There has been increasing interest in pedagogic theories and processes for the use of technology for learning. In part this may be seen as a reaction to the perception that despite considerable investments in new technology for learning in many countries, technology enhanced learning has failed to have the expected impact on learning processes. It may also be in part a reaction to changing demands and expectations from learners and also to changing demands in competences for learners (see previous section).
The renewed focus on pedagogy has been accompanied by a movement towards student centred education or a movement from teaching to learning. This has led both to discussions over new roles for teachers and attempts to redefine learning.
Coffield (2008) criticises limited understanding of learning as related to the transmission and assimilation of knowledge and skills. He himself uses the term ‘teaching and learning’ and he offers a number of definitions of pedagogy. He cites John Dewey (1938) as saying “learning, or as he preferred to call it ‘the educative process’ amounts to the ‘severe discipline’ of subjecting our experience ‘to the tests of intelligent development and direction’, so that we keep growing intellectually and morally” (p.114).
Cofflield (2008) also refers to Etienne Wenger who argued that what differentiates learning from mere doing is that “learning – whatever form it takes – changes who we are by changing our ability to participate, to belong, to negotiate meaning” (1998, p226).
Much of the research into pedagogy for using technology for learning advocates a move toward constructivist approaches. Vocational education has traditionally been based on behaviourist pedagogies (Doolittle and Camp, 1999). Such approaches were in turn predicated on an ideological view of the role of vocational education in teaching students “the right work and moral habits.” Despite the movement towards information processing and constructivist theories of pedagogy, Doolittle and Camp say “The single most pressing impediment to fundamental theoretical change in career and technical education has been the requirement that the profession provide trained workers for occupations based on definable worker competency lists and to document the success of those workers through placement, follow-up and reporting. That regulatory and structural constraint has tended to militate against a fundamental break from the historical behaviorist perspective (Dobbins, 1999)...as long as the local curriculum derives from worker task lists, is delivered using incremental teacher-directed instruction, and is evaluated based on criterion referenced measures, behaviorism remains the de-facto theoretical foundation.”
and even more so...
The essential core of constructivism is that learners actively construct their own knowledge and meaning from their experiences. Doolittle and Camp look at different ideas of constructivist theory including cognitive constructivism, social constructivism and radical constructivism.
They put forward eight principles as providing the essence of constructivist pedagogy, emphasizing the student's role in knowledge acquisition through experience, puzzlement, reflection, and construction. Pedagogy “is based on the dynamic interplay of mind and culture, knowledge and meaning, and reality and experience.”
“Learning should take place in authentic and real-world environments…
Learning should involve social negotiation and mediation…
Content and skills should be made relevant to the learner…
Content and skills should be understood within the framework of the learner’s prior knowledge…
Students should be assessed formatively, serving to inform future learning experiences…
Students should be encouraged to become self-regulatory, self-mediated, and self-aware…
Teachers serve primarily as guides and facilitators of learning, not instructors…
Teachers should provide for and encourage multiple perspectives and representations of content.”
@ page 27
The importance of tutors knowing about the use of e-learning appropriate to their own subjects was underlined. Where tutors were not aware of how to use information and learning technology within their subject they made only limited or inappropriate use of e-learning. Finlayson et al emphasise it is not enough for teachers to know how to put materials onto a virtual learning enviornment, but they also need to know how to “design the materials and the accompanying student tasks to support the learners in developing both their understanding and their autonomy” (p.53).
but wait now we need to...
IfL (2010 (a)) has stated the “dual professionalism of its members means that teachers and trainers are both experts in their subject, with current vocational skills and knowledge, and in teaching and training methods, kept up to date through highly individualised professional learning.”
If we overlay this perspective with the use of technology for learning, this would suggest a three-fold orientation to using technology in practice for teaching and learning in vocational education.
First, the general use of technology as a tool for teaching and learning, second the use of technology within vocational and subject didactics or pedagogy, but third is the use of technology within the work processes for the vocational area.
A review... what a neat concept....
The issue of vocational pedagogies is complex. IfL (2010 (b)) have called on the forthcoming Wolf Review to “make the case for an independent inquiry into vocational pedagogy and establish the basis for comprehensive research into vocational teaching and training, drawing on the experience of expert teachers and trainers.”
PLEs no not please!!
Based on these ideas of collaborative learning and social networks within communities of practice, the notion of Personal Learning Environments (PLEs) is being put forward as an approach to the development of e-learning tools (Wilson et al, 2006) no longer focused on integrated learning platforms such as VLEs or course management systems. In contrast, these PLEs are made-up of a collection of loosely coupled tools, including web 2.0 technologies, used for working, learning, reflection and collaboration with others. PLEs can be seen as the spaces in which people interact and communicate and whose ultimate result is learning and the development of collective know-how (Attwell, 2010 (a)). A PLE can use social software for informal learning which is learner driven, problem-based and motivated by interest – not as a process triggered by a single learning provider, but as a continuing activity.
who and what is learning for/about?
Critical to such an understanding is a basic paradigm shift from learners engaging with institutional provision and procedures to the institution engaging with the learner (Attwell, 2007 (a)). This would imply that institutions have to recognise the new cultures of learning and networking and engage Left hand side page by Lifelong Learning UK 38 38
with those cultures. Yet that involves profound change in institutional practice and procedures and institutional organisation and in curriculum organisation and pedagogic approach.
