Promoting Self-Directed Learning (SDL) and Assessment as Learning (AaL) in Science Education in Hong Kong

Abstract

Learning and teaching in the 21st century witness great changes in terms of teaching pedagogies, learning environment and learners’ diverse needs. In a typical science classroom in Hong Kong, students with mixed learner diversity are grouped into one classroom. Science teachers often then have to spend great efforts to cater for their needs: helping students be engaged and motivated to learn science in EMI environment, teaching students different language, cognitive and generic skills, as well as creating differentiated scaffold, tasks and materials. In particular, for successful and effective learning and teaching of science to take place, science teachers need to create highly challenging yet well supported science-learning activities to scaffold students’ development of science knowledge, academic literacy and cognitive development (Gibbons, 2002). Conducting research studies on science literacy, language across the curriculum (LAC) and content and language integrated learning (CLIL) is crucial for application of innovative pedagogical approaches, particularly in educational contexts where English is not used as a first language like Hong Kong. Negligence on integrating content learning and language might limit Hong Kong students’ development of 21st century skills, which is of utmost importance of their future career and academic advancement. In this study we address the issue of selfdirected learning (SDL) in an EFL Science classroom as a way to provide language scaffold for Hong Kong students who are learners of Science using English as a foreign language (EFL learners). Our central thesis in addressing this question is how to bridge our students from a dependent learner to a self-directed learner by gradually releasing learners’ responsibility (GRR) in a language rich support learning environment. This study thus aims to evaluate the extent of self-directedness in learning by monitoring the learning progress of students The research adopts a design-based intervention design with two groups of Secondary two (Grade 8) Science students in an EMI school in Hong Kong. One average academic ability class is invited as the intervention group while another class with similar academic ability is invited as the control group of this research study. Students in the intervention class receive additional language support and SDL elements in the teacher-researcher’s lessons while students in the comparison class will receive no additional language support. Through the research period, language support used in the intervention group will be gradually removed by careful scaffolding in order to increase learners’ responsibility (Fisher and Frey, 2013) and foster self-directed learning (Grow, 1991) to observe the learning progress of students. Academic achievements of the two groups are measured statistically through formative assessment tasks such as results in uniform tests and examinations. In addition, teachers’ journals, questionnaires were also used to understand the attitudes of the teacher and students towards teaching and learning Science in English during the study. Results, pedagogical and theoretical implications for CLIL and SDL are discussed.