self-taught strategies were implemented upon the transition to online science education. It is vital to go back to the recommendations of the National Science Teachers Association in its position statement about the role of online learning in science education where it stresses on “school districts and science supervisors should seek, evaluate, and provide teachers of science with high-quality, meaningful learning experiences employing e-learning technologies” (NSTA 2016). This statement aligns with the perceptions of science teachers who viewed professional development as the main key to a successful and fruitful practice of online science education.
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The third research question sought to inspect if the demographic variables affected the perceptions of teachers of online science education. The collected data and its distribution across the demographic variables did in fact answer this research question. The data did show that the gender demographic between males and females did not affect the answers of the teachers as the percentage of teachers agreeing and disagreeing with all the items in the questionnaire came equally distributed among the genders participating in the questionnaire. However, the teaching experience demographic did in fact affect the perceptions of science teachers. The collected data showed that science teachers with more than 10 years of experience answered in alliance with the majority of the answers in all the items in cluster 1 which is about teachers’ perceptions of online science instructions. This shows the weight of teaching experience on the perceptions of science teachers and how that experience contributed to the decision-making and transition from face-to-face learning to online science education. It is important to highlight that the teaching experience demographic did not affect the answers of the other clusters and the answers came equally distributed among the responses. Moreover, having less than 10 years of experience or less than 5 years of experience did not affect the teachers’ perceptions and those teachers’
answers came equally distributed among the answers across all items in all three clusters.
The other demographic variable which affected the perceptions of teachers was the academic demographic. The data revealed that science teachers who are holders of a Master's degree contributed to the majority of higher percentages of answers in cluster 1 in the questionnaire which was focused on teachers’ perceptions of online science instructions. This data shows how having higher academic education among science educators assisted in having decisive perceptions about the difficulty of online science education compared to face-to-face education;
as well as biased perceptions about students’ lack of motivation and the challenges faced by educators to access students’ scientific skills in online science education. This trend of contributing to the higher percentage of answers gets broken in one particular item. In item 2 in cluster 1, which is about teachers’ perceptions about having had several trainings to understand the strategies to science online, the academic demographic of holding a Master's degree did in fact inversely affect the perceptions of the participants. The data exposed how those educators were the minority to agree that they believe science teachers have had prior training to understand and hence implement online science strategies.
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