Intimations Of Success: Studying The Signs From Student Teacher Pre-course Online Workspace

Author(s):

Kathy Wright(presenting / submitting)

Conference:

ECER 2014

Network:

10. Teacher Education Research

Format:

Paper

Session Information

10 SES 07 C, ICT in Teacher Education Research

Paper Session

Time:

2014-09-03

17:15-18:45

Room:

B226 Sala de Aulas

Chair:

Rasa Nedzinskaitė

Contribution

This paper reports on a study of online pre-course activity of two successive cohorts of intending secondary student teachers which used a case study approach to investigate the following research questions:

- What did high participation reveal about contributors and did their online activity provide indicators of future high achievement on their ITE programme?

The research was undertaken in the context of secondary ITE programmes within a post 1992 university in an urban setting in the UK. The online activity of two cohorts, each of 250 intending student teachers, was studied (2009-2011) and was informed by literature from the fields of online learning in higher education and of teacher effectiveness.

A collaborative Web 2.0 platform was created as a counter to the ‘present past’ which is still according to Fullan and Langworthy (2014) ‘the dominant model of education…. in most places today.’ This enabled anywhere, anytime collaboration and creativity between future student teachers. Augar et al (2004) noted the particular strength of this type of collaborative learning is the promotion of peer to peer interaction and the facilitation of knowledge sharing amongst learners. Such interaction can be democratic and empowering (Leuf & Cunningham, 2001). The workspace technology used comprised of wiki pages and a comment forum. Participation in the workspace was entirely voluntary and no academic credit was awarded for contributing to the site.

The potential contribution of social media to learning on pre-service initial teacher education (ITE) programmes is still underdeveloped and is consequently under-researched. This study aims to link two distinct fields of research – research into online participation and collaborative learning with research into the attributes of effective teachers with the aim of finding out if the characteristics of teachers with the highest impact on pupil learning can already be observed prior to an ITE programme, as well as further developed on the ITE programme. Teacher educators across Europe, as reported at the Project Nexus European Conference January 2014, Essen, Germany, are under intense pressure from politicians to develop ever more effective teachers who have a positive impact on their students’ achievement. This small scale study aims to investigate whether collaborative online spaces for student teachers can contribute useful information to allow teacher educators to make progress in this endeavour.

The study is firmly located within a social constructivist paradigm (Vygotsky 1986, Pritchard 2009). The research draws on a multi-strategy design (Robson 2011) selecting appropriate methods from both interpretivist and positivist methodology, containing features of flexible design research described by Robson (2011) in that the design emerged and developed during data collection.

In this study the positivist approach to research design and methodology was unlikely, on its own, to uncover the possible ‘predictor’ features of effective teaching being demonstrated by future student teachers through online participation. Equally the adoption of a solely interpretivist approach would not uncover whether there was significant evidence to support a hypothesis that those who participate the most were more likely to achieve a high grade in practical teaching. The study can be described as deductivist defined by Bryman (2008:13) as a theory which generates ‘hypotheses that can be tested.’

Method

The mixed methods study used both quantitative and qualitative data from workspace activity, participant surveys, individual student records of ITE selection data and on course feedback forms, focus groups and interviews. Statistical data was collected from the workspace to identify the most frequent contributors to the site and also the type of engagements undertaken and then end of programme achievement data was studied in order to find out if there was any correlation between data sets. This helped identify potential individual case studies. A case study methodology was used centering on analysis of an ‘artefact’, that is the online workspace, which had been replicated in two successive years. The relationships between the pedagogy, the context and the technology are complex and intertwined. As Yin (2003:4) points out ‘the richness of the context means that the study cannot rely on a single data collection method but will likely need to use multiple sources of evidence.’ A study of selection for ITE records and lesson observation feedback forms was also undertaken to discover the attributes identified by teacher educators during selection interviews and in lesson feedback. Subsequently an analysis of pre-course postings by the two case study student teachers was undertaken using a framework for the classification and indicators of social presence developed by Garrison and Anderson (2009) as well as an analysis of the engagement undertaken (editing, uploading, creating new pages, posting comments).

