Los aspectos de género

Student-centred instructional strategies are teaching techniques that give students the opportunity to be drivers and active participants of their knowledge acquisition (Voogt & McKenney, 2017). The use of technology in this case, would be to use technology resources in order to facilitate pre-service teachers’ participation in the knowledge acquisition process rather than having it dispensed to them by the TrEd. This way the pre-service teachers have the chance of developing 21C skills such as the 4Cs. Literature shows that the use of a student-centred approach is directly aligned to the development of higher order thinking skills (Israel et al., 2014).

5.3.2.1 Technology-enhanced collaboration instructional strategy

Collaborative teaching strategy enhanced with technology implies a teaching strategy where students use technology in pairs or groups to achieve learning goals. Studies report that 21C instructional strategies require a departure from traditional lecturer-centred approaches to student-centred instructional strategies such as technology-enhanced collaboration. In the 21C, technology-enhanced collaborative instructional strategies support the view that learning occurs effectively through interpersonal interactions (Lambropoulos, Faulkner & Culwin, 2012; Mustafa & Fatma, 2013; Goodwin et al., 2014).

In this study, TrEd00 was observed making use of collaboration during the course of a professional studies module. They tasked pre-service teachers to work in small groups to produce digital storytelling videos. In this case the TrEd recommended the use of the technology application PhotoStory 3. Students in this assignment were given room to decide how they wanted to present their outcomes; they also had the choice of making use of an alternative technology.

This highlight the benefit of collaborative peer projects as indicated by (Nsamenang & Tchombe, 2011) in that the students are given a choice on how best they want to interact with knowledge, how they wish to interpret it as informed by their context. In their groups the pre-service teachers in this case would have had to discuss amongst themselves and agree on which application they intended to use. The ones who were more knowledgeable of the applications had to assist their peers in becoming familiar with its functions. As argued by researchers Le, Janssen and Wubbels (2018), collaborative tasks are useful in developing interpersonal, negotiation as well as decision-making skills. This emphasises Vygotsky’s notion, that the idea of collaborative learning is based upon the achievements a student can make when aided by peers (Vygotsky, 1978). In such an activity there is a sense of

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responsibility by the students and they take an active role in helping each other to achieve the shared objective of a task (Hanson-Smith, 1997). The researcher deduces that the use of technology-enhanced collaborations exposes the pre-service teachers to a wider range of technology knowledge as shared amongst peers, it is also an opportunity to showcase both their existing and newly acquired technology knowledge.

The issue of pre-service teachers having choice of technology to use is beneficial in that they already are being given the opportunity to exercise technological pedagogical knowledge (TPK). They have the opportunity to decide which technology would best suit the outcomes of their task or which one would be more efficient. In this case the pre-service teachers decided to use other applications apart from PhotoStory by realising their functions which they deemed more adequate for their use. The advantage of such tasks extends to the TrEds as well as the teaching and learning process becomes a reciprocative one. TrEds may also be exposed to new and unfamiliar technologies by their students, as the students have the freedom to discover and employ technologies that facilitate their learning process. The TrEd’s exposure to technology tools and resources is therefore also broadened when making use of collaborative teaching strategies.

The use of teamwork and collaboration contributes to the development of investigative skills as the students direct their own searches and construction of knowledge (Care, Kim, Vista & Anderson, 2018). The advantage of this kind of exercise is that it allows the student to build on their existing knowledge, which motivate the desire for further learning. In this study, on different occasions TrEds would give an instruction on what tasks need to be completed and the students collaboratively agreed on relevant and convenient technologies to use. At times they opted for alternative ones to the ones recommended by the TrEd. This therefore supports the notion that when students have direct influence on how they learn as advocated by constructivist, it stimulates the desire to learn more, critical thinking, as well as decision making (ibid).

The same DST project had very interesting outcomes as observed by the researcher. The pre-service teachers were given the topic of interest – social inclusion, and had to present a video story on how they experienced this. The pre-service teachers did not only stop at using various other technology applications, but they told various real life stories on their experience with the topic. The presentations also varied in nature, from first person narratives to third person narratives, the structure of the videos. The teams showed their creativity in various ways. This speaks into the constructivist principle that holds the notion that teaching and learning activities should facilitate for multiple learning outcomes (Steyn,

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2017). Behaviourist notions would be more specific in terms of outcomes of learning, there would be a rigid list of how the students express their acquired knowledge (Bates, 2015), anything outside of that would be discarded, it takes no note of contextual and individual influences.

