Angela McFarlane

Technology as small group face-to-face Collaborative Scaffolding

There is a wealth of evidence that collaboration between learners can enhance the outcomes for all concerned. This supports the theorization of learning as a socio-cultural practice, framed by Vygotsky and developed by other researchers such as Rogoff, Lave and Wenger. However, there is also evidence that working collaboratively may not be a spontaneous response to working in a group, and that teaching learners how to collaborate, and in particular how to work together to negotiate meaning, is a necessary part of the process of learning collaboratively which can enhance outcomes further. A question for the computer supported collaborative learning community then arises as to whether learning to collaborate can be scaffolded through the use of digital tools, and what such tools might look like. This paper reports on the design of a digital system that aims to support the practice of face-to-face collaboration on open-ended tasks. Findings from trials of the system in classrooms in the UK and Chile show that the model is welcomed both by teachers and pupils, and met its objectives of ensuring greater interaction between class members who did not normally work together, and involvement of all individuals in discussion based activities.

Pedagogical approaches for technology-integrated science teaching☆

The two separate projects described have examined how teachers exploit computer-based technologies in supporting learning of science at secondary level. This paper examines how pedagogical approaches associated with these technological tools are adapted to both the cognitive and structuring resources available in the classroom setting. Four teachers participated in the first study, undertaken as part of the InterActive Education project in Bristol; all of them used multimedia simulations in their lessons. The second study presented was part of the wider SET-IT project in Cambridge; 11 teachers in eight schools were observed using multimedia simulations, data logging tools and interactive whiteboards. Teachers were interviewed in all cases to elicit their pedagogical thinking about their classroom use of ICT. The findings suggest that teachers are moving away from only using ‘real’ experiments in their practice. They are exploring the use of technologies to encourage students to engage in “What If” explorations where the outcomes of ‘virtual’ experiments can be immediately accessed, for example through using a simulation. However, this type of activity can serve just as a mechanism for revealing – and indeed reinforcing – students’ informal conceptions if cognitive conflict is not generated or remains unresolved. The teachers in our studies used simulations, data logging, projected animations and other dynamic digital resources as tools to encourage and support prediction and to demonstrate scientific concepts and physical processes – thereby ‘bridging the gap’ between scientific and informal knowledge. They also integrated technology carefully with other practical activities so as to support stepwise knowledge building, consolidation and application. Research of this kind has design implications for both curriculum-related activities and emerging computer-based learning technologies, in terms of helping us to understand how teachers capitalise upon the technology available in supporting students to construct links between scientific theory and empirical evidence.

Knowledge transformation through ICT in science education: a case study in teacher-driven curriculum development-Case-Study 1

The papers in this volume of BJET relate to the over-riding concern about the role of information and communications technologies (ICT) in education: the extent to which the claims of policy makers, administrators, publicists, politicians and bureaucrats are borne out in the reality of teaching and learning inside and outside the classroom. One approach to providing the evidential base for judging the extent of and nature of the gap between rhetoric and reality and closing it are major research studies based upon statistically significant sampling like IMPACT2, another is to build up a body of in-depth case-study evidence that can be used as the basis for generalisation. This paper falls into the latter category, looking at a case study of the initial stages of the development of effective ICT in Science Education. The research and development work involved is an element in the ICT strand of the Teaching and Learning in the Information Age Project. The paper first reviews the issues in the development of a design initiative for furthering our understanding of the problem of knowledge transformation in science education through ICT. A discussion of the development of ICT use in science education then leads to an illustration of current use in UK school science classrooms and laboratories. A theoretical framework of teachers knowledge and pedagogical reasoning in science through ICT is presented as the basis for the curriculum research and redevelopment that the case study involves. The case study, findings and discussion then follow.

Perspectives on the Relationships between ICT and Assessment

There are at least three perspectives on ICT in schools which influence policy and practice. This paper considers the relationship between each of these perspectives: as a tool, as learning support and as revolutionary agent, and the relationship of each to assessment. It proposes that ultimately what determines the role ICT plays in school-based learning depends on the value attributed to learning outcomes. While national assessments continue to reward specified content knowledge above knowledge building abilities, the use of ICT will continue to cause tensions in the classroom.

Teaching and learning with ICT within the subject culture of secondary school science

This paper reports some of the findings from the science subject design initiative team in the ESRC Interactive Education Project at the University of Bristol. The subject culture of secondary school science, characterised by a content‐laden curriculum and assessment, but also with a tradition and requirement for practical work, is briefly described to give a picture of the environment in which the use of ICT was planned. Six science teachers, working in UK comprehensive schools, with between 2 and 18 years experience in the classroom planned subject design initiatives (SDI) in which practical work was simulated by software. Team discussions and individual interviews following the SDIs are summarised and early conclusions presented about the resulting shift in pedagogic approach and subject culture.

