New Pedagogies in Teaching and Learning & Curriculum Development and Practices

This sharing is based on the presenter’s own classroom research that seeks to maximize student learning. The pedagogical question at the heart of this research is how do we assess whether students have attained the learning goals as stated in the unit being taught?
Formative evaluation is among the most powerful factors identified by John Hattie in his seminal work on Visible Learning (2016). Formative evaluation is a form of feedback from the learner to the teacher, and focuses on the goals of the learning process (Hattie & Zierer, 2018). Underpinning this approach is the gathering of data on student learning and using the data to determine the gaps between the stated learning goals for a curriculum unit, and whether learners have attained the goals.
By undertaking a formative evaluation at the end of a unit, it allows the teacher to gather critical feedback from students about their learning and the attainment of the unit’s learning goals. Formative evaluation also provides an opportunity for the teacher to identify instructional “blind spots” and make necessary adjustments to close the learning gaps before the onset of summative assessments at the end of the curriculum unit. After all, is it not the objective of all pedagogical efforts that students achieve the stated learning goals?
This paper will share how data on student learning was collected and how formative evaluation was conducted using the data to design relevant instructional adjustments. The post-intervention data, both quantitative and qualitative, were subsequently collected to measure the success of the teacher’s instructional adjustments.
Conclusions from this classroom research were subsequently used to design a four-step instructional approach for practitioners on the use of formative evaluation.  This paper presentation will outline the four-step process as follows: (i) formulating clear learning goals, (ii) describing the success criteria, (iii) assessing students’ attainment of learning goals, and (iv) making the necessary instructional adjustments.  As part of the teacher’s post-research work, at least two presentations have been scheduled in 2018 to share this research with fellow professionals, both within the school as well as outside the school. 
 

It is crucial to adopt strong experimental research designs for any educational research that seeks to examine causal relationships. In a critical review of the quality of 12 large U.S. federal evaluations, Howell and Yemane (2006) emphasized the importance of adopting an experimental or quasi-experimental design. More recently, the importance of using strong research designs is reiterated when the U.S. Department of Education’s Early Intervention (EI) program used a single group pre-post comparison design to evaluate the program’s impact on child outcomes (Rosenberg, Elbaum, Rosenberg, Kellar-Guenther, & McManus, 2017). The authors made a strong argument against the use of a flawed research design, which would result in misleading conclusions about the effectiveness of the EI program.
This paper introduces a new pedagogy to teach and apply experimental designs in educational research through a mnemonic RA-COMPRESS (Random Assignment, COMparison group(s), PREtest, Supplementary data point and Series); and proposes that most experimental research designs are permutations of these five basic design components. Using the mnemonic RA-COMPRESS would identify all the possible components that can be incorporated into an experimental research design. The mnemonic also guides teacher-researchers to consider true   experimental designs first, followed by quasi-experimental designs before choosing pre-experimental designs.
To examine the effectiveness of using the mnemonic RA-COMPRESS to teach Campbell’s experimental designs by design component as compared to the traditional way of teaching by design templates, a randomised controlled trial (RCT) is proposed. Students will be randomly divided into two equal groups by matching. One group will be taught using the mnemonic RA-COMPRESS whereas the other group will be taught using the traditional method; and their learning outcomes will be compared. The RA-COMPRESS mnemonic can simplify the teaching of experimental research designs by reducing them to five design components. It would be a helpful tool to help teachers-researchers consider different design possibilities quickly and systematically whenever they need to craft a research design for an educational research. Finally, the use of the RA-COMPRESS mnemonic can contribute to improvements in the design of experimental studies and therefore raise the quality of educational research that seeks to establish causality.

Many literatures have reported that organic chemistry is difficult for most learners due to heavy content, use of three-dimensional thinking, extensive technical terms and symbolism. From our experience, majority of our students disliked organic chemistry and labelled it as “content heavy”, “cognitively demanding” and “irrelevant” albeit its importance in STEM education. Organic chemistry curriculum based on mechanistic approach emphasizes the learning of reactions based on the identification of nucleophiles and electrophiles and pattern of electron transfer. This structure deviates from the traditional course that organized according to functional groups. The mechanistic approach employs learning based on logical thinking, instead of rote memorization, an undesirable and burdensome learning behaviour from the functional group approach. In addition, the mechanistic approach organizes reactions according to the types of nucleophiles and electrophiles. This instils the capabilities to manage information and enhances retention and transfer of knowledge. In this paper, we sought to study the effect of mechanistic approach in students’ performance and perception in learning organic chemistry. Based on the mechanistic approach, we have developed a new curriculum for introductory organic chemistry. This curriculum begins with the basic skills in organic chemistry and follows by an extensive coverage of reaction mechanism formalism prior to introducing organic reactions. 166 students undertook this new curriculum and results show that 73% of the students are able to predict the product of a new reaction that they have not encountered using mechanistic thinking. Students’ work also display the evidence in employing mechanistic approach to attempt questions on organic reactions. Furthermore, students gave feedback on this approach as being less burdensome in learning organic reactions. In conclusion, this study shows that mechanistic approach is effective in improving students’ performance and perception in leaning organic chemistry. Further studies is required to determine other factors that contribute to the success in learning organic chemistry besides mechanistic approach.