Research Article
Leila Karimi, Tunku Badariah Tunku Ahmad
CONT ED TECHNOLOGY, Volume 4, Issue 3, pp. 197-211
ABSTRACT
Blended learning, as a new approach to education, is rapidly being adopted by educational institutions for the purpose of teacher education or teacher training. This study reports the results of a survey exploring the relationships between perceived learning and satisfaction in a blended teacher education program among three different groups of specialization at the Institute of Education, International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM). This study was mainly exploratory in nature, employing specifically the quantitative research method, utilizing cross-sectional survey as the method of data collection. The respondents consisted of 170 teacher trainees who were randomly selected through quota sampling. The instrument used to collect data was a modified questionnaire that measured the respondents’ perception of learning and satisfaction in the blended teacher education program. The respondents reported high levels of perceived learning and satisfaction toward the blended teacher education program. The results showed positive and moderate correlation between perceived learning and satisfaction, while there was no statistically significant difference among all groups of teacher trainees’ perception of learning and satisfaction.
Keywords: Teacher education program, Blended learning, Perceived learning, Student satisfaction
Research Article
Yalin Kilic Turel, Filiz Varol
CONT ED TECHNOLOGY, Volume 3, Issue 1, pp. 17-35
ABSTRACT
The main goal of the current study was to analyze early childhood and elementary pre-service teachers’ choices of participant-designed materials and the reasons for their selection. To this end, 57 elementary and 39 early childhood teacher candidates were asked to design one physical material and one electronic material for instruction. Then, they were asked which type of material they would prefer if they were teaching and what their rationale was for this selection. The results revealed several dissimilarities between early childhood and elementary teacher candidates in terms of their choices and the reasons for their choices. In their rationale, elementary pre-service teachers more referred their limited technological knowledge while early childhood pre-service teachers took attention to the need for hands-on activities for their instruction. In general, participants raised critical questions related to teachers’ technological knowledge, and teacher preparation programs as well as professional development programs regarding how to integrate such instructional technologies effectively into course activities to enhance learning.
Keywords: Instructional material, Instructional material design, Pre-service teachers, Early childhood education, Elementary education, Teacher education programs