Karen Borgnakke, professor dr. pæd.
University of Copenhagen e-mail Karenb@hum.ku.dk
& karen@comart.dk
ECER 2006: Transforming Knowledge, European Conference on Educational Research, 11.-16.
September, university of Geneva
Paper: Network 19, Ethnography
Karen Borgnakke
The paper is based on fieldwork in IT-classes in upper secondary schools. The paper is furthermore based on experiences from the CLASP projects, Borgnakke, 2004, 2005, Jeffrey 2006.
The fieldwork covered the different school levels and show how the school management and teachers create it-based strategies in the light of the professional background and how students create strategies for IT-learning in a dynamic spectrum between being Newcomers and Old-timers.
The paper shows how schools are facing the challenge of integrate IT in the teaching process in order to create new routines and learning strategies. Furthermore, the context of school and youth culture recalls the basic conflicts and dynamic contrasts of learning, such as desire/duty, playing/learning, leisure (‘for leisure use’)/school (‘for school use’). In empirical sense the paper discuss the practical consequences and different types of learning strategies.
In the light of the political context
In the light of the political context the pedagogical strategies can be recognized both in terms of international education policy and in terms of national reforms. In the Nordic countries we can see almost the same political discourse and tendencies, though the reform at the upper secondary level both in Norway and Sweden already has been implemented, Beach (2004), Beach & Dovemark
(2004), Dovemark (2004) Moldenhawer 2005. Discourse analysis of national policies and programmes show firstly, the demands of new strategies for learning, teaching and evaluation, secondly the changing discourse: from elite to mass education. Thirdly the programme shows how
IT-based strategies represent the innovative and creative aspects of school development (Borgnakke
2004, 2006).
IT-based strategies and the pedagogical agenda are rooted in project pedagogy and the principles have links to Jean Piaget, Lev Vygotsky, John Dewey as a starting point for an ongoing process of rethinking and renewal (Borgnakke 1996, 2005). In the practical context project pedagogy involve
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both project work and a learning process, described as creative learning connected to ICT and new learning strategies. My fieldwork therefore can be conceptualized both in terms of the progressive tradition and experiences from the seventeenth (Adrian et al 1980) and in terms of the newest experiences from practical development work called The Virtual School or The Electronic School.
The Electronic School – A Newcomer or an Old-timer?
My fieldwork in The Electronic School is mapping out the newest tendencies, showing how the ictideas, technologies and strategies are working in practice. But my fieldwork was also about basic issues related to the social and cultural environment. ‘My school’ was placed in a suburb south of
Copenhagen. The school has a multi-ethnic profile. The classes observed - and therefore the classes in focus - are the two IT-classes: 1.g (age 16-17) and 3.g (age 18-19). The observations, material collected and interviews were organized in phases shifting between school levels and between the two classes as follows: a) one week day to day observation in 1.g. , b) one week with visiting different areas of the school and conducting interviews, leader/teachers/students from the classes observed c) one week day-to-day observation with a 3.g. d) one week interviewing teachers and students from the classes observed, e) one week visiting 1.g class observing activities chosen by the students as examples of new learning strategies/chosen by the teachers as examples of new teaching practice, f) one week visiting the 3.g class observing activities chosen by students and teachers as examples of how to get a routine out of development work and new learning strategies g) three days going back to interview the two teachers in 1.g and one teacher in 3.g. The theme: Looking back on teaching strategies in IT class. Interview with group of students on the same theme: Looking back on learning strategies in IT classes.
On this background the empirical data cover both the three school levels as well as the process of teaching and learning. The observations and interviews show here how the students in 1.g classes create strategies for IT learning as Newcomers, while learning strategies in 3.g class are rather recreated by the students as Old-timers.
