Teachers pedagogical change framework: a diagnostic tool for changing teachers’ uses of emerging technologies

Abstract

One of the challenges facing education systems in general and the South African education system in particular is how to understand ways that teachers change from nonusers of technologies to becoming transformative teachers with technology. Despite numerous initiatives, not limited to training, workshops and so forth, to bring about sustained and wide-spread teacher change, transmission/delivery-based pedagogies and chalk-and-talk methods continue to dominate. While policy directives and professional development programmes aim to effect change in teachers' practice, they tend to fail to create sustainable change in teachers' practice of using emerging technologies (ETs). This paper reports on a study that sought to understand how teachers change their pedagogy of teaching with ETs. Using a Design-Based Research approach, the paper reports on the teachers' pedagogical change framework (Teaching Change Frame -TCF) as a diagnostic tool for locating and mapping how teachers' change. The TCF maps teachers' existing pedagogies and ET uses, and designs a pathway of a change process to effect the desired change. The TCF was tested and refined using data from 325 teachers drawn from rural, resource-constrained schools, urban, well-resourced schools and from preservice teaching students in a decontextualized environment. Following three iterations it was found that teachers' use of ETs in regulated, restrictive ways correlate with transmission pedagogies, unregulated, dispersed ways correlate with transformative pedagogies. The use of TCF not only located teaching pedagogies but also provide different pathways to ensure sustainable change. Findings emphasize the need for teachers to encourage learners to build/create/construct with ETs and for increased interaction in fostering nonregulated dispersed use of ETs.Since the fall of apartheid in 1994 South African education has changed significantly to transform what was a fundamentally unequal system. One of the most irrepressible challenges to

Emerging Technologies (ETs) in Education: A Systematic Review of the Literature Published between 2006 and 2016

“…Within qualitative research, the case study was the most widely used (e.g., [7]), followed by design-based research [36], then there is a great diversity in methodologies such as action research, literature review , phenomenological studies, ethnographic studies, among others, which were not used by more than 4 studies.…”

“…In approaches 35% focus on studying new teaching approaches and this way guide the incorporation of ET (e.g., [35]). 20% generate frames for integrating or adopting ETs (e.g., [36]). In methodology, 5% of the studies propose a methodology for the design, implementation and evaluation of resources (e.g., [37]) and 5% only design a methodology to include ET in the educational context (e.g., [38]).…”

Professional Learning Community (PLC)

“…In fact, there are unintended consequences of technology in the classroom (Coughlan, 2015;Harper & Milman, 2016). The ways teachers use technology make the difference between merely substituting traditional practices with digital forms and using technology to transform teaching by facilitating students' active construction of new understandings (Dolan, 2016;Groff & Mouza, 2008;Gundy & Berger, 2016;Lin, Wang, & Lin, 2012;Staples, Pugach & Himes, 2005;Tarling & Ng'ambi, 2016;Zhao et al, 2002).…”

Professional identity and the adoption of learning management systems

“…A professional identity perspective, which assumes adoption is shaped by professionals' sense-making and their role-related identities, demands a nuanced understanding of adoption. Current studies regard LMS adoption as the use of features 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 (Owens 2015;Tarling and Ng'ambi 2016). In the present study, we assess LMS adoption in three ways: as the number of features used, as a velicle for information delivery and as a means of facilitating learning.…”