Judy Moreland

Developing classroom‐focused research in technology education

During the last 10 years, curriculum documents in Australia, the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Hong Kong, and New Zealand have emphasized the importance of students’ developing technological literacy. In utilizing research findings to consider future curriculum needs, there is the danger that the field may come to be understood in light of the research undertaken, not in light of what needs to be done. Past research has tended to focus on curriculum issues and the defining of the subject. If technology education is to advance as a curriculum area of worth and as a focus of research, then much more of our research effort must be on student and teacher learning in technology. This paper argues that classroombased research must become the focus of research over the next 10 years. While there is published research on what students do when involved in technological activities, we still lack significant research on students’ learning in technology and on ways in which this learning can be enhanced. Teacher and student conceptualization of technology is a complex issue and requires an understanding of the many factors that influence it. Classroom culture and student expectations appear to influence strongly the way in which students carry out their technological activities. Student learning in technology can be enhanced by effective formative interactions occurring between teacher and student and between student and student. Part of technology assessment should provide evidence of progression in learning, about which we currently know very little. This paper describes some fruitful areas of classroom-based research that could inform technology curriculum development.RésuméAu cours des 10 dernières années, la documentation sur les curricula en Australie, au Royaume-Uni, aux États-Unis, au Canada, à Hong Kong et en Nouvelle-Zélande ont mis l’accent sur l’importance de l’alphabétisation technologique des étudiants. Par le passé, les recherches étaient surtout centrées sur des questions de curricula et de définition du sujet. Si nous voulons que l’enseignement des technologies devienne un domaine d’apprentissage significatif chez tous les étudiants, il sera nécessaire de concentrer ultérieurement nos efforts sur la recherche dans les salles de classe. En effet, bien que les travaux sur la définition du sujet soient encore très importants, on en est maintenant arrivé au point où l’enseignement des technologies doit surtout mettre l’accent sur un apprentissage accru dans la salle de classe. Cette insistance sur les classes de technologies met en évidence quatre aspects importants et reliés entre eux: l’apprentissage des technologies chez les étudiants, l’évaluation, les interactions particulièrement formatrices et le développement de notions de progression. Les premières recherches ont montré que, si on concentre les efforts sur ces aspects, il est possible d’améliorer l’apprentissage des étudiants et de fournir une base solide pour développer les curriculums.Notre recherche montre que, pour améliorer et soutenir l’apprentissage des technologies, il est nécessaire d’axer le savoir des enseignants sur les résultats d’apprentissages technologiques spécifiques et détaillés, conjointement à des approches pédagogiques adéquates. Il est particulièrement important d’utiliser un cadre bien défini pour centrer l’attention des enseignants sur les aspects conceptuels, procéduraux, sociétaux et techniques de l’apprentissage des technologies chez les étudiants. Nous ne concevons pas ce cadre comme absolu et défini dans ses moindres détails, mais bien comme un outil analytique général susceptible d’aider les enseignants à réfléchir sur les caractéristiques de l’apprentissage des technologies. Il s’agit en fait d’aider les enseignants à réfléchir sur ce que les étudiants peuvent contribuer à la classe et comment cette

Leveraging Disciplinary Practices to Support Students' Active Participation in Formative Assessment.

Studies of disciplinary work have converged with studies of classrooms to highlight the social and cultural nature of disciplinary knowledge and practices, and of classroom learning and assessment. For students to become discerning and autonomous/authoring learners, classroom assessment needs to ensure students experience what it means to exercise discernment as part of collective and individual decision-making. In this paper, we adopt a sociocultural lens and focus on student appreciation and use of disciplinary norms and practices within a classroom community of scholars as both a means and an end for learning and its assessment. We illustrate student responses to the way their primary teacher combined disciplinary norms with formative assessment practices to help them appreciate and experience how knowledge is generated and warranted within biotechnology. We argue that when sources of authority are distributed and used to scope possibilities, students experience learning as the development of autonomy and discernment.

Finding out about Fossils in an Early Years Classroom

In this chapter we draw on our classroom-based research on assessment for learning (AfL) to develop a “practical explanatory theory” (Nuthall, 2004) for student engagement in learning and how it might be supported. Our practical explanatory theory has three dimensions: disciplinary agency, material agency and student conceptual agency.

Assessment in schools – Technology education and ICT

People use technology to intervene in the world to expand their possibilities, applying both intellectual and practical resources. It encompasses more than information and communication technologies (ICTs). Technology is included as a curriculum area in many countries where increasing the levels of technological literacy is seen as of intrinsic value. Effective assessment in technology, both formative and summative, needs to accommodate the multifaceted and multimodal nature of technology. ICTs have the potential to enhance classroom assessment practices through the provision of additional modes of representing, recording, and reviewing information on student learning process and products.

Strengthening Teacher Planning and Preparation

While the notion that assessment can inform teaching and enhance learning seems to have an intrinsic appeal, a number of studies have illustrated that the practice can be challenging—all the more so for primary teachers in science and technology (see for example Atkin, Coffey, Moorthy, Sato & Thibeault, 2005; Black, Harrison, Lee, Marshall & Wiliam, 2003; Sato, 2003; Sato, Wei & Darling–Hammond, 2008; Thompson & Wiliam, 2008; Torrance & Pryor, 1998; 2001).

Elaborating our Context

In this chapter we outline the New Zealand assessment context as well as science and technology education in New Zealand in order to elaborate the context of the book. We also present the InSiTE project through detailing the research aims and the ways we worked in partnership with our teachers. Finally we introduce our students and teachers.

Fostering Student Learning Agency and Autonomy

In this chapter we focus more directly on how AfL practices can provide opportunities for students to develop identities as capable and independent learners who are aware of and able to employ the accountability systems for knowledge generation and legitimation in a discipline. To do this we step back to consider how the classroom culture for learning provides opportunities for students to exercise agency and authority.

Pursuing Learning as Coherent, Connected and Cumulative

In this chapter our specific aim is to show how the time teachers and students spend together can be constructed and used as a resource within and for AfL in science and technology. As we explained in Chapter 2, our sociocultural stance drew our attention to the complexity of how learning takes place over time (lessons, days, weeks, months and years) and contexts (small groups, whole class, in and out of school).

Material Artefacts as Scenarios and Resources for Ideas and Interaction

In Chapter 5 we focused on the multimodal nature of interaction. In this chapter we direct our spotlight more closely on material artefacts. Our reasons for devoting a chapter to material artefacts are both practical and theoretical. At the beginning of the research, in line with much of the literature at that time, we took for granted students undertaking hands–on activities in science and technology.

Assessment for Learning Interactions as Multimodal

In Chapter 4 we unpacked the planning the InSiTE teachers devised to prepare for teaching and assessing. In this chapter we turn to how this planning and preparation played out in science and technology classrooms. What was interesting for us was that the planning and preparation our teachers undertook did not prescribe exactly what then happened in their classrooms.