Challenging the knowledge‐transfer orthodoxy: Knowledge co‐construction in technology‐enhanced learning for children with autism

Experimental intervention studies constitute the current dominant research designs in the autism education field. Such designs are based on a ‘knowledge‐transfer’ model of evidence‐based practice in which research is conducted by researchers, and is then ‘transferred’ to practitioners to enable them to implement evidence‐based interventions. While these research designs contribute important knowledge, they lead to a gap between what the research evidence may prescribe and what happens in practice, with a concomitant disparity between the priorities of researchers and practitioners. This paper discusses findings from the ESRC‐funded ‘SHAPE’ project, which adopted a different model of evidence‐based practice, focusing on knowledge co‐construction. Pupils (N = 8), teachers (N = 10), a speech and language therapist and a parent in three different school communities investigated creative ways in which children's social communication skills could be enhanced through technology use. Through a participatory methodology, digital stories were used as a method to enable engagement with the practical realities of the classroom and empower practitioners to construct and share their own authentic narratives. Participants articulated precise knowledge about the learning opportunities afforded to them and their pupils through quality interactions that were mediated by the technologies, as evidenced through digital stories. The SHAPE project shows that it is feasible to develop methodologies that enable genuine knowledge co‐construction with school practitioners, parents and pupils. Such co‐construction could offer realistic opportunities for pedagogical emancipation and innovation in evidence‐based practice as an alternative to the currently dominant and narrow model of knowledge transfer.     

Teachers' learning to facilitate high‐level student thinking: Impact of a video‐based professional development

Attaining the vision for science teaching and learning emphasized in the Framework for K‐12 Science Education and the next generation science standards (NGSS) will require major shifts in teaching practices in many science classrooms. As NGSS‐inspired cognitively demanding tasks begin to appear in more and more science classrooms, facilitating students' engagement in high‐level thinking as they work on these tasks will become an increasingly important instructional challenge to address. This study reports findings from a video‐based professional development effort (i.e., professional development [PD] that use video‐clips of instruction as the main artifact of practice to support teacher learning) to support teachers' learning to select cognitively demanding tasks and to support students' learning during the enactment of these tasks in ways that are aligned with the NGSS vision. Particularly, we focused on the NGSS's charge to get students to make sense of and deeply think about scientific ideas as students try to explain phenomena. Analyses of teachers' pre‐ and post‐PD instruction indicate that PD‐participants began to adopt instructional practices associated with facilitating these kinds of student thinking in their own classrooms. The study has implications for the design of video‐based professional development for science teachers who are learning to facilitate the NGSS vision in science classrooms.     

Dimensions of personalisation in technology‐enhanced learning: A framework and implications for design

Personalisation of learning is a recurring trend in our society, referred to in government speeches, popular media, conference and research papers and technological innovations. This latter aspect—of using personalisation in technology‐enhanced learning (TEL)—has promised much but has not always lived up to the claims made. Personalisation is often perceived to be a positive phenomenon, but it is often difficult to know how to implement it effectively within educational technology. In order to address this problem, we propose a framework for the analysis and creation of personalised TEL. This article outlines and explains this framework with examples from a series of case studies. The framework serves as a valuable resource in order to change or consolidate existing practice and suggests design guidelines for effective implementations of future personalised TEL.     

Assessing the crossdisciplinarity of technology‐enhanced learning with science overlay maps and diversity measures

This paper deals with the assessment of the crossdisciplinarity of technology‐enhanced learning (TEL). Based on a general discussion of the concept interdisciplinarity and a summary of the discussion in the field, two empirical methods from scientometrics are introduced and applied. Science overlay maps and the Rao‐Stirling diversity index are used to analyze the TEL field with a scientometric analysis. The science overlay maps show that a wide variety of disciplines contributes to research in the field. The analysis reveals that the field has been operating on a relatively high level of crossdisciplinarity in the last 10 years compared with six other fields of reference. Only in 2004 a decrease in the level of crossdisciplinarity could be identified.     

Measuring learning gain: Comparing anatomy drawing screencasts and paper‐based resources

The use of technology‐enhanced learning (TEL) resources is now a common tool across a variety of healthcare programs. Despite this popular approach to curriculum delivery there remains a paucity in empirical evidence that quantifies the change in learning gain. The aim of the study was to measure the changes in learning gain observed with anatomy drawing screencasts in comparison to a traditional paper‐based resource. Learning gain is a widely used term to describe the tangible changes in learning outcomes that have been achieved after a specific intervention. In regard to this study, a cohort of Year 2 medical students voluntarily participated and were randomly assigned to either a screencast or textbook group to compare changes in learning gain across resource type. Using a pre‐test/post‐test protocol, and a range of statistical analyses, the learning gain was calculated at three test points: immediate post‐test, 1‐week post‐test and 4‐week post‐test. Results at all test points revealed a significant increase in learning gain and large effect sizes for the screencast group compared to the textbook group. Possible reasons behind the difference in learning gain are explored by comparing the instructional design of both resources. Strengths and weaknesses of the study design are also considered. This work adds to the growing area of research that supports the effective design of TEL resources which are complimentary to the cognitive theory of multimedia learning to achieve both an effective and efficient learning resource for anatomical education. Anat Sci Educ 10: 307–316. © 2016 American Association of Anatomists.     

