Learning to teach in a networked classroom: An enduring partnership
Therese Laferriere
Laval University
Canada
tlaf@fse.ulaval.ca
Stéphane Allaire
University of Quebec at Chicoutimi (UQAC)
Canada
stephane_allaire@uqac.ca
Christine Hamel
Laval University
Canada
christine.hamel@fse.ulaval.ca
1. Introduction
This paper reflects on the results of a sixteenth-year long (1997-2012) universityschool partnership in which pre-service teachers collaborated with cooperative teachers
and peers in the context of the project Learning to teach in a networked classroom. The
underlying assumption is that the networked classroom is the new workplace of the
teacher. The networked classroom is a notion not well delineated as it may mean an
onsite classroom with only a single computer linked to the Internet as well as an online
classroom with almost no onsite encounters between participants. In this case, the
networked classroom means one-to-one laptop brick-and-mortar classrooms.
2. Perspectives
Three teacher educators participated in a university-school partnership with the
aim to uncover ways of using the Internet effectively to enrich the learning environment of
both secondary school students and pre-service teachers. The latter were introduced to
collaborative reflective analysis (Schön, 1983). A social perspective on learning (Lave &
Wenger, 1991) and Engeström’s (1987, 2001) notion of boundary spanning were applied
at the intervention level. After five years and as an attempt to move beyond best
practices, knowledge building became central to the design of the learning environment
of the participating pre-service teachers. For Scardamalia & Bereiter (2006), knowledge
building is an epistemology, a pedagogy and a technology; it refers to the production and
continual improvement of ideas of value to a community through collaborative inquiry
mediated by online discourse on the Knowledge Forum® software (1994, 2006). The
software includes a web-based collaborative platform for extending and deepening
classroom discourse, which affords scaffolds to support written discourse, and a set of
analytical measures that participants can apply to monitor their own knowledge building
activity.
3. Methods, techniques, or modes of inquiry
The school district superintendent mandated the school principal of a large
secondary urban school to conduct a needs assessment regarding the relevance of a
student-owned laptop program. School district personnel, the school principal and a
university-based teacher educator designed the program. They adopted the model of a
school-within-a-school program. From the onset (1997), the basic model was the
following one: parents were to buy a laptop for their child, the laptop was to be connected
to the Internet during class time and students were to sit in groups of four and engage in
project-based learning under the guidance of their teacher. Many online tools and
resources were to be accessed. The notion of the networked classroom was put forward
by the leading teacher educator/researcher in an attempt to describe the teaching activity
in such a new learning environment. Teachers were considered the main designers of
networked classrooms.
The use of Knowledge Forum for asynchronous online discourse was optional for
school learners, but became mandatory for pre-service teachers who volunteered to do a
five- or a fifteen-week long practicum in the program. Thirty-two cohorts (two cohorts per
year) of pre-service teachers participated in the program.
A systemic framework (Banathy, 1991) is adopted here to reflect on the key
environmental features that nurtured and sustained the activity of learning to teach in a
networked classroom. Based on Banathy’s dimensions, the following research questions
were asked:
1. Dimension one: focus on teaching in a networked classroom. What
environmental features were present at each of the following levels of the
system: learning, instruction, administration, and governance?
2. Dimension two: scope of the environmental features. Were participants active
within the boundaries of their level in the existing educational system? Did
participants broaden the boundaries in order to consider issues and concerns
in the education (ecological) environment arising in the project process?
3. Dimension three: patterns that connect. What were the characteristics of the
relationships between pre-service teachers and teachers, and between preservice teachers from within and across cohorts regarding Banathy’s key
processes (information exchange, cooperation, coordination, and integration)?
4. Data sources or evidence
Participant observation had been conducted according to Banathy’s design
framework, and Engeström’s notion of boundary spanning became increasingly in focus.
A Knowledge Forum database on the networked classroom developed by pre-service
teachers (2002-2012) was analyzed according to an evolving lexicum. The views of 20
student cohorts (five to nine students per cohort) composed the database. This
corresponds to over 650 pages of online written discourse.
