(1963) A METACOGNITIVE INSTRUCTIONAL APPROACH AND SELFREFLECTION: REFLECTIVE PRACTICE FROM A COMPUTER SCIENCE PERSPECTIVE

摘要

Teaching is increasingly complex work which takes time to plan and continuous effort to ensure the highest standards of professional practice. There is a paradox in our rapidly changing society that educators are not very open to change in their practice (Hoban, 2002). The process for educators to learn and acquire effective teaching skills is a labour which has to be mastered over time. They would gain pedagogical knowledge and skills based on accumulation of new acquired knowledge and teaching methods and strategies to be added to their repertoire of existing knowledge and skills. In addition, it is vital for educators to utilize two aspects of reflective practice as suggested by Schon, which are ‘reflection in action’ and ‘reflection on action’ (Schon, 1983, 1987). Reflection in action refers to quick thinking action which takes places when one is teaching in the classroom. On the other hand, reflection on action usually takes place after the lesson out of the classroom when the educator reflects on his or her previous teaching and considers certain situations from the lesson again. Educational system in the 21st century encompasses reflection from both the teachers and students’ perspectives. In general, reflective practice in teaching and learning in undergraduate education focuses on the professional development of students and academics in an interdisciplinary education. Reflective practice has been in existence in most professional educational practices for several centuries. The use of reflective practice in computing education courses has significant benefits to enhance the knowledge of the students. However, there is some controversies on how this reflection was done and the manner in which this was done based on individual teaching practice. One of the main objectives of this study is to describe the various approaches used in teaching undergraduate students in a computing course. The study illustrates several modern approaches used during this classes. A qualitative research method was applied in gathering the feedback from the students using a general survey questions based on the course delivery. The study used statistical packages for the social sciences (SPSS) to analyze the data gathered. The results revealed the various level of acceptance of the teaching methods applied in the course. These results also demonstrate significant findings on the students' opinions and criticism which could help in future improvement of undergraduate computing curriculum. The study, firstly review literature on reflective practice. Secondly, discussed some of the good teaching practices and methods used in delivery the classes. Thirdly, the analysis and results obtained from the instrument questionnaires used for this study and finally, summary of the findings and further research directions.