بررسی باورهای معلمان ایرانی در مورد یادگیری و تدریس

مقدمه: باورهای معلمان، مهم‌ترین عامل در کنش‌گری آنهاست. این در حالی است که منبع بسیاری از باورهای معلمان، تجربه‌های شخصی آنها از دوران دانش‌آموزی خود و بعد از آن تجربه‌های آنها با کلاس درس است. هدف پژوهش حاضر، بررسی فهم معلمان ایرانی در مورد مفاهیم یادگیری، تدریس و بررسی میزان انطباق آن با دیدگاه‌های اخیر علمی و به ویژه علوم ‌شناختی در مورد یادگیری بود. روش کار: در این پژوهش از روش پدیدارشناسی استفاده شد که در آن به بررسی انواع شیوه‌های فهم از یک مفهوم یا پدیده از منظر گروه خاصی از افراد ‌پرداخته شد. شرکت‌کنندگان در این پژوهش 15 نفر از معلمان مدرسه ابتدایی بودند که باورهای آنها در مورد یادگیری و تدریس از طریق مصاحبه‌های عمیق نیمه‌ساختاریافته بررسی شد. یافته‌ها: نتایج پژوهش نشان داد معلمان ایرانی بیش از همه در جریان اصلاحات آموزشی اخیر از نقش معلم در تدارک بازی‌ها و تجارب متنوع برای دانش‌آموزان آگاه شده‌اند، در حالی که تفاوت‌ها و تناقضات دو مفهوم دانش‌آموز محوری و معلم‌محوری کماکان برای معلمان روشن نیست و در اظهارات خود به تناوب به این دو رویکرد اشاره کرده‌اند. همچنین معلمان از اهمیت نقش دانش قبلی به عنوان چارچوب سازمان‌دهنده به تجربه‌ها و اطلاعات جدید غافلند، توجه اندکی به نقش عوامل اجتماعی بر یادگیری دارند، جایگاه دانش را درون ذهن قلمداد می‌کنند و با وجود اهمیت زیادی که برای عوامل هیجانی و انگیزش قائلند از نظریه‌های دقیق انگیزشی بی‌اطلاعند. همچنین علی‌رغم تاکید زیادی که بر وارد کردن مفاهیم روان شناسی شناختی و علوم اعصاب شناختی در دوره‌های آموزش معلمان وجود دارد، معلمان درک محدودی از مفاهیمی مانند حافظه و توجه دارند. نتیجه‌گیری: مطابق با یافته‌های قبلی، نظام ‌باورهای معلمان ایرانی نیز ناهمسو و حاوی باورهای متناقض است. بررسی دقیق تناقضات و دلایل شکل‌گیری آنها، روشن‌گر مداخلات آینده برای بهسازی کلاس درس خواهد بود.

Investigating Iranian teachers’ conceptions of teaching and learning

IntroductionTeachers ’ beliefs are the most influential factor affecting classroom practice. According to previous studies, teachers bring preconceptions about teaching and learning to the educational settings from their own experiences as students. These preconceptions work as a framework of understanding and interpreting new information and are resistant to change. At the same time, the tremendous change from traditional approaches to constructivism and an increasing tendency to the neural underlings of education have encountered teachers with lots of new concepts to learn. Simultaneously studies in different countries have provided pieces of evidence that teachers hold many misconceptions and neuromyths. All of these have made studies in the area of teachers ’ conceptions worthful, especially when it comes to subsequent interventions. There are also limited inquiries into teachers ’ conceptions through indepth interviews in Iran. Also, previous studies in Iran approached teachers ’ conceptions in particular subject areas like math or were interested in teachers ’ epistemological beliefs and neuromyths. the present study aimed to explore Iranian teachers ’ conceptions of teaching and learning as an interrelated system, including neuroscience concepts and cognitive psychology concepts like memory, and attention. Finally, it was to see to what extent they are consistent with the scientific theories and understanding of learning.MethodsTo do such, a phenomenological methodology was applied in which different ways of experiencing a phenomenon by a specific group of people at a collective level are examined. Indepth semistructured interviews were conducted with 15 elementary school teachers at a private school in Tehran. It is worth mentioning that schools in Iran were divided into two types of schools: public and private schools. Private schools in Iran can recruit teachers who graduated from different majors and universities based on school demand. However, public schools can only recruit teachers from notable universities for teacher education. Both schools provide their teachers with workshops and short courses in the newest approaches to teaching. Written consent was obtained from all participants (mean age= 30 years; mean experience= 10 years). One of the researchers conducted all interviews, which lasted 40 minutes on average, and intrarater reliability was calculated after six months. The idea here was to see if teachers spontaneously refer to scientific underlying of learning and teaching in response to questions like ldquo;how does learning occur? rdquo; and then to ask probe questions like ldquo;what is the role of attention, memory, and other mental processes in learning? rdquo; to provoke details. The data were analyzed as a whole, and descriptive categories were formed based on the similarity between teachers ’ expressions.ResultsThe results revealed that Iranian teachers have become aware of the significance of providing students with activities and giving them more chances for having an active role during educational reforms, while the distinction between studentcentered and teachercentered approaches was not well understood. In other words, ldquo;being active rdquo; was understood by teachers as being physically active and doing handson activities and being engaged in activities, which primarily were designed only by teachers rather than being mentally, cognitively, or metacognitively active. In fact, teachers showed confusion between learning and teaching strategies. Teachers also neglected the role of social factors that were unable to see prior knowledge as a framework for understanding new information and placed the knowledge inside the mind. Despite being aware of the importance of motivation, they lacked scientific theories about it. One important and exciting part of Iranian teachers rsquo; beliefs were their conceptions about memory and attention. Teachers considered ldquo;memory as a place rdquo; for information rather than as a process and ldquo;attention as a gate rdquo; for information needed only for deep learning rather than all kinds of learning.ConclusionSimilar to the previous studies, teachers showed inconsistencies in their pedagogical belief system, with evidence of having traditional and modern conceptions of learning and teaching at the same time (e.g., studentcentered and teachercentered). The implications of these results lead us to address these inconsistencies and coexistences explicitly. Teachers also did not show evidence to have a comprehensive understanding of underlying learning processes like memory and attention, despite the growing interest in incorporating cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience in teacher education. It shows that the gap between scientific studies and classroom practice is still huge. Any changes in teachers ’ approaches toward teaching and learning need belief change. Some previous studies suggested implementing a conceptual change approach, which has shown to be promising in confronting misconceptions. They implied that teachers need to be aware of their beliefs as the first step of change and get dissatisfied with them. It must be mentioned that our research was limited to young and middleclass teachers with having previous workshops in the newest approach in education. Future researches need to investigate teachers with different cultural and educational backgrounds.Ethical ConsiderationsCompliance with ethical guidelines: Participating in the research was totally voluntary, personal information was kept confidential, and the participants were informed about the research goals. Written consent was obtained from all participants.Authors rsquo; contributions: The first author designed and performed experiments, analyzed data, and prepared the manuscript. The second author contributed to designing the research, analyzing the data, and revision the manuscript. The third author contributed to the critical revision of the data analysis method and text revision. Funding: This research received no specific grant from any funding agency.Acknowledgment: The authors wish to thank all Hazrat Masoume elementary school teachers for their patience in answering questions. Conflict of interest: The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest.