Facebook Messenger as an Educational Platform to Scaffold Deaf Students’ Conceptual Understanding in Environmental Science Subject: A Single Group Quasi-Experimental Study

Abstract

The advent of technology proliferates the evolution of social media that creates a massive breakthrough in different aspects of life, especially in education. Teachers play a crucial role as they adapt to the new era of an educational system where students with special needs are mainstreamed in the regular learning environment. Student’s success in learning is attributed to teachers' effective techniques, methods, and approaches to deliver quality and meaningful learning to diverse students regardless of religion, ethnic groups, race, culture, and disabilities. This context inspired the author to investigate the effectiveness of Facebook Messenger as an educational platform in teaching to scaffold deaf students’ conceptual understanding in environmental science subject through a quasi-experiment to a single group composed of four (N=4) deaf college students in one selected State College of the Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in Northern Negros Philippines. The findings revealed that deaf students had a very low conceptual understanding of the subject in the pre-test, however, manifested very high after the intervention (post-test). Moreover, results show that there was no significant difference in the level of the participants’ conceptual understanding between and among gender groups, however, the difference was significant in the pre-test and post-test gained scores. Furthermore, Facebook Messenger has been proven effective and thereby recommended to maximize its potential as an educational tool in teaching to scaffold deaf students’ conceptual understanding of science fields and other disciplines.