Adoption of flipped learning in social humanities education: the FIBER experience in secondary schools

ABSTRACT

FIBER (Flipped Issue-Based Enquiry Ride) is a teacher-facilitated interactive pedagogic framework that the authors propose to integrate flipped learning into social humanities education. This paper reports a quasi-experimental study (with mixed methods) which examined the pedagogic effectiveness of FIBER in the authentic setting of formal curriculum learning and teaching. The study involved totally 611 Secondary-4 students from academically top, middle and bottom schools in Hong Kong. In comparison with the conventional issue-based enquiry learning approach, FIBER had different intensity of positive effects on the high, moderate, and low academic-achieving student participants. This paper provides researchers and educational practitioners with empirical evidence for supporting wider adoption of FIBER in social humanities education, as well as harnessing flipped learning in formal schooling. Apart from discussing the benefits, the authors also underline the challenges of FIBER and suggest future work.

KEYWORDS:

• Flipped learning
• issue-based enquiry
• social humanities education
• FIBER
• formal schooling

Acknowledgements

The work described in this paper was substantially supported by a grant from the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong Special Administration Region, China (Project No.: 14604817). Thank you very much to all teachers and students who participated in this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Morris Siu-yung Jong is an Associate Professor of the Department of Curriculum and Instruction and the Director of Centre for Learning Sciences and Technologies, at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. His research interests include learning sciences, educational gamification, context-aware mobile learning, and technology-enhanced pedagogical design and implementation. Currently, he is the Co-Chair of the IEEE Education Society Technical Committee on Learning Sciences, the Chair of the APSCE (Asia Pacific Society for Computers in Education) Special Interest Group on Educational Gamification, and the Vice-President of the CAET (China Association for Educational Technology) Professional Committee on Game-based Learning.

Gaowei Chen is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Education at The University of Hong Kong. He received his PhD in Educational Psychology from The Chinese University of Hong Kong. Before joining The University of Hong Kong, he spent three years as a postdoctoral associate in the Learning Research and Development Center at The University of Pittsburgh. His research interests include learning sciences, dialogic teaching, academically productive talk, technology-supported teacher professional development, learning analytics, computer-supported collaborative learning, and STEM education.

Vincent Tam is the Principal Lecturer and Honorary Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at The University of Hong Kong. He was the winner of the Faculty Best Teacher Award (2010 & 2016) and the Faculty Outstanding Teaching Team Award (2013). Externally, he served on the Executive Board of the IEEE Technical Committee on Learning Technology. His research interests include educational data analytics, mobile learning, and STEM education.

Ching Sing Chai is a Professor of the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. His research interests include learning technology, teacher professional development, and the technological pedagogical content knowledge.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Research Grants Council, University Grants Committee: [grant number 14604817].