Integration of ICT in an Initial Teacher Training Course: Participants’ Views

Following two decades of computer use in schools we still do not understand connections between the knowledge represented in computer-based learning activities, the activities themselves, and the hardware and software that technically enables the activities. This paper reports on the utilisation of constructivistlike practices with pre-service and in-service teachers. The practices described originated in research into learning environments in Logo and Boxer. However they have a much wider applicability to schools, especially in the way the World Wide Web can be used as a tool for promoting effective learning. Past Experience and Research In thinking about possible effects of technology on learning, we have found it useful to ask how technology might enable us to create alternative pathways to important competencies ... (Bransford, Sherwood and Hasselbring 1988: 174) One major feature of school education over the last half of the nineteenth century has been a gradual shift in control and focus away from the teacher towards the learner. Individual differences among students, including preferred styles of learning, have been extensively examined. Following the introduction of computers into education nearly four decades ago, there was an anticipation that changes to classroom practice would be speeded up. Although many teachers believe that change in classroom practice is occurring far too slowly, an evolution rather than a revolution, there is little doubt that computers have helped bring about some changes in classroom teaching and learning. As is probably true with any educational innovation, many early applications of computers in classrooms consisted of teaching traditional content in more or less traditional ways but including some computer use. Limited software, BASIC was the ubiquitous programming language, and crude hardware, poor graphics and sound and no colour, resulted in a plethora of simple textbased “educational” programs. Using the computer for something appeared more important than developing software based on sound educational principles. Copyright © 2002, Australian Computer Society, Inc. This paper was presented at the Seventh World Conference on Computers in Education, Copenhagen, July 29–August 3, 2001. Reproduction for academic, not-for profit purposes permitted provided this text is included. It is not unusual for teachers to think about how students learn. Papert (1980, 1993) invoked the dual concepts of exploratory learning with the aid of computer software and of learners being aware of their personal learning preferences. As reports of the early Logo research were disseminated through a series of Massachusetts Institute of Technology Artificial Intelligence Laboratory memos in the 1970s and then in Mindstorms (Papert 1980), teachers and researchers began to explore a wide range of interactions between teachers, learners, and computers. Weir (1986) investigated whether computers could become an integral part of everyday educational practice that would enhance learning. She saw the computer as an empirical window that enabled both teachers and learners to see learning occurring. She argued that goals for Logo learning activities can come from learners as part of their active engagement, or from teachers as part of their continuing encouragement. Learning situations should contain a mixture of the two. She saw computer technology as changing the context for learning. When interaction with the computer helps reveal the child’s thinking processes, it can enhance the quality of the child-teacher interaction. (Weir 1986: 31) Theories of Piagetian developmental stages and constructivism have been major influences on teachers using Logo and other exploratory or conjectural software. The quotation at the beginning of this paper typifies the thinking of many of those attempting to use educational software to change the existing classroom culture. In general the alternative pathways sought by these teachers and researchers led to learning environments that were more informal than traditional classrooms. Using computers in classrooms caused teachers to focus on issues such as whether children were novice learners, developing adults who performed less ably than adults, or effective learners who had informally learned a language, motor and social skills, and a range of concepts about the world around them. Parents and teachers noted that effective learners spent considerable time learning and practicing in social, play-like environments. Two other important aspects of informal learning environments are that learning generally occurs in a meaningful context, and also that there are mediators present. For children, learning about their world occurs in a meaningful context that provides countless opportunities to use contextual information as cues to behaviour and language. Mediators, parents or older children, provide both structured learning experiences and feedback for learners. Monitoring and providing feedback involves being sensitive to a learner’s zone of proximal development (ZPD) as defined by Vygotsky (1978). For an educator the ZPD is where a learner can accomplish something with some assistance whereas they could not do this thing without assistance. It becomes evident that useful and effective mediators have to be aware of what the learner has experienced in order to provide a meaningful context for new learning. Weir (1986) believed computers could improve feedback for learners and teachers. In traditional classrooms feedback is entirely up to the teacher, but when using computers some feedback can come from the technology. Teacher observation of a learner’s performance determines the next step in a teacher-student dialogue. Computers can display workings of a learner’s mind to the teacher. Some writers claim that the core of Piagetian theories of cognitive development is a view of knowledge constructed through interaction. There are two different aspects of Piagetian interaction. The first concerns domain knowledge, and relates to acquiring knowledge through a simultaneous combination of actions and experiments with concrete materials and thinking about those materials. The second aspect of Piagetian interaction is social in nature, and is brought about by an exchange of thoughts, feelings and strategies between learners, between learners and adults or teachers, and through self reflection. When learning in a computerbased medium there is a need for “provocative enounters” with the basic structure of particular knowledge (domain knowledge) and equally stimulating encounters with the thoughts of others (social interchanges). Much of the published research on students learning in computer environments has focussed on specific curriculum areas. The original Logo research by Papert and others, especially as encapsulated in Mindstorms (Papert 1980), was a response to the perception of poor teaching and ineffective learning in school mathematics classes. DiSessa has explored how learners in science, especially physics, can make use of computer-based microworlds to turn intuitive understandings and misconceptions of physical science into accurate and useful knowledge. He argues that as a human being develops she or he acquires fragments of information about many aspects of the world. These pieces of knowledge make up: a fragmented collection of ideas, loosely connected and reinforcing, having none of the commitment or systemacity that one attributes to theories. (DiSessa 1988: 50). This concept of fragmented knowledge, or knowledge in pieces, is very different from the view of knowledge adopted by traditional physics and mathematics text books. What learners require in educational software is an acceptance by designers and educators of the importance of fragmented knowledge as the starting point for learning experiences, and a concerted effort to complement, complete, and systematise knowledge. DiSessa