Applying blogs for pre-service teachers in science education: From one's epistemology towards a pragmatic approach in collaborative and ubiquitous learning

The purpose of this study is to explore the existing practice of a group of pre-service teachers majoring science education structured their learning. It also looks at the impacts of the introduction of Weblog (or blog) for one's knowledge construction. Particularly, the teachers' learning attitude, the methods of inquiry and perception of applying Web 2.0 tools in science education have also been evaluated. A questionnaire was given to the teachers at the beginning of the research which was aimed at investigating their approaches in knowledge building in the context of science education and how they were making sense with those concepts in terms of teacher education. Basic training of blog features has been also given and practised before the teachers creating and using one's own blog for knowledge building. Throughout the period of our study, technical support and literatures related to blog practice in science education have been provided and discussed regularly with the participants. The concepts of personal learning environment (PLE) have been introduced to the participants. Participants' development on their PLE, the perception changes and the approaches on transferring one’s own PLE into their teaching repositories were also reported. At the end of the research, all participants have been invited in the focus group interviews for an overall discussion on the impacts of one's epistemology, feasibility and level of application in collaborative learning by connecting one's own blog to the other science teachers' blogs. In the final stage, ubiquitous computing (or ubicomp) has been discussed for the participants with the pragmatic information and communication technologies (ICT) in order to sustain the inquiry nature and learning in science education.