ONL171 Topic 4: Design for blended reflection

Course development and revision seem to be constant processes in higher education, not least so in teacher education, where governmental decrees frequently call for change. This is not in itself a bad notion. Higher education courses need to respond to changing circumstances, but they need to change thoughtfully and with measure. The question, as always, is what exactly is the impetus for change and how it is brought about. In the following I will address one of the most challenging aspects of teacher education: bridging the gap between theory and practice (Beauchamp, 2014).

My focus will be on the potential role played by features of blended learning in an otherwise campus-based program. I understand blended in this context to include digital resources of various kinds that enable above all asynchronous communication and reflection to take place (cf Brindley, Blaschke & Walti, 2009).

Studies in teacher education have repeatedly shown that teacher students’ cognitions about core pedagogical features are very hard to influence and change (Bronkhorst, L. H, et al., 2014). The apprenticeship of observation is strong. But there are also studies that indicate that with appropriate scaffolding a reflective process in the Deweyan sense can be induced (Gelfuso & Dennis, 2014; Bendtsen, 2016). What would be needed is a set of “knowledgeable others” in the form of university tutors and certain clear principles for teaching the subject area in question. These features are most likely in place in all teacher education programs. However, the study in question also points to the usefulness of video recorded lessons that serve both as a memory repository but also, and more importantly, as a lever for the teacher students’ cognitions.

Here is the plan for implementing this.

Students are asked to video record a couple of lessons that they are teaching, and then edit these videos down to one shorter video (no more than 10 minutes long). They pick out instances of dissonance, that is, instances in their own teaching that did not unfold according to plan.

This video forms the basis for

1. a descriptive summary of what is happening in the selected sequences,
2. the explicit formulation of the dissonance, and
3. suggested possible courses of action that the teacher student could have taken to deal with the situation.

The edited video, the verbal description of the identified instances of dissonance, and the suggested courses of action are uploaded to share with the university tutor and eventually the group of peer students.

The teacher student will have a conference with the university tutor. The aim of this conference is to analyse the teacher student’s verbal reports and for the tutor to probe into the reflective process of the teacher student, and discuss the suggested courses of action. This will be done with recourse to teaching theory, and pedagogical content knowledge.

The teacher student then writes a report on the conference, where particular emphasis is placed on how the teacher student perceives the instances of dissonance after the session with the university tutor. After this the whole group assembles and a joint presentation and discussion of the various instances of dissonance are discussed. Similarities and differences in types of dissonance are noted as are the various suggested courses of action.

The teacher student writes a final report where his/her own instances of dissonance are revisited and reanalysed. In addition to this each teacher student also selects one instance of dissonance presented by another student and suggests courses of action to deal with that.

The final product is uploaded on a shared platform for everyone to read and comment. In subsequent practicum periods these documents are revisited and form the basis for further collection of dissonance that are then dealt with in a similar way. By repeating these procedures and adding new material and insights to the previous observations, the teacher student will not only extend his/her previous knowledge but also be able to revisit and reanalyze previous experiences in light of current knowledge and insights.

With this suggested plan several technology features have been worked into the overall pedagogical design. The digital components of the design enables students, school supervisors and tutors to engage in asynchronous reflection. This caters for both individual/cognitive activity and learning in a social context. The video recording, and above all, the editing of the filmed lessons, enable the teacher student to reflect on the lessons in question, extract appropriate sequences and add commentaries to them. Since the videos and commentaries are shared with other participants, a community of practice and inquiry (Wenger, 2010) is gradually built up.

Face-to-face conferences and seminars provide valuable “on-the-spot” comments and sharing of experiences, and in the joint discussions of the experiences of several teacher students, a basis for synthesization of knowledge is made possible. Together with this, the chain of online asynchronous reflective commenting makes it possible for all stakeholders to engage in a learning process that keeps a certain momentum while still opens up for considerations that can be formulated without immediate time pressure.

References:

Bendtsen, M. (2016). Becoming and Being a Language Teacher. Evolving Cognitions in the Transition from Student to Teacher. Diss. ‘Turku: Åbo Akademi University Press.

Brindley, J., Blaschke, L. M., & Walti, C. (2009). Creating effective collaborative learning groups in an online environment. The International Review of Research in Open and distance Learning 10(3).