There is a growing body of literature on the development and impact of PLEs, personal learning networks and social software for learning (see the PLE2010 Conference Website). Interestingly, much of this literature focuses on pedagogic approaches to learning, rather than educational technology per se.
into the mist
Facer (ibid) says that rather than try to develop a single blueprint for dealing with change we should rather develop a resilient education system based on diversity to deal with the different challenges of an uncertain future. But such diversity “will emerge only if educators, researchers and communities are empowered to develop localised or novel responses to socio-technical change – including developing new approaches to curriculum, to assessment, to the workforce and governance, as well as to pedagogy.”
This approach, if adopted, would have major implications for the training of teachers in the use of new technologies for teaching and learning. Firstly, it means a move towards an understanding of the social impact of technologies and of socio-technical developments, rather than a focus on technology per se.
Secondly, it places a high value on creativity and willingness to explore, model and experiment with new pedagogic approaches. LSIS (2010) have pointed out that creativity and innovation are important for successful leadership and management in the learning and skills sector during a recession.
However, in this respect competences cannot be based on prescribed outcomes but rather in innovation in process. LSIS (2010) report that “with the heavy focus on accredited provision over recent years the skills of curriculum design and development have been less evident than would have been the case a decade or so ago”. A movement towards creativity and innovation in the training of teachers and trainers is required along with freedom to develop more localised and novel responses to the socio-technical change, rather than a standardised curricula response. Staff will need new skills to deal with a more varied range of learners, to deliver in new sectors or qualifications (LSIS, 2010).
A champion arises
Vogel (2010) talks about the need for engagement “conceived as motivation - enthusiasm, interest and ongoing commitment - on the part of an academic teacher to explore the potential of technologies in their practice” (p.10)
Vogel quotes Land (2001) who summarised these kinds of person-oriented approach as:
“romantic (ecological humanist): concerned with personal development, growth and well-being of individual academics within the organisation
Pedagogic Approaches to Using Technology for Learning - Literature Review 45
interpretive-hermeneutic: working towards new shared insights and practice through a dialectic approach of intelligent conversation
reflective practitioner: fostering a culture of self- or mutually critical reflection on the part of colleagues in order to achieve continuous improvement” (Vogel, p.10).
Vogel says “good practice in e-learning is context-specific and impossible to define” (p.11). She is concerned that professional development practices have been driven by institutional and technological concerns. Instead she would prefer Argyis and Schon’s (1974) approach to overcoming the divide between espoused theories or beliefs and theories in use or practice:
"Educating students under the conditions that we are suggesting requires competent teachers at the forefront of their field - teachers who are secure enough to recognize and not be threatened by the lack of consensus about competent practice" (p.174-180).
Vogel refers to Browne et al (2008) who undertook a survey of technology enhanced e-learning in higher education in the UK. They found that where there was less extensive use of technology-enhanced learning tools than the institutional norm, this was often because of the perceived irrelevance of technology enhanced learning to the learning and teaching approach.
Interestingly, where there was more extensive use than the norm, this was primarily attributed to the presence of a champion, who could represent the value of technology enhanced learning to colleagues.
If you want learner centred teachers and trainers who are creative and flexible and responsive and infinitely adaptable to student needs then you have to put those teachers to work in a system which fosters it and is creative and flexible and responsive and adaptable itself.
But what we have is a system which is increasingly bureaucratic and rigid and output driven and obsessed with these damn competencies and we put teachers in a straight jacket and then say to teachers ‘go-be-creative’. It’s nonsense. Teachers and trainers need more freedom to operate not more straightjackets.”
education/training requirements
For example Daly, Pachler and Pelletier (2009) claimed that there was
“An over-emphasis on skills training in itself at the expense of deep understanding and application of skills to developing learning and teaching. This is linked to a perceived need to address a skills ‘deficit’ in teachers, rather than to develop a focus on pedagogy.”
What rhetoric is telling us
“Twenty five volunteer participants selected six digital tools from a suite of institutional and Web 2.0 tools assembled by the LTEU...and devised their own personal development plans for the coming year. The LTEU provided group workshops or demonstrations, with homework and a follow-up session. All but the most experienced self-reported significant gains in digital literacy and many reported easily applying what they learnt to their practice” (p.15).
In terms of practice, the technical skills approach seems to predominate although most of the rhetoric advocates concentrating on the pedagogy.
so how ?
“A structured, rapid and iterative problem-based group activity to introduce academics in the departments to Web 2.0 technologies as follows:
Preliminary stage: a needs-analysis questionnaire to help narrow down the technologies to be introduced
Stage 1: in a ten minute presentation, a technology is briefly “passed in front of the eyes” of academics
Stage 2: in groups they then brainstorm how these might used it in their own contexts, write succinct ideas on post-it notes and stick them onto the wall. The process is repeated with a number of technologies.
Stage 3: academics look at each others' posted ideas, and use stickers to prioritise them.
Stage 4: there and then if possible, the Learning Technology Adviser summarises the priorities, proposes an action plan to bring them about, and encourages the group to nominate a contact for each project” (p.40).
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