Development of experiential teaching competence throuth science research for geography pre-service teachers at can tho university

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HNUE JOURNAL OF SCIENCE DOI: 10.18173/2354-1067.2019-0133 
Educaitional Sciences, 2019, Volume 64, Issue 12, pp. 78-85 
This paper is available online at  
DEVELOPMENT OF EXPERIENTIAL TEACHING COMPETENCE 
THROUTH SCIENCE RESEARCH FOR GEOGRAPHY 
PRE-SERVICE TEACHERS AT CAN THO UNIVERSITY 
Nguyen Thi Ngoc Phuc and Ho Thi Thu Ho 
School of Education, Can Tho University 
Abstract. Experiential teaching competence (ETC) which has been giving positive supports 
for teachers in developing qualities and capacities of high school students. Scientific 
research is a potential resolutions to develop ETC for geography pre-service teachers 
during the training process. This report summarized some resolution experiences and 
results on developing ETC by promoting students take part in science researches at Can 
Tho University (CTU). Observation, interviewing student researchers and their advisers in 
the period of 2016 – 2019, group researchers had followed and measured the positive 
changing degree of the ETC of geography pre-service teachers. Orienting and choosing 
scientific research issues; fostering knowledge and skills in scientific research and 
education for geography pre-service teachers in teaching process; improve the competence 
and responsibilities of instructor; support and create encouraged environment to students 
who have been participating are some activities which have been used at CTU. Research 
results have given positive contribution to improve up their ETC. 
Keywords: Competence, experiential education, experiential teaching competence, 
geography pre-service teachers, student scientific research. 
1. Introduction 
Scientific research is a practical proposal to help learners develop qualities and competencies, 
improve the quality of training, contribute to create or apply their knowledge in diverse real 
situations [1, 2]. It also positively supports to the learning process at the pedagogical university. 
Experiential education (EE) is an educational theory which were developed in the second half 
of XX century and applied in many countries such as the United States, England, Australia (Kolb, 
2015) [3]. Many studies have analized and sum up the concepts of EE clearly [4, 5] include the 
learners’ experience levels [6, 7], characteristics and learning cycles through experience learning, 
applying experiential activities in some different subjects [8, 9, 10]. Teacher creat convienient 
environment for learners to connect and reflect personal experiences to solving problems, 
situations or many tasks and applying them to the new situations which are associated their lives. 
Learning through experience helps learners develop qualities and competencies effectively. EE 
was encouraged by many countries and organizations around the world. The renovation of 
Vietnam education in recent years has been interested in encouging experiential education 
activities in every subjects [1]. 
Received November 20, 2019. Revised November 29, 2019. Accepted December 15, 2019. 
Contact Nguyen Thi Ngoc Phuc, e-mail address: ntnphuc@ctu.edu.vn 
Development of experiential teaching competence through science research for Geography... 
79 
Methods of educational and social science research is an integrated approach [11]. Scientific 
research experiencing carries a great potential for development of student’ qualities and 
competencies. Development ETC throught organizing for Geography pre-service teacher studied 
on how to apply EE theory in teaching process and its effectiveness would be presented in this 
report. Research result will contribute one more solution for developing experiential teaching 
competence of Geography pedagogy students. 
2. Content 
Research results are based on a combination of these methods: (1) analysis, synthesis of 
documents and statistics, (2) observations 14 students and (3) in-depth interviews 4 instructors 
and 7 students who have been participating in scientific research association with EE in the 
period of 2016-2019 at CTU. Observation has been used during the teaching and guiding 
scientific research process. The criteria’ observation were the manifestations of experiential 
teaching capacity - how they assigned, supported and feedbacked, abstracted conceptualisation, 
resolved situattions. Student researchers had participated in self-assessment ETC before and 
after participating in their researches. The lecturers always informed and explained clearly for 
their students about the assessment results. The interviews aimed to collect results of capacity 
development, difficulties and recommendations for developing experiential teaching capacity 
through scientific research. The results of developing ETC were also demonstrated through some 
academic products of these students. 
