The Improvement of Attitudes toward Convergence of Preservice Teachers: Blended Learning versus Online Learning in Science Teaching Method Courses

Abstract

There has been a growing need as preservice teachers develop competencies regarding convergence. Focused on a discussion of blended learning before the COVID-19 pandemic versus online learning in the epidemic, we aimed to explore whether preservice teachers’ attitudes toward convergence can be influenced by the learning environment. Participants were a total of three hundred preservice teachers who attended the science teaching method courses training their TPACK at a teachers college in South Korea during the 2018 to 2020 academic years (194 in the blended learning group and 106 in the online learning group). Survey data on five subcomponents of attitudes toward convergence were collected at the start and end of the courses and analyzed using ANOVA and ANCOVA. As result, preservice teachers’ responses to the attitudes toward convergence in the pretests have a significant difference, whereas the overall scores in the posttests revealed no significant difference in the modalities of learning environments. Consequently, the preservice teachers engaged in the courses enhanced positive attitudes toward convergence regardless of delivery methods either blended learning or online learning. This paper provides evidence that the two teaching modalities of curriculum studies have the potential to foster preservice teachers’ attitudes toward convergence. This study supports that the blended and online learning formats of the course were feasible to induce short-term improvements in bias affective domains under the learning environments of science teaching method courses.