The distinction between Newcomers and Old-timers is inspired of Lave and Wenger, 1991, and can also be seen in the light of the concept from Dreyfus: from novice to expert. In empirical sense, though, the distinction and descriptions derives from most of all my former fieldwork and the detailed analysis of student strategies and learning processes (Borgnakke 1996). In this analysis there is a very precise link to the fact that the newest and youngest students are the strangers, coming to the field for the first time, discovering the official and hidden agenda, feeling the rules
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and every day life routine in the learning context etc. These groups of students literally speaking are
Newcomers and act like it. The same analytical points go for the group of elder students, tutors, supervisors and the group of teachers. In the context these groups are Old-timers, with experiences from the field and surrounded with expectations of acting like the experienced part. And my observations and interview show indeed how. In addition: when the comparative dimensions between the school levels are taking in account there is a kind of extra point to the empirical analysis
According to strategies on an organizational level The Electronic School is already an experienced part of the actual programme of reform as well as being an experienced part of the pedagogical development of creative teaching and learning. With programmes and reforms of The Gymnasium started 1999 and the new reform implemented 2005 as the broader context the schools own development work and strategies are described in a number of strategy papers and evaluative reports. Connected to IT classes e.g. 'Stik mig en bærbar' (Give me a Lab Top) about six years experiences with IT teaching and learning, 2003. According to the school as a progressive school participating in the pedagogical movements from the seventies the school even has a story to tell as the experienced part, or as Old-timers in the field. Connected to these points the narrative dimension can be seen very clearly in written materials from the school as well in interview with head of the school and with group of teachers. An ongoing story telling is build and interpreted by metaphors as on one hand Newcomers in the field of elite education in the local community with
“non familiarity” to the tradition of Gymnasium. On the other hand the story telling is about all the experiences with school development on difficult conditions, interpreted by Old-timers facing e.g. new schools as Newcomers.
It is therefore a central point that my fieldwork identifies the pedagogical tendencies and practical development at all three levels in terms of how the experienced part, Old-timers in practice are facing new tendencies and new forms of ict, media and youth culture.
Old-timers facing new tendencies and challenges
The pedagogical challenge is, according to the head of the school, that all school levels are to be looked upon as being “in practical transition” not occupied in “fancy experiments” but rather in
“everyday school life and experience”. As the head says:
“We no longer take part in those huge and fancy experiments. It is more important for us that we are involved in ‘the new tendencies’ like IT learning on an everyday basis and on ordinary conditions”.
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As regards the background, the head talks about the local conditions in terms of non-familiarity to the educational tradition connected to the traditional Gymnasium. The head talks about the start in the seventies:
“There were only three cultural institutions in this area: The Church, The Gymnasium and The
Library. In a sense that is somehow a starting point for building up a school. Then there is a long period of time, where you not only recognized all the new people coming into the school, you also need to work with the people.This shows in the fact that we, maybe innocently, started to create a new pedagogy to hold those people. I mean it is not these kinds of people you can read about in the textbooks. I think this pedagogical development is similar to one described in Italy as ‘the integrating background’. You use the people living here and you need to use their background to make education and teaching. You use their qualifications, their way of thinking, life forms and cultural background.”
For the school believes that it needs to reflect on resources both according to ‘The White’ and ‘The
Black’ students to hold the students and their different cultural background. As the head says, there is always a risk of the tendency “The White will escape, when impacts from the Black become more obvious”. And therefore, as the head continues:
“We offer activities and make sure that The White do not escape”.
The offer of IT classes, where every student gets his own laptop has to be seen in this light. As are the processes of implementation of IT based strategies and enhancing teachers’ qualifications. As the head says:
“The question I have been asked the most from my principal colleagues is ‘How do you do it, because we cannot get our teachers on board?’ I say, I don’t know, but they probably got an offer they couldn’t refuse! And I must say that it strikes all my colleagues as surprising that it is possibly to fire up such an old teacher staff. It was not even difficult, maybe because we decided just not to accept the patterns for applying from ‘Black Trash’ students - we simply would not accept that - at that's why we were forced to do something.”
In this sense the school and the teaching staff was ‘forced’ to be a learning organization with a practical policy for in service training courses in IT. As the head says:
“Our policy was that everyone on the staff should learn IT for use in their teaching. We did not want an ‘A and B team’ - therefore all the teachers have been through courses in IT. We are proud that we don’t have a B-team – or at least that it's a small one.”
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Another member of the management group adds:
“We have educated one another. Those who started in 1997, did so with a training course as distance learning. They became super users and afterwards created courses for the rest of the teachers.”
According to the head the strategy was not an experiment with ‘fancy words and goal setting’ and as he says:
“To be safe in the school means that ‘no one runs away screaming’ when we send The Lap Top
Project in the air. At the same time it was accepted that in service training not dealing with IT was closed down. You could not go to a course about ‘French verbs’. “
This strategy: The staff strategy created the feeling among the teachers of being safe. For the school it was both a mark of identity and a challenge to cope with the ‘scarf’ environment and the electronic environment’.
