Often teachers’ thinking is influenced by both the social contexts (Vygotsky, 1978) in which they operate and the institutional cultures that profoundly shape the meaning of their work (Minick, 1985). Their perceptions of their roles as teachers, their identities, and how they interact with the students and school are of paramount importance to any pedagogical model.
Putnam and Borko (2000) identify the multiple settings in which pre-service and practising teachers are able to develop their professional understanding, expertise and integration of new knowledge. They locate their work in teacher development within a view of cognition, which is characterised by being situated in physical and social contexts, thereby allowing the teachers to socialise and interact. In this research the social nature of teaching is discussed in terms of the professional discourse communities developed in interactions with colleagues, whether in same subject domains or in the broader culture of a school’s way of thinking and acting.
Loveless (2001) looked at various models which dealt with teacher perception whilst conducting her case studies on the integration of ICT. Her research is based on personal constructs and presents complex descriptions of the teachers’ own biographies and identities. It includes their experiences of learning, their personal goals, values and beliefs about education and schooling, their views of mind and learning, their views of the purpose of the subject matter, and their personal biographies in terms of culture, gender and ethnicity.
In addition, past studies of how teachers used technology in their pedagogical practice have noted the importance of various contextual factors such as the characteristics of
staff development experiences, access to technology, availability of support and opportunity to interact with colleagues (Hennessy et al., 2005). These suggest that the teacher perceives the use of ICT through a network of predetermined criteria. Before beginning to utilise ICT within their classrooms, teachers already have expectations of how it should be used and the function of ICT pedagogy.
Loveless (2001) proposed the model (shown in Figure 2.2) to represent the teacher looking at issues to do with classroom use of ICT. In this model the identity of the teacher is formed through the perceptions they form, their subject knowledge, the community in which they interact, their pedagogic and didactic models.
Identity
Teachers as confident professionals in the information society
Community Subject Knowledge
Ethos of the school ICT as a subject, tool or community
networks capability.
Joint enterprise ICT as new
ICT in personal needs
Didactic Pedagogic
Repertoire of Models of access to changing
Representations of ICT resources
Perceptions of ICT In society As a subject
In schools
Change
Structures and progression in time
Figure 2.2: The revised model and the interaction between primary school teachers’ perceptions of ICT and their pedagogy (Loveless, 2001)
Another model proposed by Stein et al. (1999) is designed from the perspective of a professional developer seeking to plan a programme of teacher development in technology education. This professional development model shown in Figure 2.3 is
divided into three main sections separated by the dotted lines. These sections indicate areas of teacher professional knowledge (that is, personal construct knowledge, subject matter knowledge, school knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge and curricular knowledge). These areas will be addressed or developed as attention is paid to the particular focus of each section during any professional development programme that uses this model as a basis.
As the study they conducted showed, the teachers' actions and thoughts were influenced and determined by their personal constructs. At the same time the model integrates, extends, and reorders their ideas, at the core of which is reflection and development.
Figure 2.3: A Professional Development Model for technology education (Stein et al., 1999)
These professional development models build on the notion that classroom pedagogy is conscious and thoughtful, involves experimentation and reflection, and is affected
by the context in which it is developed. Teachers’ performances in classrooms and other learning environments are affected by many aspects of professional knowledge.
Mosley et al. (1999), break it down to: their approaches to teaching; their beliefs about subject matter; their subject knowledge;
their way of representing subject knowledge appropriately for learners; their craft skills (management and organisation);
their teaching behaviours;
the context in which they are teaching.
Watkins and Mortimore (1999) summarised the research and development of a more complex understanding of pedagogy over the last thirty years into four main components:
(1) a focus on contexts for teaching in classroom life; (2) a focus on different types of teachers and styles;
(3) a focus on teaching and learning within a learning community which acknowledges the importance of pupils as thinkers and as knowledgeable; (4) knowledge and the purpose of education.
They proposed the view of learning communities in which learners and teachers are co-constructors of knowledge and defined pedagogy as ‘any conscious activity by one person designed to enhance learning in another’ (Watkins and Mortimore, 1999).
Furthermore, teachers’ backgrounds, the way they learn, the way they perceive their role as teachers and the role of ICT are all factors which contribute to the manner in which they interact within an enquiry group (Loveless, 2001). The nature of these interactions within a community is the focus of this research, as they scaffold their learning they interact and communicate their practices. This acknowledges the
importance of the learners as thinkers (the teachers in this case) reflecting on their practices and the social construction of knowledge.