2.1. Science research 
2.1.1. The concept of science research 
Scientific research is to discover laws and postulate theories that can explain natural or 
social phenomena that is acquired using the scientific method [12]. Acroding to Vu Cao Dam 
(2016) [13], science research is finding things that science hasn’t been know, either discovering 
the essence, developing scientific knowledge about the world, or creating new methods and 
techniques, transforming things or phenomena to service for human activity goals. In other 
words, this is the process of exploring and discovering new knowledge for humanity. The value 
of these activities often associate with reality, direct to support the human life and is 
implemented through scientific research methods which are reliability and validity. 
2.1.2. Forms of scientific research in students 
Students can research science through variety of forms: research assignments in subjects, 
essays, graduate theses, student scientific research topics, or join in cooperating project. 
2.1.3. The meaning of scientific research for students 
Scientific research is an important activ ... tivities, 32.4% of them only identified and described the educational experience activities. All 
of them have analyzed the effectiveness of observing experience activities and answered “what 
should we do to improve experiential activities in high school effectively?” Through reality 
research, 83.8% of students have felt more motivated to organize experiential activities in their 
Nguyen Thi Ngoc Phuc and Ho Thi Thu Ho 
82 
career. Students said that «learning through experience helped to change the atmosphere of the 
classroom, developed many student’ qualities and competencies”. 
In activity 2 and 3, the instructors’ evaluation showed that the components of ETC have 
improved significantly with sig <0.05 (Table 2). The development of ETC components were 
measured with 95% reliability and Cronbach's Alpha was 0.861. All students also self-assessed 
that they improved their ETC with comparative resembalance result. 
Table 2. T-Test in pairs result of instructor assessment on the development 
of ETC for geography pre-service teachers at CTU 
Components of ETC 
Evaluation 
result before 
Evaluation 
result after 
Level of 
significance 
 (2 tailed) 
Knowledge 2.21 3.57 .000 
Design experience activities 2.92 3.78 .000 
Organize experience activities 2.85 3.78 .000 
Evaluate experience activities 2.57 3.36 .000 
Reflection and adjustment orientation 2.85 3.36 .003 
Source: results of interviewing lecturers 2017-2019 
(average of 14 students, 5 levels of scale: (1) Basic; (2) Imitate; 
(3) Apply; (4) Advance (performing proficiency) and (5) Expert) 
The table showed that student researchers increased positively about the knowlege of EE 
theory and it’ applying in geography. Designing experience activities and organizing experience 
activities had also changed significantly with more than 60% students had gotten performing 
proficiency level. Student’ capacity of evaluating experience activities, reflection and 
adjustment orientation had had lower average changing, with more than 40% students had 
developed). The majority of self-assessment students after joining to science research achieved 
at levels between 3 and 4 on the scale. 
2.5. Discussion 
2.5.1. Participation in scientific research has helped geography pedagogy students develop 
their ETC 
Evaluated results of instructors and self-assessment results of students showed the 
development of students' ETC through specific practical actions. First, students have identified 
the forms and methods of organizing experiential activities and analyzed its role in teaching 
process, specifically for geography. Next, students could design clear, feasible experiential 
activities with many different content, by a lot of methods which could be implemented. 
Example, puplis were role-played servicers and pointed out “what are elements of the market 
and its rule?” (T.T.H.L – 4th year student, lesson about “Trade geography”) or a group of 03 
students implemented the experimental activity to be named «To learn about environmental 
change in Phong Dien district, Can Tho city” for about 30 pupils at Phan Van Tri high school 
successfully. Pupils had been divided in 4 groups to study about environmental change at their 
local, made a video or brochure and presented before the class. There were fourteen students 
finished their bachelor theses expressed indeep understanding about EE theory and result in 
applying. Almost experiential activities that these students organized were quite successful and 
appreciated with high school object. In addition, there were a lot evidents of good experiece in 
assessment from these students. They could designed many situation questions, duties conect 
Development of experiential teaching competence through science research for Geography... 
83 
with the real world, studier’ concrete experiences and assessment tools appropriately. For 
example, after studied and presented the poster about the benefits and drawbacks of transport 
means individually (train, car and river...) in the lesson “Some kind of transport means”, all 
students were given in a situation that “Role-play a transportation advicer and give suitable 
advices for the customers in some different cases”. Finally, students learned through experience, 
reflected strengths and weeknesses about themself and their friends in organized experiential 
activities. Besides that, student studiers organized, managed, instructed, solved almost research 
situations. They serveyed, interviewed, observated and made a ecademic report. It helped them 
improve guiding research skills – a good experiential activity for almost pupils. It easily to see 
that, through scientific research, student’ ETC has been growed up with a little support from 
their instructors. 
