We are Waiheʻe: Motivating Fourth Grade Teachers to Choose Place-based Tools

Abstract

Fourth grade teachers at Kahaluʻu Elementary School are faced with the feat of determining and implementing instruction that is explicit, relevant, and applicable to their students’ lives in order to increase student achievement. Through a needs assessment, it was determined that place-based learning across content areas might be a strategy to help teachers provide more relevant instruction to students, therefore having a positive impact on their academic achievement. To support teachers who have limited time and energy to plan and prepare for place-based learning, this project designed and evaluated instruction called We are Waiheʻe. This instruction took the form of a web-based toolbox and was designed using Dick and Carey’s Systems Approach Model of instructional design. The project aimed to address the affective domain by motivating teachers to choose from the provided tools in the toolbox to make their instruction more relevant for their students. The project used Krathwohl’s Taxonomy of the Affective Domain, Keller’s ARCS Model, and Mayer's multimedia learning principles to improve its design. A usability study and an asynchronous learning assessment were conducted to evaluate the instruction’s usability and effectiveness. The usability study (n = 5) helped drive revisions before the learning assessment (n = 19) was conducted. Overall, teacher participants perceived the toolbox as satisfying and relevant. However, future work will be needed to find ways to enhance teacher confidence towards implementing place-based tools into their instruction.