The key question for the challenge was: How can lap tops be used in the process of teaching and learning, so as to make practical sense. At this point the process of implementation was teacherdirected. To grasp the characteristic results, empirical materials from the practical school levels must be taking in account. Interviews with teachers and analysis on the staff level show how they talk about their own way of learning to manage IT tools and projects. Observations of teachers' instruction and interactions with the students show how they create the new IT management and its products as a part of the new routine for teaching in a classroom. But the observations also show how more public activities are created in the light of a new school and in the context of youth culture. Classes and students perform literally speaking, not in a classroom but on a stage and show results from work with this new technology and with film production.
It-based strategies
The fieldwork has identified strategies in classroom activities as well as activities in the group and project work. In the analysis the it-based strategies are described as new, but also like a variations of the well known ideal types: the classic lecture, traditional classroom teaching, group work and project work. Against this background my analysis shows how the lap top is integrated in traditional teaching strategies. A simple example would be history or Danish lessons where the textbook is downloaded and therefore exists as a teaching text on the computer. In these situations the teaching strategy is traditional but at the same time optimised by the variety of textbook materials. On the other end of the spectrum, against the background of group work and project work, my analyses
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show how teacher and students are experimenting with the new possibilities. One example could be
"The Middle Ages Project" - a virtual inter-Nordic IT project (on medieval work, culture, religion etc.) The 1.g students worked in groups together with teacher and students from Island and Norway.
The project work results observed are covered as ‘A Power Point collection’ and a ‘Net
Newspaper’. My analysis of this course is concentrated on the challenges relating to 1) team teaching on the internet - organizational challenges and difficulties, 2) taking ownership and group leadership - among the students/among the learners, 3) a Power Point collection - new aesthetics norms and standards for learning products.
The Danish teachers’ own evaluations confirm these challenges. The teachers even talked about them as “the new demands” and “the new teacher skills” related to optimising the teachers’ collaborative skills and experiences. The teachers underlined the technical and practical issues connected to the project and its character of virtuality. But against the same virtual background it also became clearer that physical presence was needed. As one of the teachers stressed:
“It is an absolute necessity that EACH AND EVERY ONE in the group of participating teachers meet physically and plans the project in details.”
Related to developing the role as supervisor close to the process, I note the same need to underline the teacher’s presence. The teacher evaluation even mentioned the general need for a support teacher
“The optimal form would be a support teacher in the intensive writing/supervising course. One of the ideas behind the written work in Danish is precisely that the students should learn by being corrected and supervised during the process instead of after it”.
The same demands for being present during the process work for the students. During the project these show up as the primary requirement to be a good communicator who is available. According to the teachers, the students succeeded, as was stated in the evaluation:
“Difficulties we have overcome:
The language barrier – three different languages. It has been positive to see the students
COMMUNICATE - not necessarily correctly in linguistic terms, but nevertheless very effective. “
The virtual project was extremely advanced by being a new kind of IT based project work. On one hand the project demands creativity and experience and makes demands which exceed what the
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group of teachers and 1.g students were able to give at the time. On the other hand this shortfall provides the challenge.
The next example is on the contrary a result of implementation and adaptation to better known teaching strategies.
The observation of teaching and learning among the student in 3.g has to be regarded as observation of the IT class’s members as Old-timers. The students know the routine in the IT class from the inside. A reconstruction based on day-to-day observation and interviews with teacher and students shows the new routines in a very concrete manner. There are several important empirical findings, but the reconstruction could be concentrated on the fact and the spirit from the experienced group of students: "We are beyond…" (as the 3.g class and groups of students told me) "the phase with impression and using the computer all the time", and are also "beyond the childish surfing on the internet, private chat and hidden play sessions during the lesson". The students are doing ‘IT based learning’ and using the computer in a mix with other classroom activities, oral presentations and discussions, where the interesting part in an empirical sense, too, is ‘the mix’. This mix means literally speaking that the ideal types as the whole spectra are used though in short versions. There is, for example, the classic lecture as short as 15 minutes, in which the teacher in Danish gives a sketch of Romanticism as idea and culture history, then moves to the main text of the day: tales from the great story-teller, Hans Christian Andersen. The students have the Andersen texts and their own work on the computer, and their homework pops up on the screens. In this situation we see the teacher in action as classroom teacher and Lap top coordinator. Twenty minutes later there is some mini group work, with students showing Power Point and Actant models on the screen.
Learning strategies - between the scholastic culture and youth culture
As described in Borgnakke 1996, 2005, my former fieldwork and case studies covers the whole spectrum of strategies, including analysis of learning processes. My analysis show how the cardinal point in the process represents not only challenges but also basic difficulties related to project work and problem based learning. According to the learners this concerns a dilemma between the reproductive and the independent productive and creative aspects of their learning process.