Expected Outcomes

When records of the most active students online were matched with end of course data, this indicated a correlation between high activity and high levels of achievement in the ITE practicum. The most active contributor to the online space in each of the two cohorts achieved Grade 1 (Outstanding) in their teaching at the end of the programme and, interestingly, had not been identified at selection as potentially ‘outstanding.’ Patterns of participation in both cohorts showed a ‘power-law distribution’ with a small number of students making more contributions than the rest of the cohort. Interestingly the reasons for the high levels of participation by the students did not appear in this study to be dependent on the ICT skills of the participants or on their prior experience of using Web 2.0 tools (such as social networking). Those students who chose to create pages, upload content, as well as adding comments were statistically far more likely to achieve a Grade 1, suggesting that those who edit are demonstrating characteristics such as ‘risk taking’, innovation and problem solving which are most closely associated with highly effective teaching (Swainston 2008). Before the ITE programme had started the case study students displayed skilful verbal and non-verbal communication, empathy, commitment to collaboration as well as persistence and resilience in the face of difficulties in their online participation. These characteristics are in line with the findings on the attributes of the most effective teachers (Hay McBer 2000, Walsh 2001, Day et al 2006). The findings suggest that analysis of pre-course activity online can provide teacher educators with rich data which could be used to target interventions which may support student teachers to develop the skills they need to become high quality practitioners in the practicum elements of their programmes and in their future teaching careers.

References

Adcock, L., & Bolick, C. (2011) Web 2.0 tools and the evolving pedagogy of teacher education. Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education, 11(2). Retrieved from http://www.citejournal.org/vol11/iss2/currentpractice/article1.cfm Augar, N., Raitman, R. & and Zhou, W. (2004) Teaching and learning online with wikis. 21st ASCILITE Conference, Australia. Retrieved from http://www.ascilite.org.au/conferences/perth04/procs/augar.html Day, C., Stobart, G., Sammons, P., Kington, A., Gu, Q., Smees, R. and Mujaba, T., 2006. Variations in Teachers' Work, Lives and Effectiveness! Final report for the VITAE Project. London: Department for Education and Skills. Fullan, M. & Langworthy, M. (2014) A Rich Seam: How New Pedagogies find Deep Learning. London: Pearson. Garrison, D.R. & Anderson, T. (2009) E-Learning in the 21st Century: A Framework for Research and Practice, New York: RoutledgeFalmer. Gunawardena, C.N. & Zittle, F.J.,(1997): Social presence as a predictor of satisfaction within a computer‐mediated conferencing environment, American Journal of Distance Education, 11:3, 8-26 Hammana D., Gosselin K., Romano J, Bunuan R. (2010) Using possible-selves theory to understand the identity development of new teachers. Teaching and Teacher Education Volume 26, Issue 7 pp1349-1361 Hay McBer (2000), Research into teacher effectiveness: A model of teacher effectiveness report. Department for Education and Employment. http://www.dfee.gov.uk/teachingreforms/mcber/. Hodkinson, P. & Hodkinson, H. (2001) ‘The Strengths and Limitations of Case Study Research’, Making an Impact on Policy and Practice: Learning and Skills Development Agency conference. Cambridge, 5-7 December 2001. Leeds: University of Leeds. Leuf, B. and Cunningham, W. (2001) The Wiki Way: Quick collaboration on the web, Addison-Wesley Professional: Boston, MA Pritchard, A. (2009) Ways of learning: Learning theories and learning styles in the classroom London: Routledge (Chapter 3 p 117) Swainston, T. (2008) Effective Teachers in Secondary Schools Network Continuum: London Walsh K. (2001) Teacher Certification reconsidered: Stumbling for Quality. The Abell Foundation, Baltimore: USA. Yin, R. (2002) Case Study Research: Design and Methods. Newbury Park: SAGE

Author Information

Kathy Wright (presenting / submitting)

Higher Education Academy

Education

York

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