2.5.2. The result of developing ETC through scientific research aren’t steady, it’s 
depending on many factors 
Participating in scientific research, but the level of development of student’ ETC is not the 
same. Students develop well in knowledge (100%), organizational skills (78.6%). Students' 
planning skills are becoming more and more complete, however, the ability to create ideas in 
teaching experience plan is still limit (only about 30% all of students). In other words, students 
could implement well the proposed plan but the ability to create new ideas has been limited. 
After each activity, students have almost realized whats are imperfect. The problem is that 
ability to transfer these experiences, some students are still weak. Example, among 9 students 
who participating in scientific research in 2018-2019 about organizing experience teaching in 
geography, 05 students developed proficient organizational skills (level 4) and 2 students had 
ability to organize and orient in the research team, to act as a young expert for colleagues (level 
5), others could apply the theory with some mistake. All 9 students developed research 
motivation but only 03 students had new applying ideas during the research process. 
The result in developing students' ETC were different becausse of some reasons. Firstly, 
experienced time were limit in a few month (students only had few week for 2 months for 
practice). Secondly, degree of experience (students who have experienced many times will be 
able to develop their skills better). «Thanks to previous projects, it helped me to learn from 
experience better” – Trinh, a fourth year student, who had supported a research project before 
studied her thesis shared. Thirdly, the result involved in the beginning point of a students – all 
individual competences which supported for them in the research process (with the same lesson 
plan but every student express their competence diffirently). 
2.5.3. Development ETC for geography pre-service teacher through scientific research had 
some difficulties 
Interviewing the lecturer and student researchers show that the development of ETC 
through scientific research had some difficulties. The first, students afraided to carry out 
research projects on teaching method field. According to many student researchers, these 
research project is more difficult and strenuous because they had to experiment with a lot steps 
or teachers and students in high schools sometime don’t cooperate. The second, student’ 
participating promotion in scientific research is restricted. Many students chose alternative 
modules in stead of make a bachelor thesis. Despite many announcements and encouragement 
from the university and department, the number of research students is very low. The third, 
basic capacity of students isn’t strong enough. «The lack of students' skills, especially self-
searching skills has been affecting on output qualitiy research” - a lecture said. The final 
difficulty for lecturers and students was the finance for scientific research is limited. In some 
studies, students must spended too much their own money to purchase equipment, 
remuneration, gifts.... 
Nguyen Thi Ngoc Phuc and Ho Thi Thu Ho 
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2.5.4. Developing the student capacity of teaching experience through scientific research 
should be maintained, pervaded and inherited 
Developing ETC for future geography teachers through scientific research is an effective 
measure that needs to be maintained in the future. However, in order to develop ETC through 
scientific research effectively, the training program need to spread and enhance inheritance. 
Firstly, it is necessary to spread the spirit and research results to students. Usually, only students 
who participated in research had just developed their competencies clearly. The author must be 
organized to report their research results in front of the group or publish them in the scientific 
journals. A very small percentage of research results was published at the present. Secondly, 
research projects should be inherited. Students must understand previous studies and continue to 
add new approaches and results to avoid duplication, waste of time. In, addition, the group of 
authors could introduce their lesson model which were experimented successfully for many 
other geography teachers and schools. 
3. Conclusions 
With the achieved results, it could be affirmed that the scientific research direction is 
appropriates and needs to helped geography pedagogy students develop ETC. Through the 
above-mentioned scientific research activities, students not only develop ETC but also improve 
the qualities and other professional competencies (career development, organizing environment 
development, self-study, communication and cooperation,...). In order to enhance number of 
participating students, quality and effectiveness of developing ETC through scientific research, 
it is necessary to pay attention to create motivation from the university, department and each 
lecturer and student. In particular, we should continue to integrate theory of EE in the necessary 
modules; improve teaching skills and scientific research skills for students and researchers; 
taking measures to foster and encourage lecturers and students. Developing experiential 
teaching capacity through scientific research is an effective model that needs to be utilized, 
maintained and developed. 
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