The Impact of Employing Journal Writing on Enhancing the Jordanian Student Teachers' Attitudes Towards Journal Writing

Abstract

This study aimed to investigate the impact of employing journal writing on improving the attitudes of the students of the Faculty of Educational Sciences and Arts\ UNRWA (FESA) towards using that method. Moreover, and how it is affected by student’ gender and study level.This study was carried out during the second semester of the academic year 2015/2016. The population of the study consisted of all the students of the faculty of Educational Sciences and Arts/UNRWA (FESA). On the other hand, the sample of the study was purposively selected and included all the students studying the Natural Sciences and the Methods of Teaching Social Science courses. Moreover, the total number of the sample was 98 male and female students. For the purpose of achieving the goals of the study, the scale of the attitudes towards journal writing was used. It is worth mentioning that the scale was adopted from Ambusaidi (2014) and consisted of 29 items. To ensure the validity of that scale, a group of experts in the field of education were requested to determine its content validity. In addition, Cronbach's Alpha measurement was utilized to assess its reliability. Furthermore, a focus group discussion that included 7 student teachers (intern teachers) was employed in order to collect data about the student teachers' point of views towards journal writing. Moreover, the quasi-experimental method and the one group pretest -posttest design were used in this study. Finally, SPSS software was adopted to analyze the data adequately.Comparing the performance of the students involved in this study  at the pre and post scales of the attitudes towards journal writing showed that there are differences of statistical significance at (0.05) level. This indicates that utilizing journal writing is effective in improving the students' attitudes towards it. Moreover, the results proved that there was no link between journal writing and the two variables, gender and the study level of the students. As a result, using journal writing is effective in improving the attitudes towards it in terms of both sexes and at all study levels. Furthermore, the students highlighted various advantages of journal writing and pointed out to some of the difficulties that faced them as they began to write journals. In this regard, the students denoted that they encountered a difficulty in writing the part concerned with reflection because they are unfamiliar with that method. Finally, the students stated some suggestions that may develop utilizing journal writing in the future.

Keywords: journal writing, FESA, attitudes towards journal writing.