5. Results
Teaching in a networked classroom is a work of design. Boundary spanning is
frequent: the teacher is challenged not only to instruct, but also to guide students through
project-based learning and collaborative inquiry; educational resources are not limited to
those present onsite as plenty of information is available online and communication may
be established with a diversity of persons; students are empowered in a way never seen
before. Pre-service teachers in a networked classroom are facing the unfamiliar. Yet they
have more time than their cooperative teachers to engage in reflective online
collaborative discourse and address issues in a written manner.
Learning to teach in a networked classroom has been the result of the following
key environmental features: at the university level, student willingness and the possibility
to volunteer for a practicum in a networked classroom, the availability of a teacher
educator/supervisor1 that is acquainted with teaching and learning in a networked
classroom, the valuing of work in a networked classroom by other teacher educators; at
the school district level, administrative, pedagogical, and financial support to the school
that offers a one-to-one laptop program2; at the school level, parental support for the
program, a professional learning community composed of the teachers working in a
networked classroom and the principal3, collaborative research with university
researchers on foci of inquiry related to the effectiveness of the one-to-one laptop
program, visibility and recognition for the “extra effort” that the implementation and
sustainability of such a program required; at the pre-service level, good communication
with one’s cooperative teacher and other teachers working in networked classrooms, a
place to physically meet other pre-service teachers on a regular basis, access to online
artifacts resulting from previous student teachers’ learning to teach and knowledge
building activities, identification of an unexplored problem or issue on which to focus
written online collaborative reflective discourse. These are the key features that have
nurtured and sustained Learning to teach in a networked classroom over the years
(dimension one).
Participants were mostly active within the boundaries of their activity but went
beyond boundaries on numerous occasions. For instance, teachers went to other
schools to promote the program, made presentations at technology-oriented
conferences, and some co-wrote articles or a book. Pre-service teachers engaged in
online collaborative reflective analysis for the understanding of classroom management
and pedagogical issues in ways usually not seen at their level of professional
development; they left artifacts of their online progressive discourse and organized them
in the form of virtual tours for upcoming pre-service teachers to access. We found very
little evidence of the validity of the adoption model of innovation, not only because there
was no "model" or "desired practice" to follow since each situation was different and in a
state of flux, but also because the innovation required involved design at both a practical
and a deeper level – belief about the nature of knowledge and how learning takes place,
and enaction. Such role change needs to happen in teachers and pre-service teachers
as well as in students and leadership in their school and beyond (dimension two).
Patterns of connection between teachers and pre-service students exemplified
extended relationships that began before the official onset of the practicum and often
lasted past its completion. Relationships were first characterized by information
exchange, and evolved to become cooperation as teachers were teaching a minimum of
two subject matters (e.g., math and science, language and social studies) in two
networked classrooms. Teachers/pre-service teachers engaged in coordination with
other teachers/pre-service teachers in teacher meetings for the benefit of specific
classroom students and/or the sake of the whole program. Pre-service teachers were
recognized as having a voice, and actively participated in such meetings. Moreover, the
analysis of their written discourse proved that they adopted the language of the teachers
1
The leading teacher educator/researcher remained the same throughout the sixteenth-year period.
The conditions established by the school district at the onset eroded.
3
Three different principals led the school. Teachers were forming a tightly focused professional
community that assured continuity.
2
of the program – an important first step in terms of legitimate peripheral participation in a
community of practice – and at times surpassed participating peripherally by bringing
back to the teacher community or, at least, to their cooperative teacher, new concepts
and practical ideas. Today, more than half the staff of this one-to-one laptop program is
composed of teachers that completed one practicum in the Learning to teach in a
networked classroom program when they were pre-service teachers. This accounts for a
high level of integration – the fourth of Banathy’s patterns of connection.
