Leading sustainable pedagogical reform with technology for student-centred learning: A complexity perspective

The literature on school improvement is littered with sombre reports of how ICT-mediated innovations have failed to create impact on teaching and learning. Even when evidence-based successes are palpable, they are sporadic and rarely sustainable. Against the backdrop of the litany of such studies, this paper reports the case of a primary school in Singapore that has a decade-long experience in integrating, growing and sustaining ICT-mediated innovations. By distilling the influences underpinning its integration, the article aims to make a contribution to the theorisation of educational leadership situated in the context of technology-mediated reform for student-centred learning. Using a complexity lens, this paper looks at how school leaders, together with other autonomous actors in its ecological system, foster the favourable conditions for sustainable technology-mediated pedagogical reform. Data of the study are drawn from interviews, observations of lessons, fieldtrips and professional development meetings as well as document analysis. Based on the findings, a complexity-informed model for technology-mediated reform is devised and its implications discussed. They include the need to cultivate the following within and across the subsystems of the school: (a) ecological awareness; (b) collective reflexivity on practices and implementations; (c) creating alignment; and (d) capacity to forge ecological coherence.     

Contextual factors that sustain innovative pedagogical practice using technology: an international study

Pedagogical innovation—whether involving technology or not—is shaped by a complex interaction of the innovation with contextual factors such as school and school district policy, leadership, cultural norms and values, teacher attitudes and skills, and student characteristics. This study examined school and classroom contexts in which pedagogical innovations employing technology were successfully sustained. Data were obtained from 59 cases drawn from the Second Information Technology in Education Study—Module 2, a project that examined 174 cases of innovative pedagogical practice in schools in 28 countries. An explanatory model of sustainability was derived from a qualitative analysis of the cases using grounded theory techniques. Essential conditions for the sustainability of classroom innovation were teacher and student support of the innovation, teacher perceived value of the innovation, teacher professional development, and principal approval. Contributing factors for sustainability were supportive plans and policies, funding, innovation champions, and internal and external recognition and support. An interactive website that allows for searching of SITES-M2 case reports on various attributes such as sustainability, transferability, level of school, and evidence of supportive policies and plans is available at http://sitesm2.org.     

Information technology systems and the learning organization

Several authors have depicted the learning organization as a model of organization survival in the global economy. Learning organizations are able to adapt to their environments and learn effectively from their actions. This article explores the relationship of information technology systems to learning organizations. The article discusses ways that information technologies may be used to enhance individual, team and strategic‐learning.     

Shared and personal learning spaces: Challenges for pedagogical design

The development of new tools for collaboration, such as social software, plays a crucial role in leisure time and work activities. The aim of this article is to summarize the research in the field of computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL). This is done particularly from the perspective of the blurred line between individual (personal) and group-level (shared) learning that the use of the new tools has forced us to re-think. First, individual and group-level perspectives to learning are discussed to make sense of the major notions of how learning is understood in CSCL research. Second, based on this theoretical grounding, it will be further elaborated what this means to the pedagogical design of educational practices utilizing emerging technological landscapes. And third, two different empirical examples will be presented to illustrate the variety of emerging technological landscapes meeting the needs of future learning.     

Integrated learning systems: where does the management take place?

For the last four years of the UK national investigation into the effectiveness of integrated learning systems (ILSs) we have been monitoring the educational contexts within which ILSs are used. Management issues related to ILS use are a significant factor in that educational context. In this paper some of the key management issues related to the effective use of ILSs are outlined. These will include: styles and levels of management of the learning by the ILS; management of the ILS as a learning tool (models of ILS usage); partnership or subservience (‘who’ manages ‘who’ and does it matter?). For some schools, however, the introduction of an ILS has had more profound impacts than this, in that we have recorded changes in teachers' pedagogy. Where such profound changes have been reported then those factors and processes now clearly modelled in school effectiveness and improvement debates have been shown to be operating     

Enhancing curriculum and delivery: linking assessment to learning objectives

Typical university‐wide course evaluations do not provide instructors with sufficient information on the effectiveness of their courses. This article describes a course assessment and enhancement model where student feedback can be used to improve courses and/or programs. The model employs an assessment tool that measures student perceptions of importance and their current competence in course‐specific learning objectives both pre‐ and post‐course. Information gained from this assessment enables course improvement over time and also allows for modification in delivery and/or content of the current course. This model is intended to augment traditional course evaluation mechanisms based on specific and actionable feedback on learning objectives.     

An exploratory investigation of teaching innovations and learning factors in a lean manufacturing systems engineering course

The use of collaborative activities and simulation sessions in engineering education has been explored previously. However, few studies have investigated the relationship of these types of teaching innovations with other learner characteristics, such as self-efficacy and background knowledge. This study explored the effects of collaborative activities and simulation sessions on learning and the relationships between self-efficacy beliefs, background knowledge, and learning. Data were collected from two different terms in an upper division engineering course entitled Lean Manufacturing Systems Engineering. Findings indicated that the impact of collaborative activities and simulation sessions appears to be different, depending on the concepts being taught. Simulation sessions were found to have a significant effect on self-efficacy beliefs, and background knowledge had a mixed effect on learning. Overall the results of this study highlight the complex set of relationships between classroom innovations, learner characteristics, and learning.     