Furthermore it relates to conflicts between building up subject- and topic-oriented basic knowledge and to the development of the project oriented reflection and problem consciousness. This distinction between learners’ reproduction and production on the one hand and between learners’ building up basic knowledge/problem consciousness on the other refers to the basis of
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conceptualising learning in the scholastic context. Therefore the actual fieldwork, covering the different learning situations in It-classes, can also provide examples of phases with reproduction and phases with creative self-production. The examples will range from simple reproduction to sophisticated creation, and we can take these quite literally. An example of simple reproduction in
The Middle Ages project was for instance, the situation where two students are working and both sitting with the computer in front of them. When one says: “We need a little bit more about power, the church and maybe the buildings...” the other student is already on the net accessing a textdocument in their common sources, copying and pasting a part of a text, saying: “Yeah, we have it here. Look! Are you satisfied?”
This was a course in reproduction pure and simple. What was popping up on the screen was ‘a copy’. The students did not quote they reproduced the text book as their own text. But at the same time it was characteristic that there were also phases with very sophisticated creativity. Connected to create Power Point collection, for instance, it was basically a matter of building up new basic knowledge (facts and knowledge about the Middle Ages). It was also a matter of problem consciousness, developing meta-reflections about the common theme and the project as a whole, and about communication on the net with the other Nordic members. That means that even the basic dilemma between reproduction and (self-) production still has impact, we also need to see the dilemma as a dynamic and driving force.
Furthermore my fieldwork recalls other basic conflicts and a dynamic contrast between the scholastic culture and the youth culture. It will be contrast basically conceptualised like desire/duty, play/learning, leisure (‘for leisure use’)/ school (‘for school use’). The interesting part is both the conflict or the concept in it self and the practical consequences. Teacher and students refer to the contrast and put it into words, getting closer to the important issues. This is the case, for example, when one of the student in a long conversation with me about his use of the personal computer, summarises his statement:
“It is also about the kind of feeling, where you want to go to school. I enjoy my time in the school more when we, as in the IT classes, have our own computers. It is more fun, pure and simple”.
If students in the Gymnasium, having been in scholastic cultures and school settings their whole lives, and then all of a sudden enjoy their school time more, one must acknowledge that the use of computers in schools is much more than a matter of text, screen and a printer. But the words
‘desire’, ‘want to’, ‘enjoy’ or ‘fun’ do not delete the (co-)existence of duty and the perspective of
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duty. My analysis therefore show how the basic point is strictly related to the conflict and the dynamic between desire/duty, play/learning, leisure (and ‘for leisure use’)/ school (and ‘for school use’).
The progression under observation demands concrete examples of creativity in learning processes.
The best examples are related to the experienced IT students from 3.g and their way of using the lap tops as Old-timers, in practice knowing what they are doing. In my close up analysis (Borgnakke
2006) I give a range of examples from learning situation as examples from formal scholastic and scheduled creative learning. Nevertheless I had also important examples of the unexpected creativity. The unexpected is like non-formal learning or like learning called ‘unusual learning process’ (Ziehe & Stubenrauch) and my example here was learning through a strike. The students had occupied the school and closed the door in a very real and symbolic manner. There are chairs blocking the main door, and on a sign is written “Teachers no admittance”, as I describe in the field note, Borgnakke 2004, 2006. I also describe how the students organise, motivated and talk about the strike. As the students tell me: “It is all against the cuts. We are striking for the teachers and the school, too, not only for our own benefit.”
As I suggest in my analysis the strike as unexpected and unusually process of learning represent situations where the students in all senses take ownership, control, create and make their own decision. Furthermore the students in both a concrete and symbolic manner are gatekeepers based on rules and cultural patterns coming both from the political and the youth cultural area. One must have the students' permission and from the start the students denied anybody looking like an adult teacher access to the school. “Teachers no admittance” as the sign on the door said. At the same time the indoor localities became crowded with people and a number of activities are going to start.
There is a plenary discussion and group work, different organisational possibilities and activities have to be planned, directed and carried out.
The strike and all the following activities are days without teachers and teaching. But the days is not without learning, it is in fact ‘learning by doing’. My field notes also provide many references to life skills and student development. I write, for instance, about and use words such as
‘organisational skills’ or the young students' ‘media skills’. Likewise the field notes expressed situations with the active group of 1.g students, The Newcomers in terms like “They are growing before my eyes.”