proposes Boxer as an example of educational software that is based on a pedagogy that accepts and is appropriate to the intuitive or fragmented knowledge of learners. Such software is characterised by (i) providing experiences that engage naïve learners and help them build and integrate pieces of knowledge; (ii) replacing abstract information and statistical data with systems that link to the real world by being dynamic and interactive; and (iii) enabling students to monitor and control their learning because they are aware of the nature of development and integration of knowledge. Building a new and deeper systemacity is a superior heuristic to the “confrontation” approach many theorists have taken. (DiSessa 1988: 51) Many teachers and researchers have attempted to develop educational software that embraces the characteristics described above. Others have taken existing hardware and software and tried to establish a pedagogy and culture of learning that is sympathetic to the ideas of Piaget, Papert and Vygotsky. One example of the latter group is Harel’s Instructional Software Design Project (ISDP). Based around the concept of constructionism, a Papertian derivation from Piagtetian and Vygotskian principles, primary school students spent several months developing Logo microworlds. The express purpose for developing the microworlds was to use them to teach mathematical content to other students. Harel (1991: 32) cites Papert in order to clearly define constructionism: Constructionism is a synthesis of the constructivist theory of development psychology [Piaget’s theory], and the opportunities offered by technology to base education for science and mathematics on activities in which students work towards the construction of an intelligible entity rather than on the acquisition of knowledge and facts without a context in which they can be immediately used and understood. The ISDP model involved students learning about fractions while they constructed Logo microworlds that were interactive teaching devices. Throughout the project students shared ideas and continually interacted with classmates who were engaged in developing similar microworlds. Conclusions arising from the ISDP include the suggestion that using technology in this fashion allows changes to the way fractions are learned and taught, as well as offering positive changes to general cognitive and problem solving skills. The project offered Harel and her participating teachers the opportunity to implement the theoretical principles of constructionism in a realistic educational context. While Logo was an integral part of the ISDP, Harel argues that similar results could be achieved with other software products. Constructionism will be revisited in the final section of this paper in the context of encouraging pre-service teachers to learn about the content and structure of school curriculum. Microworlds, templates, worksheets, and other technology-based artefacts were constructed in response to stated learning outcomes found in the school curriculum. Teacher Professional Development Changing, or restructuring, classroom practice can not occur without significant changes to the way schools are administered, the way teachers teach, and the way students learn. Lasting and effective change is dependent on change being a common goal for all the stake holders, i.e. for administrators, teachers, and students. In this section consideration is given to one agent of change in classroom practice: the professional development of both beginning and experienced teachers. Some general problematic issues are presented, and then there is a more detailed focus on these issues in relation to using computer technology to improve learning in classrooms. A common problem in teacher education, at both inservice and pre-service levels, is decontextualisation. Professional development for teachers is usually provided away from the normal work place of the participants. Even when teacher professional development is conducted in a school it is unlikely that students will be present. These are commonly occurring examples of decontextualisation at an in-service level. The problem for pre-service teachers is that their work place is a university campus, and even though they undertake practice teaching in schools, they are not ongoing staff members in those schools. In addition the teaching practicum is commonly considered a separate subject or area of the course, usually with its own goals and requiring a different and specific set of skills, knowledge and techniques. It is extremely difficult for both pre-service teachers and teacher educators to establish meaningful links between what occurs in a university lecture room and the reality of managing and teaching a class of twenty-five school students. Professional development in effective use of educational technologies such as computers, in common with most other areas of professional development, assumes that participants will be able to return to a classroom and implement the skills, training and knowledge they have acquired. A corollary of this assumption is that in most cases the professional development participants will be able to carry out this implementation almost on their own, with little or no assistance from colleagues or outside experts. The supportive environment and cooperative learning atmosphere that were probably present in the professional development course are most likely not readily available in the school situation. Valente (1997) notes that distance education on its own, even when teachers can access distance education courses in their work place via the Internet, removes context from what is being learned. In most cases distance education courses are developed for many teachers from a variety of geographic and educational locations. Such courses still do not create the supportive and collaborative work place environment necessary for innovative technology-based practices to be integrated into everyday classroom teaching and learning. Valente further argues that the only solution is to have a professional development course that is aware of and that accommodates each teacher’s curriculum and pedagogy needs, and for much of the learning to take place in a normal classroom setting. In addition to his own course in Brazil, he discusses (Valente 1997: 72) two specific projects that recognised the contextual and support problems previously described. Both projects invoked Papert’s constructionist principles. In one project, based at MIT, participants constructed science teaching materials away from the classroom, then returned to the classroom with MIT staff and attempted to implement the ideas and techniques, and finally had opportunities to reflect upon and share their experiences. The second project, from the Institute of Education in London, involved teachers having one weekly universitybased session in an otherwise normal teaching schedule. At university they devised and developed Logo-based mathematical microworlds that they then implemented in their mathematics classes. University staff provided ongoing support and also observed the teachers in their own classrooms implementing the microworlds. At times pre-service teacher education programs have been based fully or partly in schools, in an attempt to provide a real and meaningful context. However this model does not solve the problems. First there is no guarantee of support for pre-service teachers who want to introduce new or innovative practices into classrooms. In Australian schools, because of legal issues relating to accreditation, pre-service teachers cannot be given control of their own classes, there must always be an accredited supervisor present. At times supervisors can be a conservative barrier to new ideas. Problems of transfer and support also arise at the conclusion of the pre-service program when the newly accredited teacher takes up a full time teaching position away from the university and supervising teacher mentors.