Contribution
Description: Instructional planning is one of the most central tasks in all teaching professions, mainly because it is the process by which teachers link curriculum to learning. Given the importance of instructional planning, educational practitioners as well as researchers agree that preservice teachers should concern themselves with learning this process. However, although this learning requirement is widely accepted, there exists a substantial lack of research with respect to the questions of what planning knowledge novice teachers actually need and how this knowledge could be developed. These questions are at the outset of my research project. The purpose of the project is to describe the development and gradual refinement of an instructional model for teaching planning knowledge to student teachers in the domain of economic and business education. This instructional model is premised on contemporary cognitive and activity theoretical conceptualizations of learning and instruction, which view learning as a constructive, situated and socially mediated activity. Along with scholars in teacher cognition and expertise development in the teaching professions (e.g. Clark & Yinger, 1987; Schön 1987) the model further assumes that instructional planning may be seen as a kind of design process and that design knowledge is most effectively promoted by coaching interventions.
Methodology: The research rests upon a developmental approach (e.g. Richey & Nelson 1996), which serves as a framework for the study of teaching planning knowledge within a master's level university course. This course is part of a university teacher education program for teachers in economic and business schools at the University of Mannheim (Germany). The course incorporates authentic planning tasks, the modeling of planning expertise, individual feedback on students' responses to the planning tasks, mini-lectures and reflective activities. Course delivery evolved as a collaborative endeavour of two instructors over 4 iterations and included 64 student teachers. The formative research approach is intended to explore how students' learning with the above mentioned instructional elements proceeds and to what extent they influence the development of planning knowledge. Moreover, it should help to answer the questions of what specific difficulties arise in learning how to plan and how these difficulties could be remedied through further course improvement. In order to sustain model construction, each course delivery is analyzed and evaluated in terms of underlying design decisions, course implementation and impact of the course on students' (objective and subjective) learning success. Data sources include:- working protocols and e-mails, which record discussions among course instructors,- students' responses to the authentic planning tasks, which they proceeded during and after course completion,- students' responses to the reflection tasks (e.g. a concept mapping task to indicate changes in students' learning concepts),- a final test on conceptual and procedural planning tools, and- a questionnaire to measure students' perceptions of their learning and the course.
Conclusions: Since data analysis activities are not yet concluded and model development is still under way, it is not possible at the moment to draw any final conclusions or to formulate ultimate recommendations. However, as first evaluations of students' learning outcomes and perceptions indicate, it is the combination of authentic planning tasks and individual feedback that is especially helpful for promoting learning how to plan an effective learning environment. This preliminary result seems to support the assumption that a coaching strategy may be considered as a promising instructional approach to foster the development of basic planning knowledge. Besides a deeper exploration of the impact of authentic learning tasks and feedback, further data analysis activities will be particularly concerned with the impact of the remaining instructional elements (i.e. modeling, reflection tasks, lecturettes) and with the specific difficulties of students with less successful learning outcomes.
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