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To come that close to the situation as ‘the act of learning’ is thought-provoking. The intensive fieldwork concentrates here on the student perspective. On this background it becomes clearer what it means to focus on learning strategies as the learners’ strategy. Or as I will summarise below what it means in empirical sense to focus on and identify, not the schools, not the teachers, but the students strategy.
The learners or the students’ strategies
In the empirical analysis we can pin point common issues and main characteristics by recalling the conceptualisation of surface and deep approaches to learning, Roger Saljö, Ference Marton (1976,
1988), Paul Ramsden (1999). In the context of upper secondary school this concept will indeed be recognised e.g. as conventional orientation towards curriculum and assignments where students confirm them selves to short answers, superficial text reproduction, not coming beyond the levels of pure description. And one recognises deep approaches as absents when the teacher criticises the missing analysis, and as present, when the student get good feedback for showing good interpretation skills giving the text close up analysis etc. In this sense it is corresponding with what teachers, fx in the subject of Danish and Sociology talks about as the main demands, namely that the good assignment has three levels or dimensions1) description 2) analysis 3) perspective. The level divided conception is further more corresponding with conceptions of fx Blooms taxonomy, as latest documented in a project about Conceptions of Progression. Progression and the levels for analyzing and perspective demand so to speak deep strategies.
As already mentioned I can contribute with further description of the impact for the it-based strategies. At the same time I need to go back to a more original point to the empirical studies of strategies, namely as studies on the students own, self made or by own choices, strategies. To capture this empirical perspective my former fieldwork is a proper basis (Borgnakke 1996, 2005).
The fieldwork and the analysis have given deep insight in the course of learning and in the learner’s strategies. In this paper I will confirm my self to the main point that the student develop strategies both in sub cultural senses as counter strategies and in an official sense. In the characteristic below I will refer to a diverse background according to subjects, levels, gender, age.
Project oriented strategies – topic/problem oriented strategies (observed by the young students at
Aalborg University, 1.års Newcomers
).
The analysis show (Borgnakke 1996, bd. 2: Del IV and V) how the students develop strategies
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related to the project work and to what I find as the cardinal point of the course. The analysis also show two different strategies among the students called respectively the problem oriented and the topic oriented strategy.
The problem-oriented strategy contained the following elements: choice of theme and definition of the problem area, fieldwork involving interview and investigation of relevant material.
The work process was characterized by a relatively high degree of collective discussions, and, relatively little division of labour. Activities were planned in common, and there was an ongoing discussion and analysis of the materials collected. Further more the problem-oriented strategy included untraditional ways of presenting their findings. The student also prepared the final evaluation, and the basic type of discourse was discussion, with only a few instances of direct probing or questioning by the examiners.
To sum up, the problem-oriented strategy was recognized as a strategy for going out into the wide world to investigate and interview, and through collective discussion and written analysis coming back ending with discussion again.
The "topic-oriented" strategy represent a where the student has chosen a general theme or a broad topic area - such as the Northern Ireland, the home rule movement on Greenland - which, the student knew very little about. The student had no special focus of interest and made no attempt to define a problem. The work process was characterized by relatively long reading phases, punctuated by reproduction of what had been read. In this way their work process was a question of retelling, and largely reproductive.
Their process also involved a relatively sharp division of labor - in fact one might ask whether it was group work at all. This meant that the group report was an edited summary of various individual contributions. Nor were they able to discuss or analyze each other's contributions to any great extent.
The groups chose the written form as the sole way of presenting their work, and made no special preparations for the actual conduct or organization of the evaluation. The evaluation process was dominated by traditional patterns of examination discourse, with the examiners testing the knowledge of the examinees, and very little free discussion.
To sum it up: the topic-oriented strategy included a starting point with a broad topic and text-books on the topic, division of labor, individual home work, studying and writing, a report characterized by individual chapters and finally an evaluation characterized by traditional examinations discourse.
Facing two different strategies in the same learning context one must ask how the difference arises and how the impact of the strategies can be conceptualized in learning terms, in social terms, and in terms of symbolic meaning. I the analysis I followed the complex and show further more how the
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topic-oriented strategy is directly confronted with the official principals and goal for project work
(Borgnakke 1996, 2003). Samtidig synliggør den problem- og emneorienterede strategi et nyt fælles problem: hvordan takler man, fagligt set, spørgsmålet om basisviden?
