Teaching Life Sciences on online platforms: a phenomenographic study

Abstract

This study explored Life Sciences pre-service teachers’ experiences of learning Life Sciences on an online platform at university, and how they thought Life Sciences should be taught on online platforms in schools, using a phenomenographic approach. This topic is relevant because Life Sciences lecturers and teachers had to adapt their teaching strategies and representations to suit online platforms during the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent university and school closures. Using semi-structured focus group interviews, 14 Life Sciences pre-service teachers were asked to describe the teaching strategies and representations used by their Life Sciences and Life Sciences methodology lecturers on online platforms. They were further asked to describe what teaching strategies and representations they thought Life Sciences teachers should use when teaching on online platforms in schools. The qualitative results described that the Life Sciences pre-service teachers perceived that their Life Sciences and Life Sciences methodology lecturers used teaching strategies such as synchronous teaching, asynchronous teaching and the flipped classroom approach. Representations used were visualisations such as PowerPoints, pictures and reading material, as well as digital educational technology such as online simulations and applications, e-books, YouTube videos and demonstration videos. Based on their experiences of learning Life Sciences on an online platform at university, the Life Sciences pre-service teachers suggested that the following teaching strategies should be used to teach Life Sciences on online platforms in schools: interactive and engaging synchronous teaching strategies, the flipped classroom approach and hybrid teaching. The Life Sciences pre-service teachers suggested that the following representations should be used to teach Life Sciences on online platforms in schools: visualisations such as PowerPoints and pictures, and digital educational technology such as experimentation software in the form of online simulations and applications. It was concluded that the Life Sciences pre-service teachers in this study perceived their Life Sciences and Life Sciences methodology lecturers as having developed Technology, Pedagogical and Content Knowledge (TPACK) when lecturing on online platforms. The Life Sciences pre-service teachers’ TPACK was well established as they were able to perceive and understand how online platforms can be used to replicate and replace classroom-based practices, but they were not able to suggest ways in which teaching could be transformed online in a way that would not be possible in a face-to-face classroom. Key terms: Synchronous teaching, Asynchronous teaching, Flipped classroom, Hybrid teaching, Online digital educational technology