Philippine E-Journals

Effects of Educational News Stories on the Beliefs of Taiwanese Teacher Education Students

Shih-hsiung Liu

Discipline: Education

 

Abstract:

Educational news stories are likely to provide teacher education students with opportunities to understand the educational situation in the real world. However, in the case of Taiwan, most of local newspapers present negative coverage that may induce teacher education students to generate pessimistic opinions and further negatively affect the formation of their beliefs regarding the nature of education. This study determines the effects of reading educational news stories by teacher education students on their beliefs regarding education after controlling for factors like pre-existing beliefs and perceptions of news story credibility. An experimental research method with a two-group pretest-posttest design, consisting of positive and negative newsgroups, is applied. Sixteen news stories, in print and video, were selected and assessed as positive/negative materials. News credibility scale and teacher education student belief questionnaires were the main research measurements. Eighty participants were randomly assigned to one of two groups. Analytical results reveal the negative effects of negative educational news stories on teacher education students’ beliefs regarding education. This study concludes that reading positive news stories did not significantly strengthen the beliefs of teacher education students, while negative news significantly worsened the beliefs of Taiwanese teacher education students regarding education.