Self‐directed reflective assessment for collective empowerment among pre‐service teachers

Abstract

This study investigated the role and process of self-directed reflective assessment (SDRA) enhanced by learning analytics to support pre-service teachers' (PTs') collective empowerment in a knowledge-building (KB) classroom. The participants were 43 secondyear PTs from a compulsory course taught by a teacher who had 2 years' teaching experience. A comparison class of 47 PTs, taught by the same teacher and studying the same topics in a regular KB environment, also participated. Statistical analysis revealed significant differences in participation and domain understanding between the experimental class and the comparison class. Qualitative tracing of the SDRA group's online discourse indicated that the PTs were empowered and that their collective empowerment increased gradually over time. Analysis of the PTs' prompt sheets revealed that analytic-supported SDRA helped the PTs engage in collective decision making to choose and judge promising ideas, and in collective synthesis and "rise-above" of ideas, thus helping them engage in high-level collective empowerment. The findings have important implications for the design of technology-rich environments as metacognitive tools to support learners' empowerment, and they shed light on how teachers can use such tools to engage learners in metacognitive practices to increase their empowerment.

Examining the Effects of Three Group-Level Metacognitive Scaffoldings on In-Service Teachers’ Knowledge Building

“…Among three GMSs, GTS had the worst effect on fostering interactional behavior and cognitive engagement. One reason might be that the taskoriented scaffolding reduced the complexity of the learning activities and pushed learners to complete subtasks, which discouraged the sustained development of collective ideas (Molenaar et al, 2014;Yang, Du, et al, 2020). In summary, GIS had the best effect on promoting question-proposing and perspective-proposing engagement through social interactions; GeS promoted the groups to explain their own perspectives rather than communicating perspectives with peers; and GTS had the worst effect.…”

“…To facilitate the knowledge-building process, various scaffoldings are designed, e.g., instructor-student interactions (van de Pol et al, 2010), structural or procedural scripts (Kollar et al, 2006) or computational or technological tools (e.g., Jeong & Hmelo-Silver, 2016). A series studies conducted by Yang et al (2016;Yang, Chen, et al, 2020;Yang, Du, et al, 2020) reveal that metacognitive scaffoldings have potential to help learners engage in productive knowledge building. Moving this research strand forward, the current research designs different group-level metacognitive scaffolds to help students engage in successful knowledge building process.…”

Constructivist educational technology: Re‐examining the foundations and state of the literature

“…how pre-service teachers' self-reflective thinking transformed their language (Yang, Du, Ouyang, van Aalst, & Sun, 2020). Indeed, language bears all the hallmarks of information technology itself as abstraction and reproduction (Englebart, 1962;Vygotsky, 1986).…”

“…Along with Yang et al (2020), we contend that a narrow focus on individual learning outcomes has occluded the ways that technology itself is a form of social learning; that our relationship to technology bears a sedimentary history of human cultural development Vygotsky (1978). Erstwhile, we have examined factors at the individual level when we should also be examining factors at the group level such as social learning as it manifests in online communities (Brinton et al, 2018), or more broadly, the social impacts of technology uptake itself.…”

“…Constructivist educational technology research examines the affective dimension and can be used in diversity education for influencing attitudes and beliefs, as examined by Harley, Liu, Ahn, Lajoie, and Grace (2020), even for influencing ways of knowing or awareness, including self‐conception, such as using inquiry‐based learning to increase interest in STEM fields (Wang & Chiang, 2020). Such change can be captured by discourse methods, for example, by analyzing social learning artifacts on Knowledge Forum to study how pre‐service teachers’ self‐reflective thinking transformed their language (Yang, Du, Ouyang, van Aalst, & Sun, 2020). Indeed, language bears all the hallmarks of information technology itself as abstraction and reproduction (Englebart, 1962; Vygotsky, 1986).…”