Transforming Teacher Education with Mobile Technologies

Kevin Burden, Amanda Naylor, Kevin Burden, Amanda Naylor

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781350095656
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Technology

Transforming Teacher Education with Mobile Technologies provides an international, comparative overview of current thinking and research in the field of mobile learning and teaching/teacher education, with case studies from Australia, Germany, Ireland, Norway, Sweden, Turkey and the United Kingdom. Drawing together contributions with teachers and teacher educators engaged in a European project, this book investigates practices further afield and provides insight into research and cutting-edge pedagogical practice in teaching and teacher education using mobile learning. Students use personal technologies like their mobile phones, extensively and expect to be constantly connected and engaged in a networked world. It is imperative, therefore, that teachers keep pace with this ever-shifting landscape and this is a challenge to those in the profession and more widely to teacher education which is tasked with preparing the next generation of teachers. This volume provides some answers to these challenges, linking theory to practice and developing theoretical models. The contributors also explore possible future developments in this field using an innovative methodology associated with Future Thinking Scenario Planning (Snoek, 2004).

Part One

Introducing the Mobilising and Transforming Teacher Educator’s Pedagogies project

The contexts within which society prepares teachers to work in schools and supports the professional development of in-service teachers (ISTs) have always been capricious and susceptible to unforeseen swings and changes, but today it is almost unfathomable and there is no indication that this will change any time soon (cf. Pegrum et al. 2013). Add to this the growing ubiquity and pervasiveness of technology and particularly mobile devices, owned and controlled by individuals, not the institution, and teacher educators are caught up in a perfect storm of uncertainty. Indeed uncertainty in teacher education futures is a burgeoning field of academic study in its own right (e.g. Schuck et al. 2018) and the role and importance of educational technology are a fiercely contested part of this debate (Selwyn 2018). Schools and institutions of teacher education alike are struggling to stay afloat in the face of repeated waves of technological innovations, and the use of mobile technologies is proving to be a particularly problematic challenge, as educators seek to resolve the tensions and binary positions that situate these technologies as both the cause and solution of today’s educational challenges and problems.

In 2014 these were some of the contextual factors and drivers that inspired the Mobilising and Transforming Teacher Educators’ Pedagogies (MTTEP) project, an Erasmus+ Strategic Partnership project partly funded through the European Union (see www.mttep.eu). This was a three-year transnational project featuring four Initial Teacher Education institutions (ITEs) in the UK, Norway, Germany and Australia, along with partner schools in each country.

The principal objective of the project was to develop bespoke resources and networks that would support teacher educators in using and teaching with mobile technologies. In turn it was recognized this was a necessary but not sufficient step in ensuring pre-service teachers (PSTs) understand and are able to use mobile technologies effectively when they teach. Therefore the MTTEP project was also cognizant of the issue of sustainability and the need to ensure the initiative had a legacy that lasted beyond its three-year duration. This led to the establishment of the Mobile Learning Network for teacher educators, an international network for teacher educators to support and enhance the use of mobile technologies as tools for learning (http://www.mobilelearningtoolkit.com/network.html).

In order to achieve these aims the project partners focused on creating and disseminating a mobile learning toolkit to provide both theoretical and practical guidance for educators in the principled use of mobile technologies. The toolkit (see www.mobilelearningtoolkit.com) consists of several elements that include iPAC, a bespoke theoretical mobile learning framework developed by academics in Australia and the UK (see Kearney et al. 2012); a selection of evaluation and survey tools to gauge and monitor the capacity and capability of educators in using mobile devices; a collection of video exemplars to illustrate different practices in using mobile technologies in teacher education; an online mobile learning course or MOOC to support professional development; and a selection of eBooks which provide detailed guidance, advice and further reading around the topic. A more detailed account of how the toolkit was designed, created and tested can be found in Burden & Kearney (2018).

The Mobilising and Transforming Teacher Educators’ Pedagogies project was designed to bring about change and transformation at a systemic level across institutions of teacher education and in turn, their partnership schools where PSTs undertake placements. But no two institutions of teacher education or the placement schools they partner with are alike. Indeed the contextual factors that shape the dynamics and relationships of these partnerships are complex and multifaceted, meaning one-size-fits-all solutions are unlikely to work. In the section that follows project partners from ITEs and partner schools/colleges illustrate their involvement in the project and describe the contextual factors and issues that shaped it. Each of these partners was instrumental in designing, developing and piloting the various resources, instruments and tools that make up the mobile learning toolkit, and the five chapters that follow highlight different aspects of each along with the impact their involvement has brought about on staff, students and their wider institutions.

