Features of and representational strategies in instructional videos for primary science classes

ABSTRACT

Utilisation of instructional videos for science teaching has become more widespread due to the expansion of online teaching and learning environments and growing awareness of benefits of videos, such as enabling use of effective multiple representations. With this in mind, this study aimed to examine features of instructional videos for teaching scientific inquiry, a key element of science education, and learners’ engagement, a crucial issue in instruction in terms of representational strategies used. We analysed 16 instructional videos for science teaching generated by pre-service teachers. We found that the instructional videos tended to focus on posing a question related to a phenomenon and constructing its explanation conceptually rather than conducting investigations and interpreting the data. It was also found that there were alternations between providing relevant and conceptual resources and affording learners opportunities to answer questions verbally and visually to prompt their engagement. Various representational strategies, such as summarising, comparing, highlighting, sequencing, and presenting vivid phenomena, were also employed for better teaching scientific inquiry as a part of learners’ ongoing cognitive activities. Based on the findings, we argue that there is potential for using instructional videos for teaching science, considering representational strategies in terms of scientific inquiry and learners’ engagement.

KEYWORDS:

• Instructional video
• scientific inquiry
• representational strategies
• learners’ engagement

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Ethical statement

Ethics approval was obtained from the Institutional Review Board of the Chuncheon National University of Education, No. 2021-4.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant funded by the Korea government (MIST: Ministry of Science and ICT), [Grant No. 2019R1F1A1040353].