Participating TrEds were observed on how they were using technology to enhance collaborative learning. The findings reveal that TrEd001 and TrEd007 preferred the use of content-specific instructional software. TrEd007 used YouTube video, that simulates natural science concepts and processes. According to TrEd007, before using simulated videos, he used to struggle to make students comprehend abstract concepts such as respiratory system. Similarly, TrEd001 used the Graphmatica instructional software in what was a group learning process on graphs concepts in a Mathematics lecture. What was interesting to note, was that, although students had been placed in groups, as was also facilitated by the venue’s group sitting set-up which, the TrEd as well as the technology (due to its drill and practice nature as argued earlier), were mostly in control of the teaching process. The pre- service teachers were in groups; yes, however, they were not afforded the opportunity to interact peer to peer and direct their own knowledge acquisition. This implies that although ideally, collaborative tasks are designed to yield high level learning outcomes (Le et al., 2018), in this case, due to the TrEd’s decision to pair it with a lecturer-centred approach, it did not yield expected results.

This is a typical example of the kind of results that can be expected when educators have not fully domesticated the use of TPACK. In this particular scenario, the educator had the technology knowledge as well as the content knowledge, however, their choice of a teaching strategy confined the learning outcomes to augmentation level. It is for this reason that collaboration can be seen on both the modification and augmentation levels. The SAMR model clearly shows in this case the importance of choosing a student-centred approach over a lecturer centred one by highlighting how that decision affects the outcome of the learning activity.

Collaborative tasks are useful in developing interpersonal skills, negotiation skills as well as a sense of responsibility and accountability and this applies mostly to the team leader. For example, TrEd003 stated that twelve pre-service teachers underwent peer facilitator mentoring for a group project. The peer leaders had a clear grasp of the goals of the project and guidelines. The TrEd averred that the peer facilitator’s role was to assist the group to achieve its objectives; by ensuring that it had the resources it needed and by encouraging and supporting the group members who needed to understand the leaders’ roles and accept

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their directions. This instructional strategy sets a foundation for a pre-service teacher to start practicing their implementation of TCK as well as TPK. In this case, the pre-service teacher appointed as team leaders directed decision making on what technologies to use and for what purpose, for example, they created a WhatsApp group for team members to communicate. The rest of the team members are equally exposed to the opportunity of decision making and negotiation as this was a team decision they needed to agree on. Sousa et al. (2015) argues that team work helps students respect each other and creates cross-cultural and cross-racial friendship: however, this arrangement requires time for working together and for communication. Communication can on the other hand be accelerated by the use of technology thereby formulating relationship much quicker. For example, TrEd003 highlighted that:

The peer leaders created WhatsApp groups to speed up collaboration on set activities and as they worked with each other to increase proficient with the goals of DST project and the technologies used.

The TrEd explained that social media helped the pre-service teachers to communicate and share ideas efficiently during the course of the digital story telling (DST) project. Through the use of technology, the pre-service teachers were able to communicate outside of the confines of the classroom, the technology allowed them a virtual social interaction. The SAMR model advocates for the use of technology to achieve teaching activities that have been previously challenging to achieve (Kihoza et al., 2016; Romrell et al., 2014), in this case it was used to make communication and knowledge sharing take place regardless of geographical placements. According to Sousa et al. (2015), collaborative group learning promotes social interaction, this was evidenced in this particular projects, through the use of technology to communicate, to share information and negotiating to agree on the best well to present a collective assignment.

One of the principles of the constructivist theory is that TrEds must design learning activities that build-on pre-service teachers existing knowledge, (Henrie, 2016; Mcgrath et al., 2011). For instance, several studies reveal that young adults identify and align themselves more with social media for interaction (Anderson & Elloumi, 2008). It is therefore important that the TrEd is aware of these platforms and how they operate, such that they can structure learning activities around them with the added advantage of improved collaboration since activity is built on students shared technological interest and/or knowledge. Evidently in this study results indicated that TrEds needed to be more aware of platforms that pre-service teachers are predominantly using. Most pre-service teachers relied on WhatsApp because of its affordability and accessibility (Bouhnik, Denshen & Gan, 2014; Russell, 2012). This

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concept of gravitating towards familiar technology resources may be used to explain why pre-service teachers opted for alternative technological means than ones prescribed by the TrEd in certain cases. It highlights the importance of TrEds being fully aware of technologies that pre-service teachers are privy to.

