Abstract. This thesis focuses on understanding teachers’ professional development needs after attending the Marine Educators Training Course in Taiwan from teachers’ perspectives. Taiwan started to implement Marine Education in 2008 after the White Paper on Marine Education Policy was released by the Ministry of Education, R.O.C. Teachers at all school levels were expected to integrate and teach marine-related topics in various fields of the 12-year basic education. Therefore, Taiwan Marine Education Center (TMEC) conducted an official Marine Educator Training Course to enhance teachers’ marine knowledge and teaching skills since 2017 to solve the dilemmas of implementing Marine Education discovered by the Ministry of Education, R.O.C.
The conceptual frameworks of the thesis consist of teachers’ Marine Science Content Knowledge, Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK), teacher professional needs, Ocean Literacy (OL), and inspiration from UNESCO and SDGs. For this study, all the conceptual concepts are discussed under teacher professional development as the main fundamental concept. To clarify the conceptual framework of teachers’ needs for Marine Education in Taiwan, these five concepts were considered and related in implementing Marine Education for teachers.
This is a qualitative research study involving an analysis of 51 responders among 173 participants of the Marine Educator Training Course from 2017 to 2019 in Taiwan. This study focused on understanding the teachers’ professional development needs that are still required for implementing Marine Education in the classroom after attending this training course. This study aimed to analyze the teachers’ answers to this specific open question was collected by an e-questionnaire. The methodology of this study used Qualitative Content Analysis (QCA).
This study indicated that teachers in different school levels have different demand levels, and these demands could be divided into three areas. First, for elementary and junior high school teachers, they are the majority groups needing the support of Marine Educational TPACK compared to the other two groups. Second, the possible potential for the sixth principle of Ocean Literacy. Because the teacher lacks official textbooks and teaching materials in Marine Education. Third, the importance of school internal support. This internal support helps teachers to reduce their stressed and inexperienced feelings when implementing Marine Education. Simultaneously, teachers feel valued and acknowledged by the support from peers and administrations within schools. This study aims to bring insight from teachers’ perspectives and point out what the teachers’ professional development needs should have for marine education teachers in Taiwan. The observations of this study could be a potential example of Education for Sustainable Development for teacher training in basic education
