Appropriate Pedagogy? Evaluating a Teaching Intervention

Abstract

Concerns over Singaporean secondary students' difficulties in reading & understanding science textbooks, a study was undertaken to explore outcomes of content-reading instruction. A comprehensive account of the diagnostic & implementation phases of this investigation can be found in an earlier report (Lee, 1996). Here, the data are examined from the angle of "appropriate pedagogy" in this attempt to introduce a foreign methodology to a local classroom situation. "Appropriacy," an inevitably relative term, is interpreted in terms of participants' self-reports & the researcher's observations of group-work activities. Five text-reading strategies were introduced over a period of 6 weeks in 60- to 70-minute sessions. Participants' initial reactions revealed a conservative preference for a more "traditional" teaching approach & reservations as to the appropriacy of the new sessions. More positive views were reported by participants in their evaluations of later sessions. To conclude that the later reading strategies were more appropriate would, however, be an overly simplified interpretation of the situation. Other factors that might have influenced participants' reported views are also discussed.