Maaike Christine Heitink

Teachers’ professional reasoning about their pedagogical use of technology

This study focused on teachers’ reasoning about the use of technology in practice. Both teachers’ professional reasoning and their technology use were investigated. Through video cases, 157 teachers demonstrated their technology use in practice and commented on the reasoning behind their actions. Results show that most technology use was intended to strengthen both pedagogy and subject matter, or else pedagogy alone. Reasons addressed making learning attractive for students, realizing educational goals and facilitating the learning process. The majority of teachers’ technology use in practice shows aspects of the knowledge transfer model of teaching. Most technology tools were used to support a learning activity; the use of technology was essential in only a few video cases. About half of the video cases showed alignment between reasoning and practice. The results contribute to better understanding of how teachers reason professionally about their technology use.

Computer Adaptive Assessment for Learning in a Virtual Learning Environment

In this project, five European countries are working together on the development of an online learning environment through which students can enhance key information processing skills (literacy, numeracy and problem solving in technology rich environments). This paper regards the numeracy learning unit that uses formative computer adaptive testing to offer learning tasks tailored to the students’ ability level. In these formative testing activities students can use hints and feedback to complete the learning tasks. The use of feedback and hints will influence the students’ response behavior. Therefore, for estimating the ability accurately, an IRT model will be used in which the use of these hints and feedback are taken into account. The learning modules are piloted with 900 students from Italy, Portugal and Norway.