The Effectiveness of Scaffolding Design in Training Writing Skills Physics Teaching Materials

Result of field studies showed low writing skill of teachers in teaching material.
The root of the problem lies in their inability on translating description of teaching
material into writing. This research focused on the effectiveness of scaffolding
design. The scaffolding design was tested in the selected topics of physics courses
for pre-service teachers through learning to write activity approach. The treatment
effectiveness was determined by considering the effect size and normalized gain
percentage, while the hypothesis was tested using “the Kruskal-Wallis test”. The
research results showed that scaffolding between the stages of planning and
translating plans into text was effective in improving pre-service physics teachers’
ability of writing physics teaching materials and was similarly effective in
improving their conceptual understanding of the topics of electromagnetism,
waves, and optics. Learning to write activity implemented in the course of physics
with selected topics was effective in improving the ability of pre-service teachers
in translating among different modes of representation and making multiple
concept representations. The hypothesis test demonstrated that there was a
significant difference in the abilities of writing teaching materials and conceptual
understanding between experimental and control classes.