The project was coordinated and led by the University of Hull (UK), and in the first case study (Chapter 1), Paul Hopkins, a lecturer in teacher education at the University of Hull, highlights the challenges, barriers and benefits brought about by an institution-wide approach to personal tablet ownership which saw all PSTs provided with an iPad for the duration of their one-year programme. This case study demonstrates the importance and value of a sound theoretical framework (the iPAC framework) to underpin the practical activities and approaches when all students have access to a networked device like an iPad. It also highlights the need for institutions to consider how their existing curricula, including arrangements for school placements, will be affected when PSTs have access to a mobile device like an iPad. Many of the issues and tensions raised in this chapter are returned to again in later chapters.

In Norway the project partners included a teacher education institution (Bergen University College, now Western Norway University of Applied Sciences) and Metis videregående, an Upper Secondary School with about 500 students of 16–19 years of age. Each of these partners worked in complementary but different ways to fulfil the project’s aspirations. In Chapter 2, Sarah Hoem Iversen and Jon Hoem from Western Norway University of Applied Sciences present a case study of PSTs collaborative writing of a hypertext narrative for mobile devices. This chapter foregrounds the collaborative elements of the iPAC theoretical framework that was used to underpin the entire MTTEP project and features the work of PSTs specializing in English. It expands upon current debates around the nature of literacy, multimodal texts and narratives and in doing so highlights a common theme that runs across the entire volume: namely, how does the use and adoption of mobile devices challenge our current thinking and understanding of narrative form?

Chapter 3 takes us across the globe to the only non-European partner in the MTTEP project, the University of Technology Sydney (UTS). As co-authors of the iPAC framework, Associate Professor Matthew Kearney and his colleagues describe the role of UTS in applying the iPAC framework to support the creation of Personal Learning Networks (PLNs) for PSTs and their impact on learning.

Like Chapter 2, Chapter 4 is also set in the context of Norway and provides a similar but different account of the MTTEP project, this time from a transnational perspective that features older students from Metis videregående, an Upper Secondary School in Bergen, working with PST English students at the University of Hull. In this chapter the authors illustrate the benefits of a transnational, collaborative approach to using mobile devices to produce and read eBooks, a central theme or element of the MTTEP project. This chapter draws upon the notion of student agency and self-efficacy, both features highlighted as potent affordances of mobile technologies, to demonstrate how the process of designing and reviewing eBooks by school students and PSTs is a powerful pedagogic strategy in its own right.

Finally, in Chapter 5, Dr Ulf Kreber from Karlsruhe University of Education in Germany explores how mobile learning and media literacy can be integrated together by both PSTs and ISTs to foster teacher education in the fields of history and social science.

Taken together the case studies in Section 1 (Chapters 1–5) exemplify many of the different aspects and features of the MTTEP project and its aspiration to create a mobile learning network for teachers and teacher educators. They foreground the issues and complexities associated with introducing and sustaining the use of mobile technologies in teacher education institutions and in schools, including the paramount importance of professional development and support for teacher educators themselves.

References

Burden, K., & Kearney, M. (2018), Designing an educator toolkit for the mobile learning age. International Journal of Mobile and Blended Learning, 10(2), 88–99.

Kearney, M., Schuck, S., Burden, K., & Aubusson, P. (2012), Viewing mobile learning from a pedagogical perspective. Research in Learning Technology, 20(1).

Pegrum, M., Howitt, C., & Striepe, M. (2013), Learning to take the tablet: How pre-service teachers use iPads to facilitate their learning. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 29(4).

Schuck, S., Aubusson, P., Burden, K., & Brindley, S. (2018), Uncertainty in Teacher Education Futures: Scenarios, Politics and STEM. Singapore: Springer.

Selwyn, N. (2018), Education and Technology: Key Issues and Debates. London: Bloomsbury Publishing.

