TEACHERS’ BELIEFS AND PRACTICES IN DEPLOYING INSTRUCTIONAL MEDIA TO ACTIVATE STUDENTS’ BACKGROUND KNOWLEDGE IN READING ACTIVITY

Abstract

Students’ background knowledge is believed to be able to facilitate text comprehension because it acts as a mental hook for the lodging of new information and as the basic building block of content and skill knowledge. One of the strategies to activate the background knowledge is the use of instructional media. This research explored teachers’ beliefs and practices in deploying instructional media to activate students’ background knowledge in reading activity. It focused primarily upon the types of the instructional media teachers deployed in the teaching of reading and the enactment of using those media to activate students’ background knowledge. To investigate these issues, document analysis, in-depth interviews, participant classroom observation, and focus group discussion were used as data collection methods in this explorative case study. Five English teachers participated in this study. The research finding shows that the teachers made use of visual media (pictures) and digital media (YouTube). Those media were used in the beginning phase of teaching (the first 10 to 15 minutes). The procedures conducted were referring to the first two steps of scientific approach, namely: observing and questioning that functioned as a warmer activity. The implementation of media in teaching reading is, in fact, not only for warming up activity, but for activating background knowledge to enhance students’ text comprehension. It is, therefore, recommended that the teachers understand concept of instructional media for activating students’ background knowledge in reading activity.