Abstract
Background: In the recent years, practicing the school-based curriculum development program is a norm; designing a useful Chinese Character Cognition (“CCC”) approach becomes a very hot topic in the education arena. Following on this general direction, the author of this paper has conducted an action research study using the Guided Inquiring Method (“GIM”) as the methodology against Chinese Character Cognition with a group of students from the Teacher Training Program, who prepare themselves to be the primary school teachers.
Goals/Aims: The objective of this study is threefold — to investigate the effectiveness of applying GIM against the target study group, to observe the degree of their acceptance, and at the same time to reveal what should we pay attention to while using this method.
Target Study Group: A group of 9 students from the Postgraduate Diploma in Education (Primary) program (one year full time) at the Hong Kong Institute of Education.
Method: The general design of the entire study is based upon the theory of the Guided Inquiring Method, plus injection of basic teaching knowledge, group discussion, group tutorial sessions, and in-depth discussions among the target group members. In order to accomplish the goal of this study, objective assessment and questionnaire were used to confirm the findings at the end stage of the study.
Results: There are two key findings in this study. (1) With using GIM, it was found the target group members were able to understand the key principles on Chinese Character Cognition as well as have adopted a useful teaching approach in this regards. (2) The observations suggested the target group members are deficient in self-studying initiatives and also possessed a “take-it-as-is” studying mentality.
Conclusion: This study indicated Guided Inquiring Method is an acceptable approach in conducting Chinese Character Cognition program. Moreover, self-study initiative and attitude are concluded as the two significant factors that affect the overall effectiveness of the result. As for how to improve these two sensitive areas, more studies shall be conducted by researchers in this field in time to come.
| Keywords: | guided inquiring method; Chinese character cognition; action study |
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