1

Ubiquitous Mobile Learning in Teacher Education

Paul Hopkins

University of Hull

Introduction

This chapter explores the ubiquitous and pervasive use of tablet devices (in this case the iPad) in a teacher education programme at the University of Hull between 2014 and 2017. This coincides with the launch of the Mobilising and Transforming Teacher Educator’s Pedagogies project (MTTEP), coordinated and led by the University of Hull and involving many of the teacher educators associated with this case study. In 2014 the Faculty of Education¹ at the University of Hull funded a three-year project to equip all pre-service teachers on the one-year Post Graduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) programme with a personal tablet device to explore its impact on their pedagogical thinking and practices and those of their tutors. This chapter illustrates how the project was undertaken and its impact on students, teacher educators and the structure of the programme. Its central narrative is woven around the MTTEP project which occurred at the same time, and its main focus is around the disciplines of secondary history, science and English who were most closely involved in the project. While this chapter will touch on the experiences of pre-service teachers in their placement schools it will focus mainly on their experiences in the university-based aspects of the teacher education. For purposes of simplicity throughout the rest of the chapter, this is referred to as the ‘iPad Project’.

Background

The Standards for Qualified Teacher Status for Teachers in England (2000) require that teachers are skilful in literacy, numeracy, and information and communication technology, and the iPad Project was established to explore the various ways in which mobile technologies (e.g. the iPad) might support this standard and the broader professional learning of pre-service teachers that occurs across different contexts including the university, placement schools and the home. In addition, the iPad Project was designed to explore the wider institutional impact of mobile technologies for learning and teaching purposes, including both the pedagogical and logistical considerations across and beyond the institution.

Tablet devices have made a huge impact in schools since the launch of the iPad in 2010. Since that point tablet devices have proliferated and in 2014 they were predicted to outsell PCs. At the time of writing (2019) in the UK over 70 per cent of schools are estimated to be using tablet devices (BBC 2014) and in Europe, ‘laptops, tablets and net-books are becoming pervasive’ (Gartner 2014). As these devices become more established in schools they are being used to support and develop pedagogical practices (Burden et al. 2012; Baran 2014; Picardo 2017) but are also starting to challenge some existing models of thinking and pedagogy (Kearney et al. 2012; Fullan & Langworth 2014) and teachers’ attitudes towards learning and teaching (Ertmer 1999; Burden & Hopkins 2017). While offering spaces for learning to become more authentic, personal and collaborative (Kearney et al. 2012), there are also opportunities for teachers to start to redesign the ways in which learning is taking place (McCormick & Scrimshaw 2001; Puendentura 2010). In 2007 Traxler described mobile learning as ‘an educational process, in which handheld devices or palmtops are the only or dominant used technology tools’ (2007: 2) and in 2012 Kearney et al. predicted that mobiles had the potential to revolutionize the learning process in allowing individuals to determine their own independent paradigms and frameworks of learning. These devices also have the potential, with suitable human agency, to support sophisticated production of digital artefacts, and students and teachers are capable of being co-producers of learning materials.

This is important for both teacher education and for teacher educators, as given that most of these tools are recent developments, it is likely that significant numbers of those currently preparing pre-service teachers to enter the workplace have little or no experience in using these devices with school-age children and are likely to be ‘digital immigrants’ (Prensky 2001) or ‘digital visitors’ (White & Le Cornu 2011) rather than more sophisticated personal users of these technologies. They are also less likely to be digital producers of materials suitable for use on tablet devices (i.e. apps or eBooks) (Felvégi & Matthew 2012); as Dewey said, ‘If we teach today as we taught yesterday, we rob our children of tomorrow’ (1944: 167).

Professional learning, pedagogy and digital technologies

The iPad Project was underpinned by two core questions (McCormick & Scrimshaw 2001):

• How does technology support existing models of pedagogy?

• How does technology challenge existing models of pedagogy?

An important change in the last few years has been the growth in ubiquitous Information, Communication and Technology (ICT) and the consequent emerging use of mobile technologies in and outside of the classroom. Data collected in recent ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: Teacher Education and Mobile Technologies
• Part I Introducing the Mobilising and Transforming Teacher Educator’s Pedagogies project
• Part II Mobile Learning in Teacher Education beyond the MTTEP Project
• Index
• Imprint