Keywords

1 Background

School teachers require the knowledge, skills and attitudes for innovative learning design and implementation that both enable and model school students’ knowledge, skills and attitudes for study and work in the twenty-first Century. Instructional designs need to create student-centred, contemporary learning environments in which teachers are developing skills to nurture school students to actively learn, so that students are able to excel in their future career. In such Science teaching contexts, these skills may be thought of as parallel to the dynamic processes involved in research thinking.

A variety of Social media platforms are potentially effective for integration with learning activities that facilitate the development of research thinking, including Google docs, Twiki, Twitter, Wiki, Social Networking Sites (SNS), Scholar Messaging, Instagram, and Blogs. Therefore, social media integration in learning activities has been promoted for its active student engagement resulting in improved learning outcomes around research thinking (Brescia & Miller, 2006). For example, previous research on the use of social media in learning, found Blogs to be effective reflective devices (Brescia & Miller, 2006; Ferdig & Trammell, 2004), social networking sites were found to improve cognitive skills (Akbari et al., 2015), Interpersonal applications and sites enhanced problem solving skills (Zainuddin et al., 2017), and the use of forums enhanced communication skills (Liu et al., 2013). The learning theories that contribute to our understanding of research thinking developed though social media and the relevance of collective learning to social media use in education are explained below.

1.1 Basic Learning Theory on Social Media

There are five particularly salient theories that provide a deep understanding of the interconnected digital learning elements involved in social media-based learning. The first theory is Social constructivist theory (Vygotsky, 1978), which emphasises knowledge acquisition through social interaction and experience. Vygotsky also introduced the term ‘learning zone’, which consists of the zone of actual development and zone of proximal development, where the two zones are connected by social interaction and experience (Vygotsky, 1978). From this theoretical perspective, diverse educational and developmental background of individual students could be effectively brought together for mutually-informed learning by technology-based online platforms.

Second, social cognitive theory suggests an association between learning elements. Social cognitive theory (Bandura, 1986) posits that knowledge acquisition happens through modelling and observing processes. Within these two processes, three learning elements, human, environment and behaviour, need to be associated with each other (Bandura, 1986). The association may be potentially more effective when facilitated with technology.

Third, social connectivism theory proposes six characteristics of knowledge including knowledge that: (i) requires multiple opinions, (ii) requires relationship between information, (iii) may be stored by computers, (iv) requires connection, (v) should be up to date, (vi) is used for decision making (Siemens, 2005). From this standpoint, social media might be essential due to its features in harmonizing individuals’ diverse personal knowledge. This perspective associates with the features provided by social media, such as user-generated content, content sharing, and community formation.

Fourth, multimedia learning cognitive theory that elaborates on the knowledge acquisition process. Multimedia learning cognitive theory (Mayer, 2005) explains how knowledge could be considered more interesting if delivered through social media, visualization and text, which is then processed through the sensory system, working memory or long-term memory.

Fifth, social interaction theory, which is divided into social information process theory, situated learning theory and collaborative learning theory supported by computers. Social information process theory (Walther, 1992, 1996; Walther & Burgoon, 1992) emphasizes the mandatory existence of concrete communication from educators, when the delivered communication to the students is considered to be insufficient.

In addition, situated learning theory (Lave & Wenger, 1991) recommends social interaction in the learning process which is later able to be used in communities, as a massive support for the knowledge acquisition process. Social interaction (Koschmann, 1996) also encompasses collaborative learning theory which emphasizes the collaboration element in learning without limitation of space and time.

In this research all the above theories provide a consistent message emphasising social environment in the context of self-directed social media-based learning. Taken together, the overarching emphasis of all these theories is a student self-directed-but-social dynamic, best developed in interactive, highly engaged learning contexts. Applying that emphasis to this current study, research thinking is best developed in highly interactive, collective learning. This study’s use of social media in the science education context platforms both require and enable Preservice Teacher (PST) research thinking.

