| Abstract: |
As an undergraduate from Physics Education, I began teaching of Biology at the
secondary school on 22 July 2018 until 30 June 2019 when I acceded to come
back at primary school, both Islamic Madrasah. Teaching at the Islamic
Madrasah is a hassle because I should consider my perspective on Islam in
teaching. However, teaching at the Islamic Madrasah is not and should not be
considered a burden or chore that just needs to be done. It is a crucial part
of moslem scholar, as we all want to do scientifically sound research and we
should all strive to be effective teachers. Through teaching, we are
responsible for the education of the next generation of islamic peoples, who
will use their own unique ideas and skill sets to advance their society.
Teaching, in general, should not be seen as a hassle in scholar, but rather as
a skill to be developed and a responsibility to be taken seriously. Teaching
does not have to decrease research productivity, it can greatly enhance
research if we allow it to. One of my evidence about this statement is my
experience and work. After a year devoted to spruce up the teaching of
Biology, I produced a series of work on scientific literacy related Biology,
that continues my undergraduate thesis, which was related Physics. In these
works, I wrote about my experiences teaching Biology in Islamic Madrasah.
Then, I became think to reconsider my method on measuring student learning.
Measuring student learning is a complicated but necessary task for
understanding the student’s improvement and effectiveness of instruction. I
have curious about the the difference between normalized gain g and effect
size Cohen’s d for measuring the improvement of student’s scientific literacy.
I used normalized gain g in my undergraduate thesis nor my first work on
Biology Education, then used effect size Cohen’s d on my latest work on
scientific literacy in teaching of Biology. I see need reasons for using one
or both of them, to be explained in any writings on educational research. So,
in this work I investigate about my curiousity. My investigation focused on
the implications on claims about student learning that result from choosing
between one of two metrics. The metrics are normalized gain g, which is the
most common method used in Physics Education Research (PER), and effect size
Cohen’s d, which is broadly used in Discipline-Based Education Research (DBER)
including Biology Education Research (BER). Data for the analyses came from
the research about scientific literacy on Physics and Biology Education from
courses at institutions across Indonesia. The results showed that the two
metrics lead to different inferences about student learning. First, normalized
gain g being biased in favor of populations with higher pretest means. Second,
effect size Cohen’s d may mitigate the limitations of these metric for
measuring the learning of high or low pretest populations of students by
accounting for the distribution of tests scores. Third, by comparing the two
metrics across all data, effect size Cohen’s d is larger than normalized gain
g in these cases for the same size change in the means. This work reveals that
the bias in normalized gaing can harm efforts to improve student’s scientific
literacy by misrepresenting the efficacy of teaching practices across
populations of students and across institutions. This work, also, recommends
use effect size Cohen’s d for measuring student learning, based on reliability
statistical method for calculating student learning. In addition, using effect
size Cohen’s d would allow scholars to use their work in subsequent studies
and meta-analyses, align with the practices of the larger education research
community, nor facilitating more cross-disciplinary conversations and
collaborations as well. |