Experienced based strategies (observed among mature students at Open University, JÅU)
The analysis of my fieldwork at the Open University in Jutland documents how the mature students as participators in the new experiment in adult education in practice transformed the project organised framework and develop experienced based learning strategies (Borgnakke 1985, 1996).
When the students made their choices and gave their justification there were clearly references to their own life experiences from the sphere of work and the sphere of family. It was a strategy I could recognize among male students as well as among female students. The female student’s framework and course of learning, though, mirrored the experiences and showed consequences more clearly also at the personal level (Borgnakke 1987). At the same time the students’ orientation towards the life spheres did raise the basic question about the relationship between “Education – teaching – experience- learning” and between “identity – sociality - gender”.
My analysis show how the experience based strategy refer to the societal spheres and the every day lifes, but refer also to the problem of the strategy: how can one, according to the academic range of subjects and frameworks, cope with the experiences and how can one build up the analytical distance? At the same time the challenge is visible as a need to build up analytical competences and experience based knowledge.
The profession-oriented strategies (Observed among senior students at Copenhagen Business
School and The Technical University in Denmark, DTU):
My analysis are focusing on experience of project work at DTU’s Mechanical Engineering line and
CBSs Marketing Economics line, where it is important that the students get the opportunity themselves to organize and solve independently formulated tasks. The students take part in making decisions and choose what to investigate and how. At both DTU and Marketing Economics it is the orientation towards the (business) practical context that justifies the study and learning value of the project. The students learn to be practical and professional practitioners before they get into genuine situations. The aim is that the students work with tasks that come directly from an enterprise or from a technical-practical context.
On this basis, the student strategies were recognized as professions-oriented in all the above mentioned sense. But the student strategies mirrored at the same time a conflict between many
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divergent relevance criteria. Because when do which relevance criteria make themselves felt? And who decides what is to be learned?
The point is that the analysis show both how DTU and CBS are expanding the opportunities for students own choices and creative project management and how the business world and the professional standards from firms and engineering practice have impact on the strategy. On this background shall the profession-oriented strategy be regarded as the driving force. The question we also recognise is about which forms of knowledge, criteria and credibility, are the basis, and are the basis coming from the educational context or from the business world? Further more there are questions about how competencies of relevance for professions have impact on teacher/student relation sharpening the question: if students as The Professionals In Spe must learn to see themselves in the light of the real Prof, who then will try to se them as a learner and just a student?
The new mix, blended strategies
On this now stipulated empirical background the observations in IT-classes must be described as a mix. The IT-students strategies are recognised and identified as a mix of the above mentioned strategies, or you could call the strategy for a new blended version. Let me give a few examples. As
Newcomers and young students in upper secondary school the student strategies are mostly comparable with the young university students at AUC. In this sense we will identify the topicoriented strategies as well as the spectrum of project- and problem-oriented strategies. But imidiately after this statement all the nuances become the interesting part of the analysis. Because when 3.g’erne in the observations are recognized as Old-timers and very experienced media users, or It-nørds (boys primarily) talks about their strategy with great experience, then the familiarity to experienced strategies and relations to non scholastic learning context is very clear. And when ethnic students talks about the, in their view strange Upper Secondary Culture (understood as
Danish high culture) and therefore develop a strategy to cope with ’the strange’ and ‘difficult to get access to’ environment, then their strategy is comparable with especially the women strategy I observed at the Open University. The female JOU-students regarded namely Academia and the university environment as ‘strange’ and ‘difficult to get access to’. In educational and sociological investigations people with another ethnic background than Danish and women in the elder age groups are categorised as ‘The Educational Strangers’. In my analysis the important point recognizing the students own strategy, is that these strategies exactly express a way of tackling the issues, in casu tackling of the issue being a Newcomer and a stranger in Upper Secondary Culture and academic cultures.
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With these aspect mentioned there will be nuances in the analysis of the It-classes and the students learning strategies. But despite the import nuances my analysis as the main characteristic show how the students as Newcomers (shifting to Old-timers) manage the range of strategies similar to the young students in my AUC-fieldwork. Let me therefore summarize the observed it-based strategies in the following terms:
The it-based learning strategies (Among the Young, though experienced Upper Secondary students)
The observations had identified strategies for developing creativity in the teaching and learning context both in the more conventional classroom teaching and in project work and problem based learning. Hereby is recognised how the integration of ict, and concrete: the lap top as every bodys every days machine works in the learning environment. Further more and with project work as ideal typical background my analysis show how teachers and students creativity and experiments with the new possibilities. The Middle age project show how it-classes combine it-strategies with projectstrategies and how they make exactly the combination (or the mixed strategy) to their own. At the same time the analysis show the new it driven genre and collections of students’ production, as fx
Power Point collections, Net-Newspapers, Web-sites combined with more private and youth cultural genre.