PDAs and Handhelds: ICT at Your Side and Not in Your Face

In order to evaluate the potential of Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) or handheld computers to support initial teacher training (ITT), 14 science teacher trainees at the Graduate School of Education in the University of Bristol were given PDAs with mobile phone connectivity to use throughout the academic year. The following areas were identified by the ITT students as definitely being of support during their course; the calendar or diary scheduler for organising themselves, the spreadsheet of attendance or mark book for organising their pupils and the use of a word processor to make notes on information and events immediately they are encountered. However, Internet access via the portable device was the application that the students considered to be most helpful to both teaching and learning. It was concluded that having the Internet literally ‘in the hand’ affords access to tools and information in a way that does indeed function as distributed intelligence. It also appeared to be a particular benefit that the PDAs could be kept hidden in a pocket or handbag, at the student teacher’s side instantly when needed and returned to the pocket once the need was gone, unlike other information and communications technology (ICT) hardware that sits looming large in the classroom and demanding attention.

Discourses of the digital native: use, non-use, and perceptions of use in BBC Blast

This article emerges from a long-term project investigating the BBC initiative ‘Blast’ – an on- and offline creative resource for teenagers. Designed to ‘inspire and equip’ young people to be creative, the research interrogates the assumptions behind such a resource, particularly in terms of the so-called ‘digital native’, and tests such assumptions against the populations actually using and engaging with it. It finds that the conception of a ‘digital native’ – a technologically enthusiastic, if not technologically literate – teenage population, which is operationalized through the workshop structure of BBC Blast, rarely filters down to the teenagers themselves. Teenage delegates to the Blast workshops rarely validate interest based on technological facilities, enthusiasm or competency. Instead, it is peer groups and social alignments which shape declarations and, more importantly, enactments of interest. This suggests that while the concept of the ‘digital native’ may be pertinent for generational comparisons of technological use, or is a useful concept for the operationalization of creative media workshops, it is simply not recognized by teenagers to whom it refers, nor does it adequately define use. Further, technological competency and enthusiasm sits uneasily with social and cultural peer group norms, where certain (and very specific) technological competency is socially permitted. This means that the concept of the ‘digital native’ is problematic, if not entirely inadequate. Focusing on the BBC Blast workshops therefore raises some critical questions around teenage motivations to become technologically literate, and the pleasures teenagers articulate in such engagements per se.

Cross-generational gender constructions. Women, teenagers and technology

Despite the supposed inroads of feminism, gender equality and new ‘democratic’ means of technological communication, adult women and teenage girls in the UK continue to emphasise what Valerie Walkerdine has termed the ‘habitual “feminine” position of incompetence’ (2006, 526). This article draws on two complimentary research projects in order to investigate the cross-generational gender constructions women and teenagers articulate. Drawing on Negras notion of a ‘cover story’ (2009, 44), this article suggests that we can read the claims and practices of the women and teenagers in terms of how they frame new ideologies of femininity. Further, the continual recourse to an essential feminine position of exclusion is detrimentally shaping not only technological use, but also the wider operationalization of gender in public and private arenas. Focussing specifically on the female populations of the research projects, we demonstrate how gender continues to emerge and be produced by women and girls in negotiated, but highly problematic ways. Rather than considering gender as a determining force, it emerges here as a carefully constructed tool for engagement, and as a distancing device facilitating a claim of, and towards, disinterest. The two projects suggest implications for future mediations and relations with new media technology; they also suggest that across generations, women are detrimentally fixing and restricting potential and actual performances of gender through the evocation of a more traditional femininity.

Claiming Content and Constructing Users: User-generated Content and BBC Blast

This chapter utilizes key findings from a research project investigating teenage user-generated content, creativity and learning on ‘Blast’, an initiative by the BBC, the UK’s public service broadcaster, which ran between 2004 and 2010. It was an on- and offline resource for teenagers, encompassing a range of creative strands (film, music, dance, games, writing, fashion, art and design). The website allowed teenagers to view, comment on and upload creative material: it included a showcase section, message boards, blogs and short instructive clips from professionals in the field. In addition, the project included an eight-month touring workshop, links with local educational and creative groups, televisual output, film and videomaking competitions in conjunction with Media Trust, work placements and work experience for young people. Sustained by user-generated content and with the notion of creative autonomy at its heart, BBC Blast was both inherently flawed and truly exciting. As John Millner, the Executive Producer, noted in the foreword to our 2008 report: Blast is the BBC’s most ambitious and sustained experiment to date in user-generated content … Blast aims to be a catalyst and incubator of teenagers’ creative skills in the fields of art and design, music, dance, video, gaming, writing and fashion … by the beginning of 2007 Blast was growing fast, mounting a nationwide roadshow of creative workshops, attracting tens of thousands of uploads of young creatives’ work to its online galleries, and generating real excitement from everyone who came into contact with the project. (McFarlane and Thornham, 2008, p. 3)