The TrEd’s knowledge on pre-service teachers’ similar interests, for example, technological interest and real-life experiences, can assist in developing collaborative tasks in such a way that gaps created by diversity are quickly bridged or can even be beneficial in their knowledge development with regards to varying context. Below is an extract from the TrEd giving their perspective on how technology was used in bridging pre-service teachers’ differences:

My class is a diverse class, culture, personal perspectives and background of the students; I consider the WhatsApp collaborative groups’ reduced the personal difference and build a community that had the same goal to achieve. But the social communications helped build trust…

TrEd specified the diverse nature of her class; especially in terms of culture, personal perspectives and background, which sometimes hindered team collaboration. Pre-service teachers in this study built up trust with each other, which was crucial for group collaboration. The use of social interaction applications for teaching purposes allowed the students to work from a point a common interest, in this case the widely used WhatsApp application. Pre- service teachers using social media enabled the DST project success. The findings of this study showed that technology easily enhanced the social skills needed to achieve the goals of a collaborative activity. Similar research suggests that students’ social interactions help achieve collaboration goals at large scales i.e. larger groups as opposed to students working in pairs (Mcgrath et al., 2011; Sultan, 2014; Church & de Oliveira, 2013). TrEds would benefit by knowing what technology applications or platforms pre-service teachers find appealing. Pre-service teachers have an equal opportunity to interact with peers on the BB LMS as they do on WhatsApp, however, they may be more interactive on one instead of the other for various reasons such as familiarity, ease of access and perhaps the informality of it (Chikuni, 2016). This knowledge could assist TrEds in designing the best possible teaching activities that pre-service teachers can fully engage with.

Collaborative learning activities are versatile in nature and therefore have the capacity to achieve outcomes that were unattainable using traditional lecturer-directed means. Collaborative instructional strategy integrated with the right kind of technology creates room for students to be exposed to a richer learning experience (Forni, Holcombe &Huang, 2013). For example, in this study, TrEd003 designed a learning activity that was a collaboration

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between students at the research site with students in a teacher preparation institution in United States of America. What made this learning activity rich, was the fact that students on both ends were exposed to a social phenomenon and how it manifests in different contexts. Therefore, the students are equipped to debate the social constructs at an international platform by drawing reference and comparison from information acquired from their international counterparts. Technology-enhanced collaboration gives the students access to information they normally would not have access to (Balaji & Chakrabarti, 2010). It allows them to get an idea of how their experiences relate to those of others in different contexts. Once again, technology is used, in this case, to bridge the diversity gap and enriches the students’ knowledge pool.

This teaching strategy used by TrEd002 resulted in achieving modification levels based on the SAMR model, due to its ability to transform student engagement and the way they acquire, process and analyse new information. In their study (Lin, Wang & Lin, 2012) concluded that when students are actively engaged in learning with technology, it provides an opportunity of deeper understanding of content. This finding supports the constructivist core principle that learners actively construct their own knowledge and meaning from their experiences. TrEd’s designing of technology-enhanced activities for collaborative learning directly boosted the development of 21C skills.

Most TrEds interviewed, agreed on the affordances of digital technology for collaborative group projects with regards to enhancing communication. However, only two of the observed TrEds exploited digital technology such as social media platforms for group collaboration in class activities. This highlights the fact that TrEds may be aware of technology enhanced activities and their benefits in theory, however, there is still a discrepancy when it comes to practical applications of these. It is possible that this may be due to the fact that TrEds may be finding it challenging to adapt the technological affordances of such strategies into their specific contexts. In other words, they may know how it works theoretically but then find it difficult to implement practically. This points to a possible need for either faculty or subject specific technology application training for TrEds.

Due to its functionality in terms of processing large amount of information and sometimes over an extended period of time, collaboration is typically used in conjunction with project- based instructional strategies (Koç, 2005). The finding in this study also showed that TrEds made use of project-based instructional strategies together with collaboration or teamwork approaches.

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