1.2 Collective Learning and Social Media

Despite the above theoretical advantages, group learning with collaboration often encounters challenges related to the amount of time required for activities. Building on and consolidating the above theories, Collective Learning is the idea that learning within a group is the most effective and efficient form of learning (Agarwal, 2011). Collective Learning is a learning-based instruction model where students are empowered to explore, experience, and teach themselves new technologies independently (Agarwal, 2011).

Features of social media that support meaningful learning include ease of use and access, permanent, global, instant communication, and simplicity of use (Agarwal, 2011). Boyd (2007) stated that social media-based learning is easy to implement due to the fact that it is so close to the existing use of social media and all its features in daily student life. Social media-based learning could answer the challenges of collective learning, which prioritises collaboration, yet otherwise may encounter difficulties due to the time-consuming nature of collaborative activities. Therefore, social media-based instructional design models have the potential to support curriculum implementation by providing dynamic learning environments (Finlayson et al., 2009). Social media-based learning may build student learning motivation through the involvement of educational stakeholders, including the students, in designing the model.

2 Context

In order to understand how Social media-based learning can be used to develop research skills, it is important to first appreciate the context for this study, initial teacher education in Indonesia during COVID-19 lockdown. The need for a social media approach and the use of the Research Skill Development (RSD) framework in the unit are explained next.

2.1 The Need for Social Media-Based Instructional Design

Learning activities have been evolving into more autonomous forms along with the existence of alternative learning systems. Chu (2020) categorized learning as formal learning (Chu, 2014), informal learning related to daily life (Halliday-Wynes & Beddie, 2019) and mobile learning (Wong & Looi, 2011). Ideally, the three types of learning are integrated in the curriculum. Social media-based learning is in the category of mobile learning. Mobile learning is a self-directed learning (Kukulska-Hulme & Viberg, 2018), using personal gadgets (Chan et al., 2006), and is conducted in an environment that is similar to a social environment, which has the potential to make the learning more meaningful for students.

Social media integration in learning has been explored by researchers in the field of education. Research by Nielsen (2018) suggests that students aged over 18 years old spend more than 45 min per day on social media. Chu (2020) found that the social media sites most effective for learning were: Google docs, Twiki, Twitter, Wiki, Social Networking Sites (SNS), Scholar Messaging, Instagram, and Blogs. The use of social media in learning has been considered to be able to improve collaboration skills, interaction, academic performance, learning effectivity, support, knowledge management and reflection (Akbari et al., 2015; Brescia & Miller, 2006; Ferdig & Trammell, 2004; Liu et al., 2013; Zainuddin et al., 2017), where these skills are akin to the skills associated with research (Willison & O’Regan, 2007) and required by teachers when they are both immediately and strategically responsive.

The existing research on social media integration in learning does not necessarily provide Educators with the guidance that they need such as learning designer principles for social media-based learning. Moreover, there is minimal research on social media-based design models for the higher education context (Mataniari et al., 2020). In order to address the need for social media-based instructional design models, this study probed the integration of social media in a Plant Taxonomy class for PSTs, aiming to nurture their research skills for their future teaching. The RSD framework was used by the Teacher Educators (TE) to inform the design of the social media-based Plant Taxonomy course. The implementation of this action research was expected to give PSTs insight on creating their own social media-based learning for their future careers. Furthermore, the research would address the gap above, by providing deep insights into one social media-based learning design model for the higher education context.

2.2 Current Study: The Facilitation of Preservice Teachers’ Research Thinking

In this study of undergraduate PSTs in their second year of initial teacher education, the Research Skill Development (RSD) framework was integrated with social media-based learning in order to guide PSTs into activities that richly elicited research skills to frame assessment and feedback. Previously, the RSD framework has shown its effectiveness in improving PSTs’ research skill when implemented in social media-based learning using blogs (Mataniari, 2017; Mataniari et al., 2020). Mataniari (2017) and Mataniari et al. (2020) found that PSTs’ critical thinking skills through RSD-integrated lab report indicated improvement through blog-based writing activities, where PSTs’ research skills evolved when they were guided by RSD framework. Thus, in this research, the RSD framework was applied within social media-based learning. In this project, we determined to see how a focus on each of the RSD framework facets (see Chap. 1 in this book) helped to develop and improve biology education PST research skills in the context of a plant taxonomy course in which Instagram was used as the social media platform. Instagram was chosen as the social media used in this study due to its popularity among Educators (Carpenter et al., 2020) and its compatible features for Biology learning, since the platform focuses more on photos, videos, interactions and responses compared to other social media platforms (Douglas et al., 2019).