Bronkhorst, L. H., Koster, B., Meijer, P. C., Woldman, N., & Vermunt, J. D. (2014). Exploring student teachers’ resistance to teacher education pedagogies. Teaching and Teacher Education 40: 73-82.

Gelfuso, A. & Dennis, D. V. (2014). Getting reflection off the page: The challenges of developing support structures for pre-service teacher reflection. Teaching and Teacher Education 38: 1-11.

Wenger, E. (2010). Communities of practice and social learning systems: the career of a concept. In Social learning systems and communities of practice (pp. 179-198). London: Springer.

Online Networked Learning: Lessons learnt and future practice

One of the most important lessons learnt for me personally has been to truly realize the learning power of collaborative work using a range of digital resources. One of the most challenging but also rewarding aspects of the course has been to decide on the mode of co-operation in the PBL activities and the subsequent issue of sharing the results.

What has dawned on me is how important task conception is within the PBL group. During the first couple of themes we went fairly quickly into the more detailed questions and issues without having thought through and discussed the underlying aspects of the type of knowledge that the topic was supposed to probe into. Bouncing on the surface of the issues gave us the illusion that we solved the tasks fairly quickly, but in later topics, when the same features returned in a new and more complex guise, we realized that we had not probed the issues in the best possible manner.

Perhaps this is quite natural, and perhaps it is a necessary part of collaborative learning. Coming together as more or less complete strangers, we gradually, and surprisingly quickly, built a sense of trust between ourselves, but before this trust was in place and had begun to be articulated in the form of probing questions, it was probably too challenging a task to pause and ask critical questions.

Our PBL group, to my mind, found a constructive way of dealing with trust building. Right from the start we had fruitful and quite open discussions about the topics, but then we also arranged further work in pairs, and then in smaller groups. Finally we opted for full collaborative work (Topic 4), and this was a very positive experience. However, we would probably not have been able to do this as well right from the starr.

What role have the various digital tools played in this process? Here I think it is very important to consider the function of various types of tools, and at what point in the process a specific tool is employed. Between us we had a fairly good grasp of tools, and our facilitator and co-facilitator also came up with suggestions. Some, such as Google Doc and AdobeConnect, were basically “given” within the framework of the course. However, we never really analysed the function and the potential of the tools we used, at least not in a systematic way. What consequences this might have had is difficult to speculate about, and to my mind we did choose rather effective tools, but I have a feeling that we would have benefitted from a more thorough discussion of the tools themselves, and more importantly, the properties of the tools in relation to the task we needed to complete.

When conducting such an analysis, it would be appropriate to make a distinction between work process and the product to be presented. To what extent are tools for work processes also suitable for presentation? In other words, for each topic, analyses along the following dimensions would be called for:

• Task analysis
• Input analysis: what kind of content are we dealing with? Scientific/scholarly, opinion, experience-based, etc?
• Own knowledge and experience: What do we know already?
• Processing of content: How do we best organize the input and knowledge provided?
• Output analysis: What are we expected to do? How complex and “open” is the outcome?
• Process analysis
• Input processing and organization
• Individual and collaborative work
• Output format
• Tools analysis
• Tools for processing
• Tools for collaboration
• Tools for presentation

With growing task understanding and familiarity of the respective tools, and with the growing knowledge we had of each other (very important!), it gradually became feasible to work with one and the same tool for both process and product. A good example of this is Prezi, where we collaboratively composed an outline for the last content topic, and then subsequently added content, reviewed each other’s content and eventually agreed on the final product. Prezi is a powerful tool for presentation but I’m not quite sure that it is generally considered as a tool for active collaboration; However, because it is shared it is possible to work both synchronously and asynchronously on content development.

The digital tools that we encountered and used in this course have certainly helped us along, and have in some cases (online collaboration, joint construction of text) been fundamental to the whole endeavour, but they would not have helped unless some vital pedagogical and group dynamic features had been present. The problem-based approach to learning has been one of those vital features. By directing us to a certain work flow we were forced to slow down our decision-making process. This most likely led to more mature considerations and decisions not only on content but also on design.

All in all, I think what I bring with me from this course is the fascinating creative potential that can be unleashed when certain factors are present:

• a common sense of direction and goal
• an openness to learning with and from each other
• a process orientation without losing sight of the goal
• the inherent fun in experimenting with digital tools in a serious, professional and supportive environment