On this background you can identify both the students’ strategies and the challenges related to further developing of strategy for learning as well as strategy for evaluation and assessment.
Regarding the learning situations and strategies in it-classes as a whole the challenges is that new esthetic standard and norms for learning products has to be formulated. It goes for new standards and norms having impact on both the phase of planning, teaching, learning and evaluation. But here also derives question about how the school, the management, the group of teachers in technical and professional terms can cope with the situation, where it integration means integration in school and scholastic culture without neglected the benefit from the students own skills and youth culture.
Project pedagogy and innovative strategies
The study on the practical level of teaching and learning together with interviews with students provide a proper basis for analysing creative learning and it-based learning strategies. But there has also been a collaborative practice concerning strategies for pedagogical development. In this sense
The Electronic School projects are already influenced by the broader reform and pedagogical perspective (Borgnakke 2005, Raae 2005). To underline these perspectives I will add a
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documentation project about project work and learning in the higher commercial and technical
Gymnasium program. The project aimed to acquire better insight into how the students work and create knowledge and skills through different kinds of project work
1
.
According to the programme of development in upper secondary school, the profile should be strengthening by a further development of the business orientated element , characterized by project and interdisciplinary work and by a teaching framework based on casework.
The schools’ different organizational cultures are influenced by both the technical and the business range of subjects. It is, therefore, important that business schools and technical schools have different traditions, expressed by their school culture, teacher qualifications and pedagogical practice. The report from the documentation project shows how those two different cultures have an impact on the teachers’ and students’ work and learning strategies.
The report includes six cases of project work and shows the different practices. On Htx courses the students have to systematically go through the project work and its phases and learn the problemoriented method. The students have to produce a product and the product will be seen as an expression of how the students have been working with the problem and the related issues. Students also have to document their process of work. In the project work at Htx there is a similarity between the students’ processing of problem solutions and the process of research. When the students work with cause/effect relations and when the students create plans for investigations and products and reflect their error-findings, they train a process of research. Furthermore students are trained in social and personal terms. As one of the teachers expressed it:
“Project work is both a working process and a process of education”.
According to the students’ own strategies the Htx cases shows how the students work differently in creating the project and product. This is stressed, for instance, by two groups of boys in their first year of Htx, where one of the groups does an experiment, searching error-findings and makes analysis of the errors. In the other group they develop and create the product (a chair) along the way. Where the first group seems to focus on project work as a learning process, the second group seems to focus on project work as a working process.
1 The project was supported by the Danish Ministry of Education. Coordinator was Karin Svejgaard, Danish
Department for Vocational Teacher training, DEL, reported in Projektarbejdsformen på Hhx og Htx .
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Where Htx expresses a focus on the process, Hhx shows how the students are focusing on the product as ‘an assignment’. Students have to work with a task given from different firms. And where Htx students’ project work expressed how process competencies are developed, Hhx students project work rather expressed how ‘to sell’ a product and develop communication skills. The case shows the characteristic patterns and interpretations of project work related to the fact that the students are working independently. In the teachers’ opinion independence has a great value for learning.
In the students’ opinion it is rather about a task to be carried out. And they do it on their own, which means independently. The task will be evaluated. In this sense the students are very product orientated, and this has an impact on the division of labour in the group and on the strategies for learning. The students' reaction to the fact that the group product will be evaluated seems to be division of labour as a strategy: each student does what s/he is already best at. Here the report shows the dilemma in the students’ learning interest. On one hand the students have an interest in learning something new. In this perspective the students need to take tasks as a challenge, where they can learn and need rehearsal and training. On the other hand the students have a genuine interest in the product. From this perspective the students act with practical sense. It makes sense for students to distribute tasks according to the principle of ‘who is best at what’. It shows a legitimate student interest in getting good marks. Seen from a leaner perspective it can be more problematic though.
Both Hhx and Htx students divide the work during the course according to the obvious tasks like searching for information or re-writing. These are tasks with few demands for discussion or preparation. But the students can also distribute tasks which require discussion and reflection to a high degree. This seems though to demand reflection on individual and collective decisions.