Due to the aim of the study in nurturing PSTs’ research skills, research-based learning was enacted by providing the PSTs with research on Plant Taxonomy as their major learning source. One piece of research that was given to the PSTs at the beginning of the course was a study by Rembold et al. (2017) that identified plants found in the Jambi province of Indonesia, in which this study was set.

The role of the six RSD facets in structuring the course to help PSTs’ research skill improvement is shown in Fig. 6.1. In the figure, the blue rectangles describe Instagram-based Plant Taxonomy activities and the black circles show the RSD facets involved in every activity.

Fig. 6.1
An 8-step illustration of plant taxonomy activities. It includes the educator giving instructions to the P S Ts of the activities they are about to do, giving research results as the main learning source, and P S Ts identifying plants found in their communities. These involve R S D facets a and b.

Plant Taxonomy activities with the RSD facets involved: a Embark & Clarify (Purposive Thinking); b Find & Generate (Informed Thinking); c Evaluate & Reflect (Astute Thinking); d Organise & Manage (Harmonising Thinking); e Analyse & Synthesise (Insightful Thinking); f Communicate & Apply (Externalised Thinking)

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There are eight main activities that the PSTs are required to do within the one semester Plant Taxonomy course as shown in Fig. 6.1: (1) Initiate activities according to the instruction given by the Educator regarding the social media-based activities they are going to do in Plant Taxonomy course, (2) Comprehend the main sources for the social media-based Plant Taxonomy activities, (3) Identify plants found in their communities, (4) Post the findings on Instagram and write captions on the plants found, (5) Compare and contrast plants found in the local communities to colleagues’ and learning sources using Instagram’s hashtag features, (6) Analyse plants found in their communities and synthesise their opinion, (7) Post the analysis and opinion on Instagram through Instagram’s caption, (8) Comment on colleagues’ posts and answer colleagues’ posts in the Instagram’s comment section. The eight activities were designed using the RSD framework to nurture PSTs’ research skills and assessed using RSD rubric as shown in Table 6.1.

Table 6.1 RSD rubric as the guidelines for PSTs in creating Instagram posts
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The first author had been involved in Plant Taxonomy curriculum design before the implementation of this research and was the instructional designer of this social media-based learning unit. A discussion with the coordinators of the course regarding an innovation needed for PSTs in order to achieve a better academic performance and skills in the course instigated the research. The participants in this study were 64 undergraduate PSTs enrolled in a Plant Taxonomy class, in the Faculty of Education at Jambi University, Indonesia.

During the course, the RSD framework was introduced to the PSTs and integrated into the curriculum in order to nurture PSTs’ research skills. This research focused in the preparation of future in-service Teachers, thus 64 PSTs participated in this study, they were involved in social media-based learning activity and expected to gain insight on creating their own social media-based learning for their future careers. PSTs’ research thinking development through the use of social media was analysed in this research.

By the end of the course, the PSTs involved in the Plant Taxonomy course were expected to critically compare and contrast the plants they found in their community to relevant research on plant identification (Rembold et al., 2017). PSTs also identified the development of their research skills through the learning activities in the course integrated by the RSD framework, with the six facets of RSD set to be the indicators of PSTs’ research skills development.

