Abstract:

Along with the prevalence of online learning management systems in schools and low-cost, user-friendly video-recording devices, “Flipped Classroom” (FC) has continued to receive a lot of K-12 educators’ attention. FIBER (Flipped Issue-Based Enquiry Ride), which is a flipped pedagogy designed for social humanities education, integrates the instructional idea of FC into the course of issue-based enquiry learning.

Teachers are always “gatekeepers” of educational innovations in schools. This paper reports a study in which we investigated teachers’ concerns about FIBER through the Concern-Based Adoption Model (CBAM). This model is composed of 5 constructs of teachers’ concerns. The “Evaluation” construct concerns the worthiness of FIBER. The “Information” construct concerns the tasks and demands involved in FIBER. The “Management” construct concerns the implementation issues related to FIBER. The “Consequence” construct concerns the impacts of FIBER on students’ learning and teachers’ own professional development. The “Refocusing” construct concerns the further improvement of FIBER.

This CBAM study involved 48 Hong Kong social humanities teachers. The data collection was carried through a validated CBAM-questionnaire-based survey with the aim of gathering the teachers’ concerns about adopting FIBER in their teaching practice. The survey was conducted right after an induction workshop in which the teachers had learned the pedagogical design and implementation of FIBER. Results indicate that the teacher possessed significantly strong “Management” and “Consequence” concerns, in comparison with their “Evaluation,” “Information” and “Refocusing” concerns. The details of the findings, as well as the research implications and limitations, will be delineated in our final paper.

Keywords:

Flipped Classroom, Teachers' Concerns, FIBER, CBAM, Social Humanities Education.