Pd John

Transforming teaching and learning: embedding ICT into everyday classroom practices

Drawing on socio-cultural theory, this paper describes how teams of teachers and researchers have developed ways of embedding information and communications technology (ICT) into everyday classroom practices to enhance learning. The focus is on teaching and learning across a range of subjects: English, history, geography, mathematics, modern foreign languages, music and science. The influence of young peoples out-of-school uses of ICT on in-school learning is discussed. The creative tension between idiosyncratic and institutional knowledge construction is emphasised and we argue that this is exacerbated by the use of ICT in the classroom.

From transaction to transformation: information and communication technology, professional development and the formation of communities of practice

Abstract Using the concept of ‘layers of community’, this paper describes and explains the ways in which teams of teachers, teacher educators and researchers worked together on the research project InterActive Education: teaching and learning in the information age. The focus is on the development and dissemination of professional knowledge as it relates to teaching and learning that incorporates information and communications technology (ICT) as a tool. Drawing on a range of data, we illustrate how ‘micro-’, ‘meso-’ and ‘macro’-communities inter-connect to create the settings for improved professional growth. The purpose is to challenge the linearity embedded in much of the professional development processes associated with ICT and to re-model the relationship between practice and research.

Affordance, opportunity and the pedagogical implications of ICT

This paper provides a brief overview of the InterActive Education Project and an introduction to this special issue. At the heart of the project was a unique partnership between university researchers, teacher educators and teachers, who worked together to find out how ICT can be used in schools to enhance learning. Within this paper we argue that it is the relationship between the pedagogy within a subject area (the practice in the setting), the subject domain and its culture (the ecology of the setting) and the technology (the tool within the setting) that is crucial to engendering quality learning.

The sacred and the profane: subject sub‐culture, pedagogical practice and teachers' perceptions of the classroom uses of ICT

Drawing on extensive interview data with 37 participants across six subject areas (maths, science, English, music, modern foreign languages and geography) this paper explores and explains the extent to which subject teachers and their various epistemic communities or subject sub‐cultures negotiate the relationship between ICT and learning in their subject contexts. The study uses Bernsteins (1996) conception of ‘the sacred and the profane’ as a heuristic to guide the dynamics of the process. Using a content analysis based on grounded themes, the findings show that with extended and supported use ‘transaction spaces’ emerge where subject teachers begin to negotiate with new technologies thus creating new meanings and accommodations. These changes are evolutionary rather than transformatory with the evidence pointing to a ‘new’ blend of technology and subject taking place; a trend that highlights the centrality of pragmatic pedagogy and the importance of the ‘pedagogic dependent ICT resource’.

Teaching and learning with ICT: new technology, new pedagogy?

This paper has two broad aims: first, to provide a brief introduction to the InterActive Education Project from which the papers in this special edition derive; and second, to draw out some of the overarching themes and threads that have emerged from the set of articles presented. The evidence suggests that a number of tensions surface when subject teachers engage with information communication technology (ICT) in their classrooms, for instance, the tension between teaching about and teaching through ICT; the tension between information accretion and information discernment; and the tension between subject and technological culture. The findings also suggest that the use of ICT by subject teachers is being embraced but not imposed. This is in part due to the collaborative nature of the InterActive Project but it is also due to a genuine desire by the participants to concentrate on the creation of rich ICT environments in which their students can engage their minds with the resources of their disciplines. The paper ends with some suggestions for taking the ICT and learning venture forward within the current curriculum context.

Seeing Is Believing: Using Videopapers to Transform Teachers' Professional Knowledge and Practice.

Gaps, barriers, boundaries and walls are words often used to describe the separation between educational research and practice. They account for the differences that are said to exist between the ‘two cultures’; the members of which appear to occupy different worlds, have different mindsets and express themselves in different discourses. The purpose of this paper is to suggest ways of overcoming this divide by presenting a new genre of publication, videopaper, that integrates and synchronizes different forms of representation, such as text, video and images, in one cohesive document. We argue that this has the potential to end the elision in the educational community which sees researchers as knowledge generators and teachers as knowledge translators. We contend that videopaper has a range of affordances that may help the professional and academic communities to find new ways of seeing, creating and using educational research.

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.

‘Them and us’: Teachers' and tutors' experiences of a ‘new’ professional development course in Greece

The research reported in this paper compares the experiences of twenty‐two secondary teachers and twelve university tutors as they embark on a course of a ‘new’ in‐service professional development programme in Greece, in relation to adult learning. It harnesses a qualitative methodology and draws upon a set of ideas that cohere under the rubric programme development to build up a heuristic guiding research technique and analysis procedure. The analysis focuses on two key parameters of programme development for adults i.e. climate and planning, and on their associated elements. The findings identify the ‘them’ and ‘us’ image that continues to perpetuate the ‘new’ courses and indicate some tentative points that might have implications for the design of the in‐service training of teachers.

Interactive education: teaching and learning in the information age

This is a guest editorial to a special section of this journal which derives from the work of one of the ESRC Teaching and Learning Programme projects, InterActive Education: Teaching and Learning in the Information Age (http://www.interactiveeducation. ac.uk), whose overall aim is to investigate the ways in which new technologies can be used in educational settings to enhance learning. The project was predicated on two assumptions: first that teachers are central to learning in schools and that much of previous research on the use of information and communications technology (ICT) for learning has underemphasised this crucial role (Sutherland & Balacheff, 1999); second that ICT should be incorporated into a designed learning situation as appropriate, with attention being paid to the whole classroom context including classroom talk, work on paper and other technologies that are usually available to a teacher. (http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1365-2729.2004.00100.x)

evaluating a ‘new’ in-service professional development programme in greece: the experiences of tutors and teachers

Abstract This article explores critically the case of university-provided inservice training for secondary teachers in Greece, using the experience of both tutors and teachers as they embark upon it. It draws upon an exploratory study carried out with 22 secondary teachers (philologists) and 12 university teachers in the context of two university departments. The analysis focuses on two aspects of Kirkpatricks (1975) conceptualisation of the evaluation process: reaction evaluation and learning evaluation. The findings highlighted the limitations of the event-delivery model of professional development, in particular, the vexatious relationship between theory and practice. The article concludes with a number of recommendations related to the need for the greater involvement of teachers in the organisation, formulation and delivery of in-service professional development.