The main characteristic of the relationships between pre-service teachers from
within and across cohorts was a high level of complicity as risk-takers by the act of
completing a practicum in a networked classroom, a practicum with a strong emphasis
on online collaborative reflective practice. Banathy’s patterns of connection were
cooperation/collaboration in the elaboration of a substantive database on teaching
(learning to teach) in a networked classroom, coordination in the selection of
questions/problems/issues not yet investigated or needing elaboration, and integration
through the design of virtual tours to guide incoming pre-service teachers through the
artifacts of their collaborative inquiry/knowledge building processes. For incoming preservice teachers, these artifacts raised the standards for what they perceived was
expected of them. They understood they had to produce a contribution of their own in the
networked classrooms (practice level) as well as in the database (collaborative reflective
level).
6. Discussion
Our systemic model of Learning to teach in a networked classroom rests on an
enduring university-school partnership. The assumption behind most practicum models
for pre-service teachers is that students must learn to teach through experience in real
classrooms. Pre-service teachers gained such experience in an innovative collaborative
context. Exemplars of boundary spanning abound as a result of such an approach to
innovative learning environments.
We are aiming at developing a fully conceptualized ecosystemic model, one that
may inspire the establishment of other university-school partnerships for the
improvement of teacher education and classroom-based learning environments.
"Institutionalization" of such a model is not something that can be achieved as an
on-off solution to implement and sustain innovation. First of all, "innovators" are
necessarily a few. As the process of innovation progresses, resolved tensions are likely
to result in new tensions in the same or between activity systems (e.g., between
individual and collaborative actions or between the innovators and the rest of the
professional community in a school/faculty). Institutionalization may lead to the
withdrawal of key conditions/persons, and established changes may be "endangered".
Conclusion
Our university-school partnership is interested in renewing formal learning
environments through advances in learning to teach in a networked classroom, and using
the knowledge building perspective to this end. Educational researchers from a variety of
perspectives could make theoretical and practical advances using a similar systemic
model.
We will value engaging colleagues interested in sustainable innovation for preservice teacher education in various discussions, especially on the importance of
learning to teach in a networked classroom, the challenges and limits of collaborative
work, and on approaching change from an ecosystemic perspective – organizations as
complex systems in a bigger universe of interacting organizations.
References
Axelrod, R., & Cohen, M. D. (1999). Harnessing complexity: Organizational implications
of a scientific frontier. New York: The Free Press.
Banathy, B. H. (1991). Systems design of education: A journey to create the future.
Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Educational Technology Publications.
Engeström, Y. (1987). Learning by expanding. An activity-theoretical approach to
developmental research. Helsinki: Orienta-Konsultit.
Engeström, Y. (2001). Expansive learning at work. Toward an activity-theoretical
reconceptualization, Journal of Education and Work,14(1), 133-156.
Kaptelinin, V., & Nardi, B. (2006). Acting with technology: Activity theory and interaction
design. Cambridge, MA: MIT press.
Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University
Press.
Lemke, J. L., & Sabelli, N. H. (2008). Complex systems and educational change:
Towards a new research agenda. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 40(1), 118-129.
Lieberman, A. (2000). Networks as learning communities: Shaping the future of teacher
development. Journal of Teacher Education, 51(3), 221-227.
Scacchi, W. (2004). Socio-technical design. In W. S. Bainbridge (Ed.), The encyclopedia
of human-computer interaction (pp. 656-659). Great Barrington, MA: Berkshire
Publishing Group.
Scardamalia, M., & Bereiter, C. (1994). Computer support for knowledge-building
communities. The Journal of the Learning Sciences, 3, 265-283.
Scardamalia, M., & Bereiter, C. (2004). Knowledge Building. In Encyclopedia of Education
Second Edition. New York: Macmillan Reference.
Scardamalia, M., & Bereiter, C. (2006). Knowledge building: Theory, pedagogy and
technology. In R. K. Sawyer (Ed.), The Cambridge handbook of learning sciences (pp.
97-115). New York: NY: Cambridge University Press.
Schon, D. (1987). Educating the Reflective Practitioner. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.