Marianne Georgsens presentation from CAL11.

1. Exploring new pedagogies – a
way forward towards practice
based competence building
Marianne Georgsen
& Jacob Davidsen
Aalborg University
Department of
Communication &
Psychology

2. Agenda
• ICT in schools – where are we?
• Competence within ICT-based teaching
– what do teachers need?
• Two empirical studies -findings and
new questions

3. ICT in teaching and learning in
schools – promises and problems
• Political focus on the importance of using ICT
in schools since late 1980’s  ICT can help
develop teaching and learning further
• National evaluation in Denmark shows that ICT
in schools is used in three main ways:
• as a motivator towards pupils (to make learning
”fun”);
• by pupils to produce nice looking products and
presentations;
• but first and foremost to search information on the
internet.

4. Three phases of ICT development in
schools in Denmark
• Phase 1  technology into the school
buildings (hardware and software which is
mostly very general ’office type’-programs,
or very specific software: dictionaries,
maps)
• Phase 2  ICT becomes integrated into
teaching in general, and finds its way out of
IT-rooms, and into the classrooms
• Phase 3  we need to focus on integrating
ICT into the content subjects of the school

5. What we are still missing
• Way of developing teachers’
qualifications within pedagogic ICT-
use
• Ways of relating this comptence
building closer to the teaching
practice,
• and orient it towards actual use of ICT
in classrooms and schools

6. Ways of dealing with
competence building
• Through policy making – as part of policies for ICT
integration into teaching/learning and into schools
• Through formal education – as part of teacher
training in colleges or other institutions (pre
service)
• Through further education – as part of
courses/training programmes offered to in service
teachers
• Through peer to peer-learning and/or workplace
learning – as part of development projects, special
initiatives or ’private’ initiatives by a few teachers

7. Research questions
o The competence development of teachers
involved in the projects – how does
progression from the operational level to
the level of pedagogical planning take
place?
o What are the main resources used by the
teachers in the development process
o In what ways do they learn from their
practical experience and share their
experience and knowledge with each other

8. 4 stages in teachers’ ICT learning
1. Gaining basic ICT skills
2. Conducting ICT-focused lessons
3. Appropriate ICT integration
4. Challenge existing pedagogical
structures (ICT as means for
pedagogical development)
(Schibeci et al. 2008)

9. TPCK (Mishra & Koehler, 2006)

10. Approach in study
• Two different projects were studied
• Project A: 6 weeks project in 7th grade with
mobile technologies; students doing field
work/project work in small groups. 5
teachers, one pedagogical ICT-coordinator,
70 pupils
• Project B: 10 months project in 2nd grade
with interactive screens in the classroom;
pupils work in pairs; technology used across
all subjects. 3 teachers, one ped. ICT-
coordinator, 45 pupils

11. Methods used
PROJECT A PROJECT B
• Observations, video and • Classroom observations
field notes – classroom for 10 months – video
and in the field and field notes
• Interviews with pupils • Interviews with teachers
• Group based and and pupils
indvidual interviews with • Video feedback sessions
teachers with teachers
• Document analysis • Video analysis with ICt-
coordinator
• Teachers blogging
throughout project
period

12. Findings I
• The collaboration with researchers is a
unique way of creating a space for reflection
in everyday practice
• This challenges the common understanding and
practice that training and teaching must take
place in ’labs’ and ’safe’ environments
• The school in this study has a policy for ICT
use and –integration – it is supported by
school management, but formulated and
implemented by the ICT-coordinator
• Challenges our preference for consensus-based,
democratic policy making

13. Findings II
• Teachers have personal preferences and
circumstances which influence their approach
towards the changes involved in taking ICT into use
• Challenges our understanding that those who enter into
development projects, are always positive towards the
changes occuring
• Parents turned out to be a substantial source of
opposition to the changed teaching practices – if
they do not understand (= recognise) these from
their own experience, they get insecure about the
learning outcomes
• This challenges the conception that parents want new
(’modern’) ways of teaching and learning for their children

14. Findings III
• The participating teachers took of in very
different directions
• Anne got into preparing her own teaching
materials for the interactive screens – not
converting existing materials, rather creating
new ones which integrated merged P, T and C
knowledge in new ways
• Following video feedback sessions with
researchers, Clive started reflecting about his
way of interacting with the pupils (from ’zapper’
to ’dweller’)
• Bridget used the technology to conserve her
current teaching practice – turned problems into
virtues (e.g. teacher control)

15. ICT-coordinators as innovators
• Motivate teachers and other to rethink
• Contextualising his/her work to the
experiences of teachers and pupils in
developing ICT-pedagogical designs
• Point out what the potentials in various
technologies are, and how new learning
designs will work in the specific context
• Manage the phases of change
• Take part in the change and development
proces and work together with teachers

16. Conclusions…
• Room for reflection is very important
• This approach will (probably) not work well
in schools with strict curriculum ’control’
• Support from the surrounding environment
is crucial
• colleagues; ICT-coordinator; school
management; parents; and pupils
• Practitioners need to join forces, and work
in teams

17. Future work
• Further conceptualise these (and more)
findings into a model/framework which can
be used proactively in school development
• Conduct more studies (less detailed that
these ones) on a range of different schools
in order to test the versatility of this model
for competence building
• Your feedback and suggestions are
welcome…