Article Review

AN INVESTIGATION OF THE USE OF THE ‘FLIPPED CLASSROOM’ PEDAGOGY IN SECONDARY ENGLISH LANGUAGE CLASSROOMS

Javier Andrade Pinzón

Noemi Pardo

The impact of technology on our society has been reflected with the creation of the Internet and ICTS respectively. Also, the globalist phenomenon has involved the language as an important tool around the world to develop a better understanding of how schools and educators can continue to serve an ever-evolving population - even as their learning needs change, too.

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INTRODUCTION

​A flipped classroom is a new pedagogical method which consists of video lectures (the videos can be those that are available from the Internet, or pre-recorded by teachers themselves) that students watch at their own time and pace prior to attending classes in which they participate in group activities or the teachers answer their questions (Stone, 2012).

METHODOLOGY

The researcher aimed at finding out the participating teachers’ and students’ perceptions towards this new approach and investigating whether the flipped classroom could be a pedagogy for fostering teachers’ reflective abilities and developing students’ generic skills. ​

•The students moved on to the self-learning phase to learn about the present perfect tense by watching the 4 videos according to their own pace and time schedule.

•In the face-to-face lesson, teachers asked their students to complete some worksheets to check the students’ knowledge of the form of the present perfect tense.

•An end-of-project questionnaire is provided to seek students’ opinions about the use of a ‘flipped classroom’ in English teaching and learning.

• Before starting the research, the practicing teachers are capacitated about the flipped classroom pedagogy and the procedure for conducting the study.

•The student has to do a pre-test check their previous knowledge about the present perfect tense.

DATA COLLECTION AND PROCEDURE

The quantitative data were collected by asking students to complete the online end-of-project questionnaire, after learning the materials about the present perfect tense to find out their perceptions towards the use of flipped classroom pedagogy.

​The qualitative data were collected from the two participating teachers and their students. Three of them were invited on a voluntary basis  to collect their opinions about the flipped classroom and how they can transfer their flipped classroom experiences to teaching/studying other classes/subjects. The interviews were audio recorded and then transcribed. The data were analysed by using qualitative content analysis.

CONCLUSIONS

•Teachers thought the flipped classroom is a creative and innovate alternative learning process, however it may only be useful for more motivated students. Also, it includes the extra workload of finding or making suitable pre-lesson online video.

•Teachers and students can still transfer their flipped classroom experiences in English Language to teaching and studying other subject.

•Whether flipped classroom pedagogy can help students gain significantly in their subject knowledge may depend on the students’ motivation.