篮球教学中开放式运动技能学习原理的应用

在实际的运动中,运动技能分为两种,分别为开放式和闭锁式,一直以来,在进行运动技能学习的时候,对于开放式的运动技能没有明显的应用,所以在体育教学中也存在很多弊端,下面就对开放式的运动技能的应用进行简单的介绍.     

Electronic systems design: An experiment of project-based learning on network

The NetPro project creates models, methods, tools and materials for network-based project learning in engineering education. This new environment is a distributed system that facilitates sharing and peer reviewing of project deliverables and interaction in special interest group discussions. The paper presents as an example the pilot course on Electronic Systems Design and its preliminary evaluation.     

Assessing technologies for teaching and learning: understanding the importance of technological pedagogical content knowledge

Past and present research has provided evidence to support the claim that technologies for teaching and learning must be pedagogically sound. However, educational technologies are also part of a complex process involving the people in the implementation of the innovation. In this paper, I review existing research and explain what both of those claims entail for educational technology. In the remainder of the paper, I discuss the research agenda related to the need to provide evidence that technology innovations are successful in the implementation process. Implications of this three‐part model as well as a discussion of the importance of technological pedagogical content knowledge conclude the paper.     

Instructional principles for fostering learning with ICT: teachers' perspectives as learners and instructors

Educational literature identifies several instructional principles essential to fostering learning with ICT, such as contextual learning, active learning, social learning and reflective learning. Since the ways teachers are taught relate strongly to the ways they later teach, this study sought to explore teachers' use of ICT as university students and their perception of the potential for ICT in school. Data were collected through interviews, questionnaires and the analysis of participants' online activities. The results indicate that while teachers exploit ICT for their own learning, they are cautious about integrating advanced technologies into school studies. Teachers value the potential of technology for making school studies relevant to pupils' real-life contexts and for stimulating their learning, but do not think that ICT is preferable to class-based instruction in terms of promoting cooperation and reflection processes in learning.     

Values education and lifelong learning: principles,policies and programmes

Abstract

For education to be moral enough, its goal is defined not as to help individuals to learn the life ideals of church or state (which means centuries of practice whereby a group of individuals is trying to impose these ideals upon another group) but to create moral individuals‐‐people who are willing and able to treat each other as equals, and who are willing and able to feel compassion towards one another. Consideration is given to lessons from psychotherapy about the potential of autonomous human individual development for programmes of social change, in order for these programmes to be carried out without government and education resorting to imposition of the life ideals presupposed by them. In conclusion recognition is given to a trend of ethical thought, revitalising the moral significance of responsiveness to the reality of other people, grounded in the virtue of care for particular people. Adding the virtues of care and compassion to the virtues of impartiality and fairness offers a much deeper understanding of the moral grounds of society in its communitarian aspects, as evidenced by Solidarity as the social movement of the early 1980s in Poland.     

Collaborative learning with multi-touch technology: Developing adaptive expertise

Developing fluency and flexibility in mathematics is a key goal of upper primary schooling, however, while fluency can be developed with practice, designing activities that support the development of flexibility is more difficult. Drawing on concepts of adaptive expertise, we developed a task for a multi-touch classroom, NumberNet, that aimed to support both fluency and flexibility. Results from a quasi-experimental study of 86 students (44 using NumberNet, 42 using a paper-based comparison activity) indicated that all students increased in fluency after completing these activities, while students who used NumberNet also increased in flexibility. Video analysis of the NumberNet groups indicate that the opportunity to collaborate, and learn from other groups' expressions, may have supported this increase in flexibility. The final phase of the task suggests future possibilities for engaging students in mathematical discourse to further support the development of mathematical adaptive expertise.     

Aligning professional skills and active learning methods: an application for information and communications technology engineering

Engineering education is facing new challenges to effectively provide the appropriate skills to future engineering professionals according to market demands. This study proposes a model based on active learning methods, which is expected to facilitate the acquisition of the professional skills most highly valued in the information and communications technology (ICT) market. The theoretical foundations of the study are based on the specific literature on active learning methodologies. The Delphi method is used to establish the fit between learning methods and generic skills required by the ICT sector. An innovative proposition is therefore presented that groups the required skills in relation to the teaching method that best develops them. The qualitative research suggests that a combination of project-based learning and the learning contract is sufficient to ensure a satisfactory skills level for this profile of engineers.     

‘Power to empower’: conceptions of teaching and learning in a pedagogical co-design partnership

ABSTRACT

This study is an autoethnographic reflection on power and expertise in an evolving student/staff partnership. The partnership was initiated as pedagogical co-design in the development and implementation of a peer-assisted learning programme. Through a process of critical reflection that linked our partnership experience with themes from relevant literature, we (the staff and student authors) became co-researchers of our practice. The evolution of the partnership provided a unique perspective from which to compare our experiences of power and expertise across both contexts. We characterised our pedagogical co-design partnership as a shift from the more traditional ‘power over’ model of delivery towards ‘power to empower’ where both student and staff partners had agency and voice. Key to this important transition was a shared philosophy of student-centred teaching. As the partnership transformed from co-teaching to co-researching we needed to re-negotiate power dynamics; while our different pathways had converged on a common view of student-centred learning, our research expertise remained disparate. We were able to negotiate this challenge by drawing on our existing relationship based on respect, reciprocity and responsibility, reinforcing views of partnership that value equality of opportunity and a focus on learning and process, rather than equality of contributions and outcomes.