Noeline Wright

Twittering in Teacher Education: Reflecting on Practicum Experiences.

Microblogging as a form of expression has gained momentum recently: a widely popular version is Twitter, which began by asking ‘What are you doing?’ While posts responding to this question were often inane and ephemeral, microblogging can still be harnessed for research purposes. This paper reports on a case study with eight participants during a teaching practicum, posting to Twitter from their phones or computers, examining the question ‘Does microblogging help teacher education students develop self‐reflective practices?’ Participants later met as a focus group on campus to discuss their Twitter/phone experiences. Methodologically, the analysis extracted themes (thematic content analysis) from the tweets, examining them in relation to both the research question and the subsequent focus group feedback. Tweet categories included: pedagogy, complexity, emotions, curriculum/planning, relationships and other. An identified benefit was a sense of community. Participants appreciated reading others’ tweets and receiving messages of support when they faced challenging situations. And while 140 characters were initially difficult and limiting for explaining ideas, it honed participants’ reflective thinking. This was highly valued in the very individual experience of teaching practicum.

A case for adapting and applying continuance theory to education: Understanding the role of student feedback in motivating teachers to persist with including digital technologies in learning

In New Zealand schools, the adoption and persistent use of digital tools to aid learning is a growing but uneven, trend, often linked to the practices of early adopters and/or robust wifi infrastructure. The Technology Adoption Model is used internationally to gauge levels of uptake of technological tools, particularly in commerce and also in education. However, this model is inadequate when it is used to attribute reasons for teachers adopting technologies for learning. This article offers an alternative view to understanding why teachers continue using digital technologies for learning. It focuses on the role of student voice and teachers’ pedagogical purposes as motivators, even when teachers have technological hurdles to overcome. The article engages with continuance theory as a lens for understanding these motivations via a qualitative thematic analysis of Moodle postings made by a 2012 cohort of initial teacher education students. The intention is to signpost ideas that might better explain teachers’ continued use of digital technologies in classrooms even if conditions for use are not optimal.

The ‘critical friend’ role in fostering reflective practices and developing staff cohesion: A case study in a new secondary school, New Zealand

ABSTRACT This exploratory case study, arising from a longitudinal project into the establishment of a new secondary school in New Zealand, examines reflective practice through critical friend roles among staff. The paper describes, through the lens of Bourdieus logic of practice, the implementation of a critical friendship approach linked to the school leaders’ vision and aim regarding learning within open classroom spaces as part of a modern learning environment. Reflective practice involves critiquing, rethinking and reframing existing professional practices, often through a critical friendship approach among school staff within a fostered collaborative and open culture. The researchers interviewed six participants (four leaders and two teachers), observed how the teaching and learning took place in the new open classroom spaces, and reviewed blog posts and the schools website. Findings reveal that critical friendship, as a way to develop staff cohesion, is fostered and supported by the school leaders’ vision and actions, while the physical geography of the new classroom spaces, and the redesign of learning, also make this easier to enact. Staff cohesion, trust and openness to peer scrutiny are hallmark of this emerging school culture. These emerging findings provide some insights into how one new school culture develops cohesion with its stated vision and mission.

Sell, sell, sell or learn, learn, learn? The EdTech market in New Zealand’s education system – privatisation by stealth?

ABSTRACT An article in The Atlantic ‘Quantifying the Ed-Tech Market’ (2015), which draws on a review by the Education Technology Industry Network, reports that the U.S. Ed-tech market totalled

Framing the School: Hobsonville Point Secondary School

8.38 billion in the 2012–2013 academic year, which is up from

Framing Learning Spaces: Modern Learning Environments and ‘Modern’ Pedagogy

7.9 billion the year before, and up 11.7 per cent from 2009. K-12 online course revenue including any digital curriculum increased some 320% and the testing and assessment market, the largest single category, generated

Framing the First Four Years: Conclusion

2.5 billion. The New Zealand business organisation EDTechNZ, indicates on its website that educational technology is the fastest growing sector of a global smart education market worth US

Framing Pastoral Care: ‘Paradigm for One’

100 billion, forecast to grow to US

Framing the Curriculum: ‘Paradigm of One’

394 by 2019. The same source indicates that Cloud-based educational technology is accelerating at 20% growth per annum and is forecast to reach US

Framing Perspectives: ‘Paradigm of the Many’

12 billion by 2019. These returns are unequalled by most other economic sectors. Our concern in this article is that the market imperative based on selling has become a driving logic for digital technologies in schools while learning gets lost in the rush for companies to profit from schools, creating de facto privatisation by stealth. Aspects of the New Zealand educational context are used to illustrate our thinking, especially since most educational provision is still state owned and taxpayer funded.