an innovative approach

According to the second question – what is the impact of the teaching
intervention on teachers and students? - The findings indicated that the different
teaching contexts of the three teachers probably influenced their implementation of
the intervention.
5. The Impact of the Intervention on the Teachers
The findings indicated that the teachers’ beliefs about learning, their content
knowledge, their perceptions of the nature of science, and their role in the classroom
had influenced the implementation of the intervention. Bell (1998) supported that
teachers had different ideas, beliefs, interests and feelings while teaching. Those
differences could lead to different outcomes within the objectives of teaching.
The attempts at correcting students’ misconceptions and enhancing students’
understanding of photosynthesis using several teaching strategies appears to depend
on the teacher’s belief in how students learn. For example, Mrs. Engka, who believed
that teaching only by lecturing could not adequately help the students’ learning about
biology, consistently attempted to correct her students’ misconceptions using several
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learning activities such as think share pair, concept mapping and discussions (see
Table 6.2). On the other hand, Mr. Vyn, who thought that students learned directly
from a teacher’s lecture, appeared to correct the misconceptions by an emphasis on
lecturing. Mrs. Amp, who rarely appreciated students who argued with the teacher
and the school and who was not confident in her chemistry content knowledge of
photosynthesis, appeared to be unconvinced to change her traditional teaching
methods from a teacher-centred approach to a student-centred approach based on the
intervention. Her teaching strongly emphasized good student discipline. The students
must be quiet and not move around during her lecture class. The findings showed that
their students could not correct the prior misconceptions. For example, a student in
Mrs. Amp’s classroom still held the misconception that “mineral, fertilizer, and water
were plant food” and held new misconception that “CO2 was also plant food”. The
findings also indicated that eighty percent of the students in Mrs. Engka’s classroom
and forty-three percent of those in Mr. Vyn’s classroom developed adequate scientific