Planning and Doing: Two Sides of the Same Coin? A Study Involving Teachers in Early Childhood Education
Author(s):
Elena Ramírez (presenting / submitting) Inés Rodríguez (presenting) Jorge Martín Maria Clemente
Conference:
ECER 2013
Format:
Paper

Session Information

27 SES 11 A, Learning Environments, Teacher Beliefs, and Educational Effectiveness

Paper Session

Time:
2013-09-12
17:15-18:45
Room:
A-204
Chair:
Kirsti Klette

Contribution

The work we are presenting here is part of a research project on teaching practices involving ICTs during early childhood education. Among other aspects, this work considers how the teachers taking part in this project view ICTs and how they include them in their classroom practices. Several strategies have been designed with a view to analysing these aspects, some of which are related to the decisions teachers take in their pre-class preparation, while others are linked to an analysis of classroom practices within the real contexts in which they take place. We base ourselves on the notion that the attitudes and approaches to education that the teachers adopt are closely linked, and these, in turn, have a significant impact on how they perform in class. This enables us to link aspects such as the views teachers may have regarding teaching technologies and the approaches they adopt in the design or programming of their practical work and, in turn, how they manage their teaching activities in a real class situation.

There are, accordingly, studies referring to “teacher effectiveness” in the incorporation of technological resources that confirm the close links between teachers’ knowledge and their practices: Gobbo & Girardi (2001), for example, focus on the connection between teachers’ epistemological beliefs and their work with ICTs. Hennessy, Ruthven & Brindley (2005) study teachers’ views on the integration of ICTs according to their scientific specialities. Other studies on teaching practices with ICTs during the stage of schooling in question here, such as the study by Miller & Olson (1994), show how the introduction of computer applications in a class of six-year-old pupils responds to the consistency between those applications and a teacher’s overall educational approach, as well as to the appropriate dovetailing of the teaching procedures using the computers available and a teacher’s normal classroom routines. Furthermore, the cases featured in the work by Gimbert & Cristol (2004) describe the efforts made by several teachers in early childhood schooling to use different technological resources in the classroom, always with the aim of bringing their classroom practices in line with the curriculum’s requirements and, in turn, with the educational possibilities of each digital resource.

Therefore, by studying the teachers’ views on the role ICTs play in planning and teaching the curriculum, we aim to develop the following objectives:

1. Describe the views on curricular planning and ICTs expressed by the teachers involved in the project.

2. Analyse these views and their relationship with the activity patterns of the real classroom practices of those same teachers when they incorporate the use of ICTs.

Method

The research we are now introducing has adopted an intensive study model of real practices with ICTs (a total of 9 teachers at 6 different schools). According to the nature of the subject of study, several different techniques have been designed for data collection: A) Regarding objective 1, we use a semi-structured interview with questions exploring the teacher’s views on teaching technologies and the planning of the learning process to be applied on an immediate base in their classes. Audio recordings were made of these interviews, which were held only moments before the teachers went into class. B) Regarding objective 2, we video-recorded classes lasting around 60 minutes in which a teacher incorporated the use of ICTs. In total, we have recorded 42 classroom sessions over the three years of the research, with their prior interviews. The interviews were classified by analysing the content of the teachers’ answers (Loughran, Mulhall & Berry 2004; Donnelly, McGarr & O’Reilly, 2011). In turn, the recordings were studied by applying a system for the analysis of the categories of classroom practices, with some of the results being available for consultation in Ramírez, Clemente, Cañedo & Martín (2012) or Clemente, Ramírez, Orgaz & Martín (2011).

Expected Outcomes

EXPECTED OUTCOMES/RESULTS Although the work is still ongoing, a preview may be made of certain trends in the data obtained so far: 1. Although the views on ICTs expressed by the teachers involved in this project reflect diverse approaches (as an instrument for digital literacy, as an opportunity for professional practice…), in this study the identification of ICTs with the notion of “teaching medium or material” is the one that appears most often. 2. ICTs do not alter the way the teachers involved in the study plan their classroom practices. They are not the mainstay of the decision-making process. Quite the opposite, in fact, as activities and methodology are the main focus of prior planning. Neither do ICTs have a clear impact on the usual ways of planning practical assessment. 3. Real practices with ICTs respond to different patterns of work in each teacher, although they are fairly constant in each case. These practices respond largely to prior planning, above all regarding the activities foreseen, although the correspondence between planning and doing is not always the same in all the cases analysed.

References

Clemente, M., Ramírez, E., Orgaz, B. & Martín, J. (2011). Recursos digitales y prácticas de clase: esquemas de acción del profesorado de Educación Infantil. Revista de Educación, 356, 211-232. Donnelly, D., McGarr, O. & O’Reilly, J. (2011). A framework for teachers’ integration of ICT into their classroom practice. Computers & Education, 57, 1469-1483. doi: 10.1016/j.compedu.2011.02.014. Gimbert, B. & Cristol, D. (2004). Teaching curriculum with technology: Enhancing children’s technological competence during Early Childhood. Early Childhood Education Journal 31(3), 207-216. Gobbo, C. & Girardi, M. (2001). Teachers’ beliefs and integration of information and communications technology in Italian schools. Journal of Information Technology for Teacher Education, 10 (1/2), 63-86. Hennessy, S., Ruthven, K. y Brindley, S. (2005). Teacher perspectives on integrating ICT into subject teaching: commitment, constraints, caution and change. Journal of curriculum studies, 37 (2), 155-192. Loughran, J., Mulhall, P. & Berry, A. (2004). In Search of Pedagogical Content Knowledge in Science: Developing Ways of Articulating and Documenting Proffesional Practice. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 41 (4), 370-391. Miller, L. & Olson, J. (1994). Putting the computer in its place: a study of teaching with technology. Journal of curriculum studies, 26 (2), 121-141. Ramírez, E., Clemente, M., Cañedo, I. & Martín, J. (2012). Incorporating Internet resources into classroom practice: Secondary school teacher action plans. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 28(8), 1433-1450.

Author Information

Elena Ramírez (presenting / submitting)
University of Salamanca
Salamanca
Inés Rodríguez (presenting)
University of Salamanca, Spain
University of Salamanca, Spain
University of Salamanca, Spain

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