A Study of Primary School Teachers’ Preferences and Opinions for NMNS’ Teacher Workshops

• Main Authors: LU, CHIH-YU, 魯志玉
• Other Authors: 葉蓉樺
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2006
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/74341447746007328530

碩士 === 國立臺中教育大學 === 自然科學教育學系碩士班 === 94 === The National Museum of Natural Science [NMNS] develops workshops for practicing school teachers as part of its ongoing educational programs. This study analyzed the teacher workshops that NMNS conducted during year 2000 to 2004, and then interviewed 26 elementary school teachers who work in Taichung City. In this study tried to figure out the subjects, contents and methods that NMNS teacher workshops used to conduct. And investigated how teachers work in the same city perceived about those teacher workshops. There were four main findings described as follow: (1)The main character of NMNS teacher workshops: The subjects inducted into 7 main themes, and the “promotion of museum education” as the majority. With reference to the content of workshop, three categories can be identified with “education resource” and “instructional strategy” being the most dominant categories. Finally, “lecture” is the most popular among the five different instructional methods. (2) Teachers’ preferences about the workshops were the theme for “Science and Technology”, the contents about “educational resource” and “instructional strategy”, and the most popular instructional method was “experiencing the museum resources”. (3) Most teachers positively consider these workshops beneficial to their teaching practice and should be linked to curriculum development. (4) Finally, factors such as sources of announcement of the workshop, most teachers prefer to attend workshops held on Wednesday afternoon and summer vacation, the topic of lectures, ways of presentation, and teaching assignment all play roles in influencing teachers’ intention in participating the workshops. Several suggestions are proposed based on the findings above. (1) The design of the museum’s teacher workshop should meet teachers’ preference. (2) The contents of the workshops should link to schools’ curriculums moderately. (3) Eliminate possible factors that may hinder their participation. (4) Future direction of workshop development can target individual school or the museum can develop a dedicated workshop program to meet the various needs of teachers.