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Enhancing pre-service teachers’ research engagement using flexible and scaffolded online resources

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Abstract

Undergraduate research engagement is critically important across disciplines. In education, however, pre-service teachers often report disengaging from research activities. To address this problem, we drew on the affordances of online learning: building and implementing a self-paced online program of multimodal resources called ResearchEd. We evaluated the program across three years. First, 120 students took part in a quantitative survey measuring research engagement. Those with program access were significantly more likely to enjoy research and consider postgraduate study. Next, 52 students compared the program to a traditional paper-based report-writing guide. The majority agreed that the program had improved their research understanding (90.4%) and confidence (84.7%). Finally, 15 students participated in a focus group interview; nominating the flexibility and self-directed nature of the program as key benefits. We concluded that the affordances of the online program enabled successful research scaffolding.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Macquarie University, Sydney, 4FW 920, Australia

    Penny Van Bergen & Rod Lane

  2. Department of Psychology, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia

    Daniel Guilbert

Authors
  1. Penny Van Bergen
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  2. Rod Lane
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  3. Daniel Guilbert
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Correspondence to Penny Van Bergen.

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Van Bergen, P., Lane, R. & Guilbert, D. Enhancing pre-service teachers’ research engagement using flexible and scaffolded online resources. Aust. Educ. Res. 47, 629–649 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13384-019-00362-y

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