3 Methodology

The study was based on an action research approach with an aim to explore the facilitation of PSTs’ research thinking through the use of social media while studying in a Plant Taxonomy course with the RSD-integrated curriculum. There were five underlying ideas on the action research use in this project. The five reasons are relevant with the purposes of action research as addressed by Norton (2009). First, as a training for the TEs to systematically analyse their own practice. Second, as an aid to reflective process which leads action. Third, as a method of enhancing PSTs learning experience. Fourth, as a method of improving the quality of teaching and learning in universities. Fifth, as a process which can bridge the theory–practice gap in university learning and teaching.

The action research employed five steps, in keeping with Norton (2009): (1) identifying the issue, (2) thinking ways to tackle it, (3) doing it, (4) evaluating it and (5) modifying future practice. In the first step, educator identified the need to explore the facilitation of PSTs’ research thinking through the use of social media for designing their future lessons. In the second step, an implementation was designed to facilitate PSTs’ research thinking through the use of social media in Plant Taxonomy course. The third step was when the implementation conducted as elaborated in Fig. 6.1. The fourth step was then carried out through a questionnaire about PST perceptions of social-media implementation and their own social media performance in the Plant Taxonomy Instagram posts. Lastly, the fifth step addressed future practice of social media-based learning, highlighting the need of social media-based instructional design model to facilitate PSTs’ research skills, so that in the future they could use the model for their own future teaching. In this action research process, the TEs modelled to the PSTs ways to be both immediately and strategically responsive.

3.1 Data Generation

Data sources were PSTs’ responses to a questionnaire capturing PSTs’ perceptions after one semester implementation and PSTs’ social media posts within the Plant Taxonomy social media-based learning through their Plant Taxonomy Instagram posts.

3.1.1 Questionnaire

Research participants were given time by the Secretary of Science Department in the final course session to answer the online questionnaire. The questionnaire was fronted by a participant information sheet indicating that participation was voluntary, and that the completion of 14 Likert scale questions indicated PSTs’ agreement to participate. The questionnaires were anonymous and captured the PSTs’ perceptions of the use of social media for their research skill development (see Table 6.2) In terms of data security, only the researcher had access to the data. The data was de-identified so that PST’s individual information would not be identifiable. All the 64 PSTs enrolled in the course agreed to participate in both surveys and Instagram-based activities.

Table 6.2 PST self-perception questionnaire responses (N = 64)
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Questionnaire results and PSTs’ social media performances were examined. The questionnaire’s seven-point Likert scale questions provided data about PSTs attitudes towards the use of the social media-based learning during one semester implementation. On the seven scales used, ‘7’ means ‘strongly agree’, ‘4’ is neutral and ‘1’ means ‘strongly disagree’. The Likert’s scale items in the questionnaire were written specifically to highlight the six RSD facets.

3.1.2 Social Media Performance

In addition to the data collection process, PSTs’ social media performances within one semester of the social media-based learning implementation were determined through their Plant Taxonomy Instagram post. Table 6.1 shows the RSD rubric as the guidelines for PSTs in creating Instagram posts, purposed to reflect the objectives and goals of the Plant Taxonomy course. The rubric reflecting six RSD facets was adapted from www.rsd.edu.au and validated through Focus Group Discussion conducted with three experts in the field of biology education. The PSTs’ Plant Taxonomy Instagram posts were the final project of the course, marked by the educator using the rubric to assess PSTs’ social media performance.

3.2 Data Analysis

Descriptive statistics (mean, standard deviation and broad agreement) were implemented to analyse the PSTs’ questionnaires. The data from the social media performance were categorised into the three levels of the RSD rubric And analysed from the perspective of each of the six RSD facets to reveal evidence of student research skills employed.

4 Results

The PST self-perception questionnaire showed that Instagram-based activities (Questions 3–14) contributed positively as the students perceived that their specific research skills (Items 3–10) were stronger than their more general research skills (Items 1 and 2), and the former ‘s mean scores varied from the lowest 5.25 (Communicate orally) to the highest 6.28, as shown in Table 6.2.

