Case Study In An “Abalar” Classroom (Galicia, Spain). The Spatial Dimension In The “One Laptop Per Child” Model
Author(s):
Conference:
ECER 2014
Format:
Paper

Session Information

16 SES 10 A, Implementation and Impact of ICT

Paper Session

Time:
2014-09-04
15:30-17:00
Room:
B011 Anfiteatro
Chair:
Greta Björk Gudmundsdottir

Contribution

There has recently been a big development and progress in the technological field, and this has affected all the vital spheres. Because of that, Education becomes a fundamental pillar to develop digital competences, which allow children become active and participative citizens in the modern society. Due to the technological imperative, which dominates the digital era, a big amount of proposals and politics have appeared to regulate the digital technologies used in education. In this sense, many countries have incorporated educational politics based on “One Laptop per Child” Model. This is the case of Spain, which in its 2006 Organic Law of Education (LOE) established, for the first time, the so-called “Handling Information and Digital Competence”. In 2009, the State promoted the program “Plan Escuela 2.0”, whose aim is implementing the 21st Century and digital classrooms with technological infrastructure and connectivity. The Autonomous Community of Galicia took this program, which is set it in the “Abalar” Project. So, a big amount of classrooms of different Galician schools are technologically immerse in the “One Laptop per Child” Model.
Beyond the operational and administrative analysis, that are also necessary, the situation of the laptops into the classrooms needs a reflection about the reality in each school and a contextual analysis (Casablancas, 2014).
With the aim to understand and describe the organizational classroom transformations that happen (or not), with the incorporation of the digital technologies in schools, to develop the digital competence, we wonder: what happens in our schools?
In this paper, we concretely focus on the organizational changes required by the incorporation of digital technologies in the curriculum and classrooms. These changes are based on the evidence that the new educational scene is distinguished for having in each classroom the technological devices (mini laptops, DIB –digital interactive board-, wireless internet access); instead of moving to a specific and shared classroom (the computer lab) as it used to be before the “Abalar” Project.
Escolano (2000: 183) remembers us that spatial and temporal dimensions, as essential issues in the scholar culture, “are not simply abstract diagrams or structures in which the scholar action is . The scholar space is not only a , where the institutional education is placed, that is to say, a scene designed from exclusive and formal premises, in which the agents that act in teaching-learning process are to execute a determinate assortment of actions”.
The classroom's space is by itself a discourse stablished in its materiality, organization, discipline, social control, symbols, representations and value system.
The schooll scene is an invisible  part of the curriculum. It is invisible because it is constituted as part of schooll shapes, they have always been there, as a common and natural experience that becomes familiar.  Its power is neither discussed nor considered, making it paradoxically more powerful  (Chartier, 2002).
In this space, historically constructed, the difficulty resides in incorporating the digital technologies, new devices for the school; and consequently, unknown devices for existing and familiar educational practices

The way in which the materials are organized in the classroom (desks, blackboard, tables…) give different and specific places to the teacher and pupils, and it  determines the social relations among them (Naranjo, 2011). That is why analyzing the space of the classroom suggests approaching  pupils and teachers, as active meaning producers, that contribute to the classroom space construction, as a social space.

Method

A qualitative methodology is proposed based in cases study with an ethnographic approach. Case study is used to bring towards the problem, because it is considered a suitable method to understand the existing dynamics and speeches in a singular context (Yin, 2003). The ethnographical approach in education with participant observation, based on taking part in the people’s daily life during a period of time, observing what happens, listening to what it is said, making questions and seeking all kind of data (Hammserley & Atkinson, 2005), allows rebuilding the daily interaction processes related with the space (classroom). The case study was the fifth course of one Galician primary school. The classroom had 15 pupils, 5 girls and 10 boys, aged between 10 and 12 years old. It was the first time they worked in the classroom with personal computers (laptops). The teacher, active from 1993, did not have any previous experience in this new modality of technologies integration in the school. The corpus of the data was by a field diary. 34-day observations, 5 sessions each one, have been thoroughly registered.13 class days have been registered in video and audio. 3 interviews (the teacher, the ITC school coordinator, and the headteacher), and 2 focus groups (with 6 pupils each) have also been realized. They have firstly been registered in audio and then transcribed.

Expected Outcomes

The teacher constantly rethought the spatial design of the classroom, principally about the pupils’ distribution, because the furniture and other objects were beforehand placed. The observations manifest the teacher’s preoccupation about her own practice in the reflection about spatial aspects to improve the learning processes. The classroom design is not ingenuous, but it fixes a social meaning which is thoroughly and naïvely shared, to be understood as a “natural” one (Naranjo, 2011). The design of the studied classroom, as it happens in other classrooms of the same and other schools, presents a delimited space for the academic work. But the designed scene to work the curricular content allows the entry to other environments. Since through the window of the classroom the people passing by and the village people can be observed and that reveals openness to the outside space and visibility. The observations reveal that the materiality of the classroom, as a physical and closed space, does not hamper that the teacher’s attitude opens the classroom doors to other non formal curricular learning experiences; without considering it a distraction, but an opportunity to open them to the community. Nevertheless, tensions between the imposed meanings by the historical construction of the scholar space, now routinized, and the particularities of the new devices, the digital technologies and the interaction of the actors with these, have been observed in the incorporation of the classroom design. The closet location, behind the teacher’s table, determines its access, under the surveillance of the teacher’s authority. The spatial distribution of the scene portrays a pedagogical teacher-centered model, as a result of both the own tradition of the materiality of the classroom and the teacher’s decisions. In the use of technologies, a pattern of teacher-centered model is maintained, communicating to the pupils the guidelines of her central position.

References

Casablancas, S. (2014). The matter of teacher training in 1-1 model: The case of Innovative schools, «Connecting equality» programme, Argentina. Revista Educar, vol. 50 (1), 103-120. Chartier, A. M. (2002). Um Dispositivo sem Autor. Cadernos e fichários na escola primária. Revista brasileira de história da educação, 3, 9-25. Yin R. K. (2003). Case study research: design and methods. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Escolano, A. (2000). Tiempos y espacios para La escuela. Ensayos históricos. Madrid: Biblioteca Nueva. Hammersley, M. y Atkinson P. (2005). Etnografía. Métodos de investigación. Barcelona, Paidós. Naranjo, G. (2011). La construcción social y local del espacio áulico en un grupo de escuela primaria. CPU-e, Revista de Investigación Educativa, 12, 2-27.

Author Information

Almudena Alonso Ferreiro (presenting / submitting)
University of Santiago de Compostela
Ames
University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain

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