2.3.2 Reflection
Stein et al. (1999) highlight the importance of reflection in continuous professional development. In this research teachers had to reflect on what they already knew to take on new practices within this knowledge. Being able to reflect solely on what was happening in the enquiry group was not enough to indicate that they had become reflective practitioners. The evidence of change, if it occurred in the classroom, would show that the socially constructed knowledge shared within the enquiry group had transformed their practice. The teachers understood the validity of their pedagogical approaches by relating them to past experiences and shared experiences through the enquiry group. This would happen through dialogue within the enquiry.
Dewey (1933) talks about reflection and the way the individual thinks. He identifies different ways of thinking, the following is an overview:
1. Suggestions, in which the mind leaps forward to a possible solution;
2. An intellectualisation of the difficulty or perplexity that has been felt (directly experienced) into a problem to be solved;
3. The use of one suggestion after another as a leading idea, or hypothesis, to initiate and guide observation and other operations in collection of factual material;
4. The mental elaboration of the idea, or supposition as an idea or supposition (reasoning, in the sense in which reasoning is a part, not the whole, of inference);
5. Testing the hypothesis by overt or imaginative action. (Dewey, 1933; p.199-209)
Schön’s (1983) work links with Dewey’s (1933) work as he looked at the way people reflected. He talked about the way that educators reflect – the conclusions a person arrives at while reflecting. Schön described reflection through a process of reflection in action and reflection on action. Reflection in action is reflecting on what one is doing while one is doing it – changes happen and redesign happens and reflection on action is the post-mortem where the teacher reviews her actions. He proposed this view on
reflection to create a world that more faithfully reflects the values and beliefs of people in it, through the construction or revision of people’s action theories.
Greenwood (1993) views this Schönian model as flawed as it fails to recognise the importance of reflection – before-action. One reflects before one starts a process. In addition, the Schönian process of reflection does not take into account the interactive elements present in this research, that is, the dialogue that may occur while reflection is taking place. It is a very individualistic point of view which does not take into account the social elements that surround reflection.
Vygotsky’s theory (1978), that language is the medium of social life and that interaction is thus the primary site for the development of higher mental processes plays a part in this reflection process. According to Vygotsky (1978), individuals in any social setting are going to be at different stages of ‘proximal development’. That is, they will have different needs for activities that will challenge them to grow and develop, and they will also have different needs for support according to the process they are undergoing.
The teachers willingly chose to participate in this research as they were willing to take on new challenges to enable their pedagogical growth. They were willing to engage in a task which could possibly involve a change in behavioural patterns to include ICT integration within their classroom practices.
Reflection during this process would help the changes to occur. The Schönian model could not be utilised directly in this research as it needed to take into account the interactive element which was present in the enquiry group and the reflections after the enquiry group case study. Reflection towards action, whereby in this instance teachers gained an insight into how their classroom could be through what others related, would be carried out through the dialogue in the enquiry group. This form of reflection would also allow them to question and share any insecurity they might have
had. It would also allow me as a researcher to analyse the language, mainly through concordancing, to identify the point whereby these reflections might be associated with some future change in practice.
Several important distinctions among different notions of reflection have been made in teacher-education literature. Such as those like Schön (1983), who has drawn attention to the distinction between reflecting before (which he rejects as form of reflection) , during and after action, and others who have made the distinction between reflecting about teaching and reflecting about the social conditions which influence one’s teaching (Van Manen, 1995). Another important distinction that has been made is between those programmes of work that emphasise reflection as a private activity and those which seek to promote reflection as a social practice and public activity to be carried out involving an enquiry group. Those who have stressed reflection as a social practice (Solomon, 1987) have argued that the lack of a social forum for the discussion of teachers’ ideas inhibits the development of the teachers’ personal beliefs, because these only become real and clear to us when we can speak about them to others (Solomon, 1987).
.
Consequently, the stages of reflection in this work are labelled to describe the phases the teachers would experience; Table 2.3 gives an overview of these. In fact, the dialogue part of the reflective process which would occur in the enquiry groups was of paramount importance. This research wanted to convey the notion of reflection and the critical moments that occurred within the process of implementation of new pedagogical ideas. Teachers were to reflect on what they had seen (videos of lessons) and discussed in the enquiry group, and then integrate their new practices within the classroom through the knowledge they had built in the enquiry group meetings.
Table 2.3: The various definitions of reflection in this research.
