Teaching and learning with new technology - a tough nut to crack (original) (raw)
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Editorial: Emerging technologies and changing learning/teaching practices
British Journal of Educational Technology, 2013
This special issue is being published at a time when emerging technologies (ETs) have become ubiquitous, and many educators in higher education are trialling different ways of using these technologies to respond to varying teaching and learning challenges (see Sharples et al, 2012 for some examples of this). These challenges include concerns about the quality and outcomes of teaching and learning in a climate of decreasing resources with a simultaneous increase in massification and diversity of the student population. The widening of participation to a diverse group of students thus brings with it contextual constraints and concerns about social inclusion that require addressing physical and epistemological access (Burke, 2012; Hassan & Nussbaum, 2012; Morrow, 2009). Higher educators are being pressurised to ensure success and throughput of students, while their classes are increasing in size and resources are diminishing, which may unwittingly reinforce exclusion and inequities (Bozalek & Boughey, 2012; Iverson, 2007). In addition to these issues that need addressing, it has to be borne in mind that access to technology, though ubiquitous, will not necessarily bring about transformative pedagogical practices (Veletsianos, 2011). Bates and Sangrà (2011, p 4) are of the opinion that radical change is needed in the design and delivery of teaching if higher education institutions (HEIs) are to be "fit for purpose" for the 21st century. Our thesis is that fitness for purpose is an outcome of a careful balance between educational goals, learning outcomes, design of learning activities and appropriation of technologies to mediate the accomplishment of the task. This requires imaginative and creative use of ETs by both students and educators in order to bridge the current pedagogical expectations sandwiched between contextual constraints and concerns. This, of course, also presumes that we understand the meaning of ETs.
How New Technologies Have (and Have Not) Changed Teaching and Learning in Schools
Information technologies have reshaped teaching and learning in schools, but often not in ways anticipated by technology proponents. This paper proposes a contrast between technologies for learning and technologies for learners to explain how technologies influence teaching and learning in and out of schools. Schools have made significant use of assessment and instructional technologies that help promote learning for all students, whereas technologies for learners, such as mobile devices, video games, and social networking sites, are typically excluded from school contexts. The paper considers how these contrasting models of technology use will come to shape schools and learning in a pluralistic society. (
EMERGING TECHNOLOGY IN REDEFINING THE ROLE OF TEACHERS
The advent of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has brought out many paradigm shifts in the Teaching-learning process. But the approach taken by many teachers in universities today is simply a result of the way they were taught. Typically university education has been a place to learn theoretical knowledge devoid of context. The roles which are expected to be played by teachers are The Process Facilitator, The Advisor-Counselor, The Assessor, The Researcher, The Manager-Administrator, The Designer, The Technologist And The Content Facilitator. Teachers should promote active learning thus Numerous instructional strategies may be considered when implementing the principles of active learning and these are Anchored Instruction, Collaborative learning, Problem-based learning, Cognitive apprenticeships and Case-based instruction. The university teacher can no longer confine his attention to his own private study and to the narrow world of his own student. With the new conception of the wider duties and responsibilities, the duties and responsibilities of university teacher have also expanded
Implications of learning technologies in the teaching-learning process: a paradigm shift
Journal of the Instructional Technology Council (JITC), 2024
This theoretical paper explores the implications of learning technologies in education and advocates for a paradigm shift in the teaching-learning process.It highlights the challenges faced by traditional educational systems in meeting the needs of digital-native students. The paper emphasizes the integration of technology into the curriculum to create meaningful and authentic learning experiences that align with students' digital fluency. It advocates for a transformative educational system that aligns with the postmodern paradigm, empowering students to become active agents in their learning by incorporating their prior experiences, cultural and social contexts, and essential competencies.The author highlights the importance of effectively integrating Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) into the curriculum, emphasizing the need for deep, memorable, and transferable learning experiences. She advocates for a curriculum that considers students' societal and cultural aspects, moving away from standardized processes towards individualized education. It promotes the development of critical thinking skills and lifelong learning to prepare students for the challenges of 21st-century society. Furthermore, the article discusses the need to rethink the curricular structure, prioritizing individual student needs as autonomous social beings. It is a call for a paradigm shift in education, integrating learning technologies to create meaningful, authentic, and socially relevant learning experiences that empower students for resilience and adaptability in the rapidly evolving 21st-century society.
