Common GroundNew Technology Meets School Culture

Mart Laanpere, Centre of Educational Technology

Tallinn Pedagogical University

IPM tools research framework

Not looking for differences, but for common ground: between countries, between school levels, between theory and praxis, technology and teachers, old and new school culture

Not looking for causes and effects, but trying to understand how the teacher make sense of ICT infusion into school

Not looking for statistically reliable generalizations, but exploring and interpreting

Research questions

What kind of adoption problems did the teachers have with PedaNet tools?

What were the common strategies of coping with new tasks?

What kind of influence did these new tools have on teaching and learning practices?

How does the school culture influence the methods and content of Webmagazines?

The Languages of Theory

Introducing ICT in schools is not only about improving computing skills of students, there are great ambitions to change learning and school culture, professionalize teaching

Pedagogical theory behind this innovation is most often related with social-constructivist approache (Vygotski, Leontjev, Bruner)

Knowledge building, anchored instruction, virtual learning communities, scaffolding and fading, metacognition, cognitive flexibility ….

The Languages of Practice

Aristotle: theoria (audience for sports games), praxis (ethical-practical wisdom)

In teaching, decisions cannot be proved, only defended

Donald Schön: experts reflect in action, practical knowledge is tacit (hidden)

Despite the decades of theory-based value-adding, teaching remains to be a practical task

Teacher professionalism & ICT

Administrative and democratic view to teacher professionalism: competency standards and indicators vs. ethos and tacit knowledge

Too radical ICT innovations tend to alienate participating teachers from colleagues

Step-by-step strategy and simple, but useful tool could be the key to success

Predicting the adoption of ICT

Betty Collis 4E model: an individual's likelihood of using a telematics application in his or her teaching or learning (assuming a voluntary choice is involved) can be expressed as the vector sum of four vectors: Environmental aspects of the institution Educational effectiveness Ease of use personal Engagement

Research methods

Online questionnaire: Background information Organization of the work with PedaNet tools Prediction of use according to 4E model

Interviews with principals, teachers and students in 3 Estonian and 4 Finnish schools

Observations and videorecordings of lessons Analysis of Webmagazines

Students-per-computer ratio

05

1015202530354045

Estonia Finland Galicia Lithuania Norway

Online questionnaire: results

Background informationStudent access to school computers

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

1 2 3 4 5

1 - students cannot use computers in our school at all2 - students use computers only during informatics lessons or computer club3 - students use computers in various subject lessons, not only informatics – but not after lessons4 - students use computers also after lessons5 - I do not know how it is arranged

Distribution of teachers by age

1 38

6

15

15

64 2

20-25

25-29

30-34

35-39

40-44

45-49

50-54

55-59

60-65

Distribution of teachers by subjects

13

9

117

5

6

5 4Math&Scinece

Mother tongue

Foreign lang.

Social studies

Fine arts

Technical

Primary

Other

How did you learn to use computers? mostly by myself

mostly with the help of mycolleagues

mostly with the help of mychildren/students

mostly on computer coursesarranged in my own school

mostly on computer coursesoutside of the school

AdminSupport Estonia Finland Galicia Lithuania Norway

Grand Total

1     1     1

2   2 2

3 1 1 1 8 11

4 2 4 7 2 2 17

5 5 10 11 2 1 29

Grand Total 8 15 22 12 3 60

Perceived support from school administration (by countries)

Editors Estonia Finland Galicia Lithuania NorwayGrand Total

Own class 3 1 3 2   9

Changing 1 5 2 4 12

Fixed group 3 7 15 6 2 33

Other 1 2 2 1 6

Grand Total 8 15 22 12 3 60

How the work is arranged? Estonia Finland Galicia Lithuania Norway

Grand Total

Subject 3 9 6 1 1 20

Extra-curricular 2 2 2 3 9

Students find the time 1 2 6 4 13

Ohter 2 2 8 4 2 18

Grand Total 8 15 22 12 3 60

The 4E prediction

The highest consensus among different countries and the highest positive rate is under Personal Engagement

The lowest consensus (dispersed responses) among both countries and persons is related with Ease of Use, but also with one question from Educational Effectiveness block: “WebMagazine does not overload me with extra work - it helps me to accomplish effectively the tasks I have to do anyway ”

Webmagazines

Language problem Types of content: school newsletter, student

essays/poems/drawings, project reports, learning resources

Enjoyable effect for younger students – parents can see their works published

School visits

In elementary schools – greater enthusiasm, more simple tasks, more flexibility, more fun

In secondary schools – more difiicult for Web tools to “fit into” institutional structures and traditions (except for specialized media courses)

Strong support from school administration Computer lab is not needed

Conclusions

There are clearly more commonalities than differences between countries and subjects in goals, ways and reasons of using Web tools in teaching and learning

Adoption problems were related with not sufficient ease of use of WM, poor local technical support, poor access to computers

Effective adoption strategies were related either with whole-school campaign of fitting the new tools to existing practices

Greetings from Holland!