Abstract:

Learning anxiety has negative effects on learners’ behaviors, attitudes and achievements in learning. Flipped learning is a blending of direct instruction with cooperative learning. Students study basic concepts and principles at home via instructional videos, and they learn in a group to solve problems or co-create knowledge in class. Thus, flipped learning requires students to learn autonomously at home, and to learn actively and cooperatively in class.

In such a learning situation, it is anticipated that learners might feel fearful or uneasy in the process of individual learning and cooperative learning. However, few or no studies have focused on learners’ psychological aspects in flipped learning. Therefore, this study purposed to identify learners’ anxiety in flipped learning.

Participants were 66 Japanese third-year university students who participated in an educational technology class. All of the participants were taking pre-service teacher education courses for elementary and secondary education. A self-report questionnaire sheet, which was a written form of free-response style, was used to identify learners’ anxiety in “flipped learning.” Participants were experiencing “flipped” classes for five weeks at the time of the questionnaire survey. Participants were asked what they found uneasy, fearful or worried about “flipped learning.”

As a result, 15 anxiety statements were identified as items for anxiety in “flipped learning,” and among them, 13 items were classified into four clusters: “communication anxiety,” “achievement anxiety,” “preparation anxiety,” and “technology anxiety”. Given the findings of this study, it is necessary to develop a “flipped learning” anxiety scale and to suggest instructors how to reduce learners’ anxiety in flipped learning.

Keywords:

Flipped learning, anxiety, instructional design, pre-service teacher education.