The Role of New Technologies in Advancing Education and Learning
It is generally agreed that education is an inseparable component of solutions to many contemporary problems such as the population explosion and the climate crisis. In the transition towards economies increasingly based on knowledge creation and dissemination, educational institutions are urged to change, pressed by a sense of competitive urgency and the fear of being left behind emerging knowledge-based economies. The term pedagogy – the art or science of being a teacher – refers nowadays not only to strategies and styles of instruction, but also to the facilitation and management of sustainable transformations, whether individual, social, structural or institutional. The paper seeks to provide some modest and certainly partial answers to questions about the educational challenges that can be solved with technology. Technologies are not magic wands, but they can contribute to the dissemination, scaling up, 'thingification' and acceleration of human intentions, using flexible modes of delivery, smart integration strategies, and effective policies allowing increased access to quality education. We show that the nature and quality of learning will depend on the epistemological orientations, and structure of the usage of technology.
Education Thinking, 2023
This review of the literature examines research reports on learning to teach with technology between 2013 and 2019 to illuminate the characteristics of the field at multiple levels of granularity and to call attention to what is missing. We ask the question: What does the overarching paradigm of the field of research on learning to teach with technology look like? Using a mixed paradigmatic and data science-based analysis that involved qualitatively coding the methodologies, purposes, and approaches in the manuscripts and applying a hierarchical clustering of principal components algorithm, five clusters emerged on a two-dimensional axis that centered on exploring the teacher pipeline versus social and individual experiences on one axis and behaviors and practices versus attitudes and beliefs on the other. The field was found to be tightly centralized, and clusters overlapped and intersected with methods and outcomes bundled together in a milieu buffeted by neoliberal logics and a sense of techno-utopianism to largely support default theories around technology as a “fix” and as an end in itself to build the teacher workforce. This review finds several critical areas underrepresented, such as time- and context-bound ethnographic studies, approaches that center on anti-oppressive critical media literacy, understanding the ways technology can bridge the classroom with families and communities, and learning to teach with technology for equity and inclusion to support the sustainability and development of identities, communities, and a more democratic society.
Pushing beyond the comfort zone: Bridging the gap between technology and pedagogy
2004
The use of online pedagogy within universities is increasing. However, this expansion is not accompanied by an associated increase in investment in lecturers' pedagogy to assist them in the transition. At present, lecturers lack the tools to describe or illustrate the meaning they try to make of this transition between online pedagogy and technology. This paper describes the changing relationship between pedagogy and technology that a group of academic staff demonstrated in a one year Action Research project. Diagrams, produced by the lecturers, demonstrated a tension between the two continua of pedagogy and technology. This way of representing their views is presented as a potential tool for assisting lecturers to construct meaning as they continue to adopt technology in their online teaching, while also providing a benchmark for their online pedagogy in order to ensure quality teaching in higher education.
Towards a Critical Theory of Educational Technology
Online Submission, 2007
The purpose of this study is to offer a critical consideration of current initiatives, and common sense discourses, forcing educators to adopt and integrate educational technology on a large scale. This study argues that it is time-in the relative absence of a critical debate-to ask questions that should precede a wholesale adoption of technology. It will first provide various definitions of technology including determinist and instrumentalist approaches. Then it will move towards a critical theory of technology in which the discussion is broadened to a critique of promises of technology drawing on technopositivism as a marketed ideology. The study cites research-computer-assisted language learning in particular-to show whether the implementation of information technologies has been able to match their promises. It calls for critical awareness of how technology is impacting education and at the same time for the engagement of teachers in exploring the relevant political, economic, and cultural contexts that help shape classroom learning and teaching.