Enabling a science teacher to teach online

Professional Development of teachers is given great importance in academia as it is considered as a continuous process to enhance the knowledge, understanding, and skills of a teacher. At the same time, technological advancement has dramatically transformed our lives by penetrating almost all areas of human life including education. The emerging technologies are used as a catalyst by different parts of the world to improve their education system in the times of Covid-19 outbreak. Thus, there is an urgent need to explore the integration of technology in teaching online. This study is an attempt to enable a science teacher to teach online using technology. The study employed an action research based on a qualitative research design with a science teacher of grade VIII in a private O level school of Karachi. Data collection in this study occurred in three stages i.e. reconnaissance phase, intervention phase and the post-intervention phase. At the reconnaissance phase, semi-structured interviews and document analysis were conducted to explore the existing perceptions of a teacher towards the use of technology in science teaching and learning. During the Intervention phase, various strategies were used to provide the opportunity to the participant to explore both synchronous and asynchronous approaches to teach science online. The post-intervention phase aimed to explore how online teaching helped a science teacher to improve education practices and also the challenges and possibilities of teaching science online. Data triangulation was carried out using software NVivo 12 in which documents were uploaded to offer easy and organized retrieval of data for analysis. The study findings revealed valuable insights from the teacher’s perspective on the role of technology in improving science teaching. Findings of this study are presented as: 1) perceptions facilitate a teacher’s new role in the digital world and 2) diverse roles of a teacher educator lead to success. This study provides evidence for researchers and education professionals to integrate technologies in the existing curriculum of science education to improve the quality of online science teaching and learning process