Findings
When integrating technology into teaching and learning, teachers mindsets reflected four elements:
- “Mediation as Journey” The lesson is a journey; the destination is its objective.
- “Mediation as Adopting Roles” In the creation of the lesson, the teacher is the facilitator; however, the teacher is a guide on the journey
- “Mediation as Mutual Investment” Student and teacher are both partners and active participants; the teacher “positions” the student by asking the student to question, predict or hypothesize.
- “Mediation as Liberating or Domesticating” or “Mediation as Appropriation”
Teacher mindset is reflected in the “programmes of action” which ensure “access, engagement and membership” by students while using technology in liberating and domesticating ways through the zone of proximal development with the teacher as a guide.
Technology is liberating when:
- a visual, simulation or interactivity support student construction of knowledge
- it is used as a resource to build concepts to build knowledge
- students develop conceptual understanding of visual, simulation or interactivity
By using technology, students:
1. are encouraged to naturally question what is happening
2. better understand it
3. have a better understanding of the relationship between concepts
4. create knowledge rather than absorb it through transmission
Technology is domesticating when the focus is the computer technology tool and not “critically meaningful” engagement with content. This quote exemplifies the domesticating use of technology.
| “…I can incorporate computer technology into every lesson but maybe one or two minutes at the end of the lesson after we have learnt a certain concept I show them a photograph of tropism and I ask the students what is the stimulus….if I … show some pictures or movie clip from the Internet I actually use the computer technology during the question and answer sessions for example after teaching a certain topic. I will show the movie clips I will ask them questions, it will be meant to be like a revision of what they have learnt.” |
Domesticating examples of computer technology include:
- reviewing content through visuals
- drill and practice
Rather than focusing only on the technology, the participants/teachers in the study focused on the using the technology as a tool for teaching and learning. While the use of technology was both liberating and domesticating, it was used mainly to support a “person-centred” view of the use of technology in the classroom.
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Question 1: Describe your experiences, either liberating or domesticating, when integrating technology.
Question 2 "Learners may be actively engaged with the technology but they may not be actively engaged with the material in critically meaningful ways.” As educators, how do we move from “hands-on” to “minds-on” when using technology in schools?
Please click on Question hyperlink to take you to the page to contribute to this discussion.
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This study demonstrated the interrelationship between “mindsets, mediation and teaching actions.”
1. Teachers approached the use of technology with four interconnected mindset elements.
2. As a result, teaching situation reflected the idea of zone of proximal development.
3. This integrated the physical tool, the technology (image, simulation, interaction) and the mindsets.
4. The four elements of mindset “define the parameters of the zone of proximal development” within the context of the institutional culture of preparing for standardized tests.
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