Figure 6.2 shows a summary of PSTs’ Plant Taxonomy Instagram post performance according to the educator who marked against the RSD rubric level (see Table 6.1) for each RSD facet. As can be seen from Fig. 6.2, most of the PSTs achieved the highest level of research skills (Level 3) as a result of one-semester Plant Taxonomy activities as detailed in Fig. 6.1. In other words, according to the assessment of the student products, the Instagram-based learning successfully enhanced PSTs’ Plant Taxonomy research skill.

Fig. 6.2
A bar graph of the plant taxonomy Instagram post performance by 6 R S D facets. Analyze and synthesize, evaluate and reflect and communicate and apply, and organize and manage have level 2 with decreasing order of values. Embark and clarify, and, find and generate have level 3.

A summary of PSTs’ plant taxonomy Instagram post performance according to the RSD rubric level for each RSD facet (N = 64)

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4.1 Results for Each Facet

The data sets of student perceptions of their research skills as determined in the Likert scale questionnaire and the faculty assessment of students’ research skills are one-dimensional when analysed separately from each other, but the extent to which the data sets corroborate provides more holistic insights into the educative process.

In order to develop PST research thinking for teaching, the use of Instagram for Plant Biology broadly was perceived by the PSTs to have enhanced, in varying degrees, their skills. Corroborating their impression, the Assessor determined that facet by facet a substantial majority of PSTs achieved at level 3 (high autonomy) and the rest attained at least level 2.

4.1.1 Embark & Clarify

PSTs were aware of the course’s relevance for them as future In-service Biology Teachers to guide their future high school students to notice plants found in their communities and also in Jambi province. The TE of the course emphasized the significance of the course in the introduction meeting in order to build their interest, and at the same time handing the PSTs research-based learning sources on plant identification conducted in their communities.. This is reflected in Table 6.2 which shows that 100% of students were assessed as operating at the highest level of autonomy in the embark and clarify facet. Accordingly 86% of PSTs (Mean 5.6) agreed the activities in the course had helped them to comprehend learning purpose and skills they would be able to nurture.

4.1.2 Find & Generate

PSTs found and generated the Instagram contents that they posted using Instagram’s hashtag feature, which enabled them both to find and to be found by other content creators interested in Plant Taxonomy field. The activity had been proven as effective to improve PSTs’ skills on Find & Generate facet of RSD. All of the PSTs were marked in Fig. 6.2 as operating at the highest level of autonomy on their Find & Generate skills during the course. As shown in Table 6.2, even more (88%) PSTs agreed than for embark and clarify that the activity had helped them to gather information (Mean 6.0) and generate alternative ideas (Mean 5.7) on Plant Taxonomy.

4.1.3 Evaluate & Reflect

Instagram posts needed student captions in order to give context for each post. PSTs’ activity, when writing the Instagram explanatory caption about the plants found in their community, was a form of reflective practice. PSTs indicated their confidence in their Evaluate & Reflect skills, as seen on their agreement through the survey through Table 6.2 and their performance on the Instagram-based activities during the course as shown in Fig. 6.2. Survey results showed that PSTs gave almost 90% agreement on the use of the activities to have helped them evaluating information and data. Out of 64 PSTs, 48 of them exhibited high level of autonomy during the Instagram-based activity, as assessed by the Assessor, meaning that most of them were able to compare and contrast between the given knowledge on Plant Taxonomy, their personal view and information from other sources within the Instagram posts. Meanwhile, 16 PSTs fell in the Level 2 of RSD rubric due to limited reference used in their Instagram posts while this facet scored the highest Mean (6.2).

4.1.4 Organise & Manage

After the PSTs were given the research-based learning sources, the TE asked them to post on social media a comparison of plants found in their communities and ones found in the published research, which might have supported PSTs’ research skills in organizing and managing. 83% of PSTs agreed that the learning activities helped them to organise and manage research-based learning sources when they learned to convert them into Instagram content. As shown in Table 6.2, more than 4 in 5 of the PSTs perceived that the explicit facilitation of organizing and managing data was successfully achieved as one of the core activities within the course. Crucially, PSTs perceptions corroborate the assessor’s measures that 92% of PSTs performed at level 3 of the RSD rubric: ‘’The Instagram posts’ design is presented in a structured and coherent way, creative and easy to follow by the end of the unit/term”, and the other 8% performed at level 2 skills for the ‘organise/manage’ were enhanced by the courses facilitation of Instagram in plant biology. PSTs perceived their Organise & Manage skills improved (Mean 5.7) and the Assessor determined that most PSTs provided evidence that their skills had indeed substantially improved during the unit.

