Understanding message framing for online teachers’ professional development: educational affordances of dyslexia awareness in Malaysia

Abstract

Despite the efforts to prepare Malaysian teachers to support students with learning difficulties, little empirical knowledge exists that can be used to guide the provision of effective online Teacher Professional Development [oTPD] on dyslexia. The review of the literature on the studies of framing suggest that analysis of framing effect could facilitate a researcher to achieve a better understanding of an effective Teacher Professional Development. This study of teachers’ responses to training materials aims to understand how dyslexia awareness messages are framed in online resources to trigger Malaysian primary school teachers to inquire more information about dyslexia conception and dyslexia supports. This understanding was achieved by analysing the triggering events as the framing effects and how the frames and the framing of the messages contribute towards the identified triggering events. The study is divided into two main phases that are carried out sequentially: the pre-message framing phase [to identify the participants’ knowledge gap] and the message framing phase [to understand how the messages are framed to trigger the participants to inquire of more information about dyslexia]. The pre-message framing phase aims to answer the first research question [what is the level of dyslexia awareness among Malaysian primary school teachers?]; while the message framing phase aims to answer the second research question [which message/messages triggered the teachers’ awareness and learning about dyslexia?] and the third research question [how are the messages framed to trigger the participants’ awareness and learning inquiry?]. The main phase of the study is the message framing phase. However, the findings from the pre-message framing phase is vital to inform the selection of the artefacts to be utilised in the study of the framing effects [which addressed the second research question] and the message frames [which addressed the third research question]. The data for this study were collected from fifteen participants via WhatsApp instant messaging interviews and were analysed using a hybrid approach of inductive and deductive thematic analysis. The findings revealed that the participants’ lack of dyslexia awareness is due to a rote conceptual understanding of dyslexia. However, since the participants’ current background knowledge on dyslexia conception is not fully established, the new knowledge on dyslexia conception [highlighting neurodiversity theory] was introduced. The findings show that the all three artefacts contain messages that trigger the participants’ learning inquiry about dyslexia especially on identification. Messages that were framed using relevant situations, attributes, choices, actions, issues, responsibility and news with the help of audio and visual representations ii triggered the participants’ learning inquiry about dyslexia. The research concludes that utilising emotional and meaningful teacher-students’ situation as framing of the messages appears to be the most significant message framing element.

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