EXPLORING THE SCIENTIFIC SKILLS AND LEARNING STYLES OF FUTURE SCIENCE MENTORS: A SPRINGBOARD IN ENGAGING EFFECTIVE SCIENCE TEACHING PEDAGOGY

Abstract

Fundamental competencies, skills, and styles of learning among students are the basis of planning an effective teaching-learning activity. Since most of the enrollees in the Bachelor of Secondary Education major in Science were graduates of non-Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) strand, there is a must to address the gap between the student’s competencies and skills from their chosen field by identifying their level of scientific skills and learning styles to effectively meet the demand of the mandated competencies in the major courses offered in the aforesaid program. In this study, the level of scientific skills and its components and the learning style of future science mentors were determined together with the correlation between the level of scientific skills and learning style. The research instrument used in this study was the researcher-made questionnaire for scientific skills which was subjected to reliability and validity testing and an adopted survey questionnaire developed by Kolb (1984) for learning style. Thus, it was determined that future science mentors as an entire group possess a “proficient” level of scientific skills and in terms of scientific inquiry and practical skills, both were determined as “proficient” in terms of processing data, it was determined as a “developing” level. Also, the learning style of future science mentors was an “activist” style of learning. A significant relationship was determined between the level of scientific skills and the learning style of future science mentors with a medium positive correlation. This study as well concluded that social constructivism and pragmatism science teaching pedagogies were the best-fit pedagogies among future science mentors in designing their learning landscape which the researchers recommend among science professors to be the reference in formulating effective strategies and learning activities to efficiently and effectively transfer learnings among their students.