Exploring and prioritizing authentic instruction strategies

Abstract

The two main objectives of the present study were exploring the authentic instruction strategies and prioritizing these strategies in the context of primary schools. In order to identify the authentic instruction strategies, the virtual focus groups method was used. Three focus groups of five education specialists (except the meeting moderator) were selected using a purposive approach and snowball sampling method. The research tool in this section was the unstructured interview. Moreover, the interviews were analyzed at two levels of sub-themes and main themes. Finally, the validity of the analyses was confirmed by focus group feedback and the analyst’s triangulation. Also, to prioritize the authentic instruction strategies the technique of hierarchical analysis technique was used. Using a purposive approach and snowball sampling method, 20 expert teachers were selected. The research tool was a pair-wise comparison questionnaire consisting of five 2 ˟ 2 comparison matrices which were emerged from the analysis of interviews in the previous section. The inconsistency rate of each of the five matrices was less than 0.1 and therefore the validity of the comparisons was ensured. Finally, in order to analyze the data, indices such as the geometric mean and eigen vector were used. This study led to identifying and prioritizing the thirty-five authentic instruction strategies which were classified into four components. Accordingly, the most important general authentic instruction strategies were "opportunities to gain the authentic educational experiences", "assessment as learning", "personalization of learning", and "teacher originality", respectively.

Keywords

• authentic instruction
• assessment as learning
• personalization of learning