Community‐based literacy learning

Because reading and writing are social as well as personal activities, many recent curricular reforms that promote literacy development have focused on the relationship between the learner and the community. These reforms have been based on situated cognition theory, which holds that learning is intermeshed with the social and physical contexts of activity and that learning occurs through active participation in a community of practice. Yet there is no distinct orientation to the concept of community across the various educational programs. In fact, at least three different orientations to community appear in the literature on literacy reform: experiential community, classroom community, and anticipatory community. Both experiential and anticipatory community orientations situate literacy in non‐school settings that involve learners in ‘real‐life’ communities. The classroom community orientation attempts to reproduce the roles of mentor and apprentice found in non‐school communities; however, its claim to legitimacy of activity is based more on the learner’s manner of participation than in the activity itself.     

Toward an instructional design model based on learning objects

The present moment in the history of higher education requires setting strategies and specific action plans to guarantee a place in the highly competitive and demanding world scenario. The incorporation of information and communication technologies is one of the feasible paths to be considered, but this requires formulating proposals insuring appropriate use of said technologies seeking improvement of education quality. For this purpose, Universidad de La Sabana has developed an instructional design model based on learning objects.     

Performance technology—not a one‐size‐fits‐all profession

Note: This commentary is part of an ongoing dialogue that began in the October 2011 Performance Improvement special issue entitled Exploring a Universal Performance Model for HPT: Notes From the Field.     

The seductive details effect in technology‐delivered instruction

Seductive details are highly interesting information tangential to course objectives. The inclusion of seductive details generally harms performance on recall tests, but few studies have used multimedia training or investigated effects on performance on recognition tests or transfer tasks. We conducted two studies using computer‐based training, instructing college students to use either Excel or Word mail merge. Contrary to most prior results, we found no negative effect for seductive details on recognition tests, and we found a facilitative effect on transfer performance. We discuss implications for theories of learning and transfer, and practical implications for instructional design and delivery.     

Boundary interaction: Towards developing a mobile technology‐enabled science curriculum to integrate learning in the informal spaces

This paper explores the crossover between formal learning and learning in informal spaces supported by mobile technology, and proposes design principles for educators to carry out a science curriculum, namely Boundary Activity‐based Science Curriculum (BAbSC). The conceptualization of the boundary object, and the principles of boundary activity as the key elements to fuse the merits of learning in informal spaces with formal learning, are discussed and elaborated. The key elements of BAbSC are further articulated to provide the framework for curriculum design and development from a holistic perspective. The proposed principles and framework will reinforce the theoretical underpinnings of mobile technology‐enabled curriculum design and development, and can be used to guide teachers to implement curriculum in a more principle‐based and structured manner.     

Teachers’ beliefs, instructional behaviors, and students’ engagement in learning from texts with instructional pictures

This study investigated the relations between teachers’ pedagogical beliefs and students’ self-reported engagement in learning from texts with instructional pictures. Participants were the biology, geography, and German teachers of 46 classes (Grades 5-8) and their students. Teachers’ instructional behaviors and students’ engagement in learning from texts with instructional pictures were assessed by means of student ratings. Teachers’ beliefs about using texts with instructional pictures in their teaching were assessed by a self-report questionnaire. Results showed that the more teachers believed that students should be taught clear strategies on how to learn from texts with instructional pictures the more engagement was reported by their students. A multilevel mediation model showed that the association between teachers’ beliefs and students’ self-reported engagement was mediated by teachers’ perceived instructional behavior.     

Design‐based science and student learning

Design‐Based Science (DBS) is a pedagogy in which the goal of designing an artifact contextualizes all curricular activities. Design is viewed as a vehicle through which scientific knowledge and real‐world problem‐solving skills can be constructed. Following Anderson and Hogan's (1999) call to document the design of new science pedagogies, this goal of this article is twofold: (a) to describe DBS, and (b) to evaluate whether significant science knowledge was constructed during consecutive enactments of three DBS units. In this study, 92 students participated in the consecutive enactments of three different DBS units. The development of their scientific knowledge was assessed through posters and models constructed during the curricular enactments and by identical pre‐ and post‐instruction written tests. The posttests showed considerable gains compared with the pretests, while the models and posters show application of this newly constructed knowledge in solving a design problem. These positive results support efforts being made to restructure school science around inquiry‐based curricula in general and design‐based curricula in particular. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 41: 1081–1110, 2004     

Teachers' personal learning networks (PLNs): exploring the nature of self‐initiated professional learning online

In the field of Literacy Studies, online spaces have been recognised as providing many opportunities for spontaneous and self‐initiated learning. While some progress has been made in understanding these important learning experiences, little attention has been paid to teachers' self‐initiated professional learning. Contributing to the debates about learning online, this article explores three teachers' self‐initiated professional learning about digital technologies through their Personal Learning Networks. It reports the findings from a larger qualitative project and examines how the participants' digital literacy practices shaped their deliberate professional learning. The analysis identified several attributes of the participants' learning which, according to them, made professional learning appealing and effective: social, personalised, active and reciprocal, ongoing and blended. The article concludes by discussing how these findings can be used to draw out implications for teachers' professional learning.