4.1.5 Analyse & Synthesise

PSTs’ Instagram posts on Plant Taxonomy included an analysis of how the plants in their community were similar or different to their classmates’, then they had to link it to the relevant research on plant taxonomy provided by the TE. It is possible that this explicit requirement was a reason that more than 89% of PSTs agree that it contributed to the development of their research skills in analysing and synthesizing (Mean 5.7). However, the challenging nature activities that required them to analyse information and data might be the reason that 42% of the PSTs fell in the Level 2 of the RSD rubric, while more than half of them effectively analysed and synthesised the results using their own words in keeping with Level 3.

4.1.6 Communicate & Apply

The comment section, as one of Instagram’s features seemed to support the PSTs in nurturing their skills of communicating and applying knowledge, as more than 80% of the PSTs’ agreed that the Instagram-based activities in this course had helped them to communicate in writing what they understand on Plant Taxonomy lab activities. However, less than 75% of them agreed on the use of the activities for their oral communication, with the lowest mean score of 5.2, which might be due to the social media text-based nature of the activities that did not focus on developing oral communication skill. Instead, the Educator made it compulsory for the PSTs to post a comment on each other’s Instagram post. Thus, it may be that the PSTs needed to learn how to academically interact within the Instagram’s comment section. The research showed PSTs engaged in Plant Taxonomy-related discussion within the comment section, this phenomenon is supported by the PSTs’ social media performance that exhibited Level 3 autonomy in terms of the language they used in the posts. Only 16 of the 64 PSTs fell on the Level 2 autonomy for the Communicate & Apply facet of the RSD.

5 Discussion

Research skills have been integrated in the curriculum of Indonesian universities for undergraduate degrees, where the students are obligated to conduct a major research project to attain a Bachelor degree. Thus, there is a need for Indonesian Educators in universities to gradually nurture student research skills throughout their undergraduate degree (Mataniari, 2017). This is especially true in the Faculty of Education, where PSTs are expected to master research skills due to the need for research-based learning to be implemented in their future teaching. Mastering these skills addresses the National Graduate Competency Standard of the Republic of Indonesia in which High School Graduates are required to achieve research skills such as creativity, critical thinking and autonomous learning (Pusat Kurikulum dan Pembelajaran, 2022) and thus become responsive teachers.

In this study, PSTs were expected to discern the use of social media for research skill improvement so that they could implement such technology and use the skills in their future teaching career. As producers of research they simultaneously constructed insights in developing instructional model for social media-based learning, framed by the RSD framework. The implementation of the authors’ action research empowered PSTs to connect theories and practice in developing social media-based learning, with regards to learning environment, learning theory and student context.

The six RSD facets that PSTs engage in correspond with the six aspects of research thinking as shown in Chap. 1, Table 1.2. The clarity of educator explanation in the beginning of the semester regarding the learning intentions for a lesson, purpose and direction might have supported PSTs’ purposive thinking within the course, resulting in PSTs agreement on how they comprehend the learning purpose of the Plant Taxonomy course and skills they would be able to nurture through the learning activities. However, the 14% of students who did not agree or who disagreed that they could independently determine their purpose, and the 12% who likewise disagreed that they could independently find information, despite being assessed at the highest level, warrant further inspection. Some studies indicate that higher performing students can be also more critical of themselves and under-assess their performance (Yan, 2022). For these 2 questions, it is crucial that the assessment from faculty was of high performance.