According to the case material it seems that Htx students can to a certain degree manage the relation between the individual and the collective dimensions. In addition the material shows the teacher’s support. Through counselling, intervention or the demand of documentation, teachers try to keep the students on track in a distribution of labour which has relevance to the actual work. The teachers make a balance between the individual and the collective level in the task. The case material from
Hhx shows another picture. Here the division of labour seems primarily of instrumental character.
The task is divided in smaller pieces, where the students then work with a piece each or in groups of two. At the end the different pieces of the solution are put together like a common product from the group.
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Cases from all six schools show that the teachers need to develop counselling and consultant functions in more specific relation to the students working and learning processes. Teacher intervention is needed in the process where the students are creating plans, products and reflections on the process. But intervention is also needed in relation to group dynamic dimensions and hereby related to social and psychological patterns in the project work.
According to the development of project pedagogy as a model and strategy for learning, the school cases show how project work is interpreted in the tradition of teaching experience and the tradition derived from John Dewey expressed by the statement of 'learning by doing'. In this way project pedagogy also involves issues such as those relating to practical problems and the students’ abilities and qualifications. The students’ problem oriented work is focussed on solutions and practical use.
Well known issues and lack of connection between teaching activities and the students own project activities or missing links between teacher invention, supervision and the students work will still be seen. One can say, though, that the characteristic orientation towards practice, as a professional practice, is a challenge for scholastic traditional thinking. Further more is conventional scholastic and didactics as well challenges by a practice where demands of creativity are integrated. The demand can be a integrated part of a special goal, as stressed by one of the teachers:
“It is a special goal in the project work that the students work with creativity and with practical use in mind. The students have to create ‘something’ as a part of the problem solving, which the students express their satisfaction with.”
But the creative and innovative dimensions can also be stressed like integrated in the very conception of what technology as a school subject is , and must be , as one of the teachers said:
”Technology has to be innovative. We shall not always know what it might develop into. We shall not always direct the students projects into something we can in before hand… the whole idea in the integrated and interdisciplinary framework is that vi try to teach the students how fare we can jump with the resources.”
(Int. Teacher Project ProjectWork)
Summarizing
The fieldwork in IT-classes has been combined with discourse analysis of national policies and programmes showing firstly, the demands of new strategies for learning, teaching and evaluation,
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secondly the changing discourse: from élite to mass education. Thirdly the programme shows how
IT-based strategies represent the innovative and creative aspects of school development.
In the Danish context this school development and the pedagogical agenda is rooted in project pedagogy, where links to Piaget, Vygotsky, but most of all to Dewey has been a starting point for an ongoing process of rethinking and renewal. The renewal based on Oskar Negt’s concepts of exemplary learning and sociological imagination, or inspired by Thomas Ziehe’s diagnosis of new youth cultures (Negt 1971, Ziehe 1982, 1987) gave the pedagogical strategies a more genuine orientation towards learning and the learner’s perspective. On this basis my analysis of IT-based learning strategies underlines empirical aspects of the classic conceptions from Piaget, Vygotsky,
Negt and Ziehe. But at the same time the empirical aspects will link other aspects of project work to new concepts of learning and creativity (Brødslev Olsen 1993, Kupferberg 1996, 2006). The question about new learning strategies is also linked to the new educational experiments
(“KaosPiloterne”, “Det virtuelle Gymnasium” , Langager 1994, Borgnakke 2005).
My analysis of the IT-classes therefore can be conceptualised both in terms of the progressive tradition and experiences from the seventeenth and in terms of the newest experiences from The
Virtual School. Further more case studies on project work taking place in the commercial and technical Gymnasium are a part of the tradition I call the practice and profession oriented project work (Borgnakke 2005).
My analysis show the learners strategies as the students own strategy. But at the same time both strategies for teaching and learning in IT-classes must be described as a mix. You could call the strategy for a new blended version. Strategies created in the light of being a Newcomer will be mix with aspect of being an Old-timer. Topic-oriented strategies will be mixed with the spectrum of project- and problem-oriented strategies. The mixed culture is also a part in terms of the students’ social and ethnic background and in terms of educational culture. Upper Secondary School culture is in tradition understood as Danish high culture. But both the it-based learning context, the internet and the whole it-culture is together with youth culture rather the new international mainstream that means a mix of the variety of Danish and other ethnic backgrounds with English language and
American culture!
Recognizing the mix my analysis shows how the students by the blended strategy try to match the complex of learning and interaction between Newcomers and Old-timers.
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