Student-Teachers’ Perception of the Preparedness to Engage in Online Teaching, and Challenges They Face When Teaching Online: A Corpus Analysis of Their Reflexive Journal Entries

The Covid19 pandemic changed the way almost everything is done, including teaching. Online teaching rose to become the quintessential way mode of teaching in weeks after being in relative obscurity the two decades of its existence. Online teaching is now prominent, but research shows that we are still lacking knowledge in almost every human aspect involved in online teaching. This study focusses on student-teachers’ perceptions of their own preparedness to teach online and the challenges they face when teaching online. This is done by looking into the primary keywords or concepts the student-teachers use in their own writing. Language is our ubiquitous tool by which we look into the minds of fellow human beings. Accordingly, this study looks at a body of language (corpus) compiled from the reflective journals produced by 23 student-teachers as part of their final assessment portfolio (+700 pages, +800,000 words). These journals embody their thoughts during their practical teaching experience. The analysis is carried out using a concordancer program. By analysing this corpus, we will, (1) identify the most prominently occurring content words, and (2) the most prominently occurring words relative to the prominent keywords. The resulting semantic web will display the concepts the preoccupy the concerns of these respondents thus giving us an insight into possible areas that we need to focus on in our efforts to remedy and enhance our online teaching capabilities. Initial findings show that the most prominent word in their writing ‘students’ with technical and technology concerns falling far behind

A Case Study: Issues, Challenges and Coping Strategies of Student-Teachers During the COVID-19 Pandemic

This study explores the issues, challenges and student-teachers’ coping strategies of teaching in a classroom setting during this challenging time of the Covid-19 pandemic in a new instructional setting of online classes that replace the face-to-face classroom interaction. Purposeful sampling was employed in studying 24 student-teachers’ reflective journals through content analysis. The findings showed that most student-teachers were positive and able to cope with the issues if enough time were given to them. Based on the themes emerging from the text analysis, class management and class organisation were not the main issue. However, other main issues such as Internet accessibility and full cooperation from the students were more challenging and the actual learning engagement for the receiving end appears to be compromised due to some teachers who were inadequately trained for online instruction. (Abstract by authors

Malaysian teachers’ and students’ perceptions of students’ Multiple Intelligence profiles in Malaysian secondary schools

Malaysian secondary schools learning profiles in classrooms in Malaysian Secondary Schools. The study adopted Howard Gardner’s Multiple Intelligence (MI) theory as a base. The teachers’ perceptions and expectations of their students’ learning profiles were compared to the students’ perception of their own learning profiles in two research study phases. The first phase took place before teachers and students were informed about students’ MI profiles while the second phase investigated what happened to these perceptions after the information has been supplied. The rationale of the study was prompted by the need to look at ways in which preconceived ideas about the students’ learning profiles may affect students’ learning in the Malaysian classroom context. Past research has informed us that teachers’ perceptions and beliefs are likely to have significant implications for students’ perceptions, learning approaches and outcomes (Marton & Booth, 1997; Prosser & Trigwell, 1999; Meighan & Harber, 2007). This research study is mainly qualitative and used these methods of data collection: semistructured interviews, quiz-questionnaire (QQ), and observation. The study was carried out in two suburban secondary schools in Kajang, Selangor, with 142 student participants for the QQ and a total of 36 teachers and students for the interview, group discussions and observations. The findings show that there are several factors that help or obstruct the students’ and teachers’ metacognition to understand the students’ MI profiles. Teachers tend to essentialise and assign labels within the students as factors. The issue of ethnic labelling which characterises the Malaysian context was highlighted by both teachers and students as a factor with significant influence on the students’ learning. Importantly, teachers and students acknowledge MI as an essential catalyst for meaningful learning. Nonetheless, this study provides evidence that teachers showed a degree of unwillingness to use the information on students’ learning profiles in students’ learning