Student perceptions of evaluation and reflection skill were rated particularly high and yet the assessor placed more students lower in this facet than other facets. The same pattern was observed for analyse and synthesise facet. This discrepancy concurs with research that suggests that poorer performing students may over-assess themselves (Kruger & Dunning, 1999; Yan, 2022). Both of these above finding expose a limitation of the study, in that no observation data was generated to determine, independent of the students or educator, the efficacy of student research skills.

Research-based learning in an online setting has potential to generate meaningful learning due to online features such as image and video collections consist of data that could be used visually. It was expected to attract PSTs’ attention and have roles in the context of learning media (Wisker, 2018). The rich features of Instagram (Carpenter et al., 2020) as one of the most commonly used instructional design strategies (Ahmed, 2020) might have supported the PSTs in using appropriate methodologies in choosing, finding and generating the data used for their Plant Taxonomy Instagram post. The way PSTs could look for other students’ Plant Taxonomy Instagram Posts using the hashtag feature (Carpenter et al., 2020) might have given them insight about plants found in others’ communities.

The concept of student-centred learning requires student participation as partners as the co-constructors of knowledge. Partnership in learning relies upon an environment set by the agreement of students and educational stakeholders in terms of learning priorities, content and direction. Thus, the use of social media in this research supported such partnership, and created freedom (Schon, 1986) through creative construction of research skills without externally imposed boundaries (Willison, 2020) for the PSTs.

PSTs’ activity when writing the Instagram caption, explaining the plants found in their community is a form of reflective practice. Reflective practice requires critical self-reflection and evidence-based research to adapt theory to practice, thus it is an important element in developing research skills (Bandaranaike, 2018). Reflective practise also takes place when PSTs answer questions in their Instagram comment section from their colleagues, connecting their findings with research results given to them in the beginning of the course. Reflective practice capability that the PSTs have been simultaneously developing within the Plant Taxonomy course has contributed to shape their insightful and astute thinking (Schon, 1986; Willison, 2020), as shown in their agreement on how the initiative has helped them in doing data analysis, evaluate and reflect.

5.1 PSTs as the Future Curriculum Designers

Engaging with RSD framework and social media-based learning appears to have given PSTs insight on how to design such curriculum in their future teaching. Addressing the National Graduate Competency Standard of Republic of Indonesia and the advancement of technology in education give challenge to them to create particular technology-based instructional design model that is able to nurture student research skills. Thus, the use of social media and RSD in learning that they have experienced as PSTs would become valuable experience for them, given that the evidence of RSD use and its effectivity in Indonesian context has been developing (Mataniari, 2017, 2021; Mataniari et al., 2020). In the future, they are expected to make use of the experience to design their own curriculum, as a future educator and curriculum designer (Rusdi, 2018).

Whilst the evidence of effectiveness of integrating social media in learning is well known (Chu, 2014), this study also highlight the use of the RSD framework for instructional design centred on social media. The use of RSD in developing instructional design model includes its use in informing curriculum and assessment design, scaffolding student learning (Hazel et al., 2013; Wilkin, 2014), providing rich curriculum conversations and collaborations within educational stakeholders (Torres & Jansen, 2016; Torres et al., 2012) and setting the assignment task and designing a rubric of assessment criteria (McGowan, 2018). By enhancing the PSTs research thinking with social media and the RSD, their capacity to identify and be responsive to school student needs and contemporary demands is potentially raised. Further research is needed to determine the link between developing PST research thinking and their teaching once they are I-STs (See Chap. 2, this book). This study could be a reference for the PSTs for the design of social media-based learning to nurture student research skill in initial teacher education contexts.

6 Conclusion

The facilitation of PSTs’ research thinking through the use of social media has aided their research skill development throughout the one-semester action research implementation. PSTs rated highly both on their perceptions about their research skills after the end of the semester and their social media performance as measured by the educator. This experience of enhanced research thinking shows the potential to enable PSTs to consolidate good teaching practice, as well as identify what may need to change, as they connect their university learning to their future career. The research thinking they develop may be the key for them to shift from PSTs to responsive high school teachers who engage with the many day-to-day and contingent learning needs their students will have in High School.