Teachers’ logs Reflection on action This is a conscious activity which allows the teacher time to go over what had happened in their classrooms. Teachers Meetings Reflection towards
action
By listening to others’ reflecting during the enquiry group, the teachers absorbed information and formed new pedagogical practices.
Interview Retrospective reflection Teachers looked at how they had developed and reflected in a systematic manner in order to learn from it.
The social aspect of constructivism focuses on how knowledge is constructed within a group or community, in this instance the enquiry group. Knowledge is considered to be created and legitimised, not through personal conviction but by means of social interchange in its many forms – which is endorsed by the discursivist theory (Chapter 2, Section 3.2). Constructivism considers knowledge to be built with the individual and by the community. It considers social interaction as central to this building of knowledge affected by individuals, communities, societies and cultures.
The chat the teachers engaged in during the enquiry group both reflects their pedagogical practices reflected to them and simultaneously constructed pedagogical identities, roles and relationships within their classrooms. Language is analysed in this research to see how the teachers achieved these reflections and constructions.
Consequently, the range of instruments used in order to capture reflection was of paramount importance, the overview of which is seen earlier in Table 2.3. When
teachers completed their logs they reflected on their immediate practice – reflection on action. They were experimenting with new practices and taking down notes. This was a personal process and one that the teachers carried out individually. The reason why I am calling this ‘reflection on action’ is due to the fact that these reflections were on the lesson they had just delivered – they recorded their intentions, adjustments, successes and failures, etc. These reflections on actions were important as they were records of their work which had just happened.
The reflection on actions were then discussed in the enquiry group, collectively, as it was here they could share what they were doing in their classrooms by presenting and discussing their video. They shared a frame of reference with regard to task and purpose, and worked on a joint outcome by considering how to ‘tinker’ further. Their discourse was characterised by the explication and negotiation of ideas and decision making (Hennessy and Murphy, 1999). Reflection here provided a supportive role and the integration of new ideas – reflection towards action. During the interviews, the ways the students and teachers had developed during the whole process was discussed and reflected upon through retrospective reflection. This reflection process required them to reflect upon the whole process of development of their pedagogic practice during the five lessons. ‘’Retrospective reflection is as a collaborative effort to systematically re-examine a process in order to learn from it’ (Krogstie, 2009; p. 418). The interview questions (appendix 6) served as an outline for the teachers to reflect upon systematically as individuals, with these questions the teacher looked at what worked, what could have been improved upon and what they would be doing next.
The process of reflection is not a level of use that has to be achieved but a process of thought development. The notion of repertoire is a key aspect of this approach. Practitioners build up a collection of images, ideas, examples and actions that they can draw upon. Schön (1983), like Dewey (1933), saw this as central to reflective thought.
When a practitioner makes sense of a situation they perceive to be unique, they see it as something already present in his repertoire.
‘To see this site as that one is not to subsume the first under a familiar category or rule. It is, rather, to see the unfamiliar, unique situation as both similar to and different from the familiar one, without at first being able to identify what it is similar to or different from what was already known. The familiar situation functions as a precedent, or a metaphor, or an exemplar for the unfamiliar one ‘(Schön 1983; p.138).
In this research it was the participants’ treatment of their ‘action’ reflections which became a focus for their reflections in the collaborative meetings.
Even when the learning process appears to be relatively straightforward, mental structures are formed, elaborated and tested until a satisfactory structure emerges. This constructivist perspective needs to be taken into account when considering the nature of the training process.
Central to the constructivist ideas is the individual’s construction of his/her own meaning or perspective for any event or concept. While this is what every trainer hopes to achieve, the teaching style, background, schools, pupils, heads and surroundings of teachers all differ. As a result, teacher training needs to be developed in response to the needs and context of the individual teacher. The important point is that individual teachers construct their knowledge and understanding rather than the latter being just something that is prescribed to them. Reflection towards action allows the practitioner to develop this knowledge built upon who they already are as an individual.
Reflection may also occur at some point after class; this is termed retrospective reflection. In this research this took place during the interviews. In practice, it is not easy to do this as teachers usually have no time to think about their work, let alone talk about it with colleagues. The participants in this project saw it significant for their own professional development – in fact, they volunteered for it. They carried out
reflection in the enquiry group through educational interaction, which entails talk about pedagogical practices and then retrospectively reflected upon what had occurred with me.
Two theoretical strands can be identified as underpinning analysis of educational interaction, namely cognitive psychological and discursive approaches. Further development on these two strands is discussed below.