Enhancing teachers’ integrating micro:bit in their teaching through professional development program within the urban vegetable garden context

Abstract

In this research, we proposed a professional development (PD) program on teaching micro:bit within the context of an urban vegetable garden. The study aimed to: (1) investigate teachers’ confidence in integrating micro:bit in their teaching as the result of participating in the PD program; (2) investigate teachers’ integrating micro:bit in their teaching; and (3) identify the factors that affected their application of micro:bit in their teaching. Thirty-three teachers, who teach in a school under the Bangkok metropolitan administration, participated in this study. Three of them were selected as case studies based on their confidence levels in applying micro:bit to their students i.e., high confidence, moderate confidence, and low confidence, respectively. Data were collected using questionnaires, semi-structured interviews, and classroom observations. For the quantitative data, the researchers employed means, standard deviation (SD), and dependent t-test. For the qualitative data, thematic analysis was used. The findings revealed that most teachers had confidence in integrating micro:bit into their teaching from low (M = 2.52, SD = 0.86) to high levels (M = 3.65, SD = 0.51) after participating in the PD program. For integrating micro:bit into their teaching, all cases challenged their students to create a project with the micro:bit to tackle issues in an urban vegetable garden. They promoted students to apply knowledge about micro:bit to new situations. Furthermore, three key factors affecting the teachers’ use of micro:bit in their teaching were identified: teachers’ background knowledge of micro:bit, school support, and students’ awareness of the benefit of micro:bit.