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Thursday 6 September 2007

Towards future pedagogies

Peppi Taalas talked about using the various media we have available to us for designing for learning. She stated that we need to understand what's taking place now in schools. We can't be just teachers, just technology-oriented people - we need different kinds of disciplines and expertise.

Defining literacy, for Peppi, the idea of multiliteracies is important; designing for learning, using these designs with students to develop the designs. Muticulturality is also important. We have a multitude of lenses through which to look at what happens in and outside school - formally and informally. Anothear important issue was how well students were given ownership of authorship.

Peppi then went on to describe the project she's currently involved with. She's been trying to see how strategica and pedagogical levels meet. She recognises a division between both these and between teaching practice and local cultures. The project collected features that would be part of a good learning environment.
  • access/authorship/ownership framework
  • The activities and texts should be meaningful to learners, having meaning outside school.
  • informal settings should merge with the formal setting

The project started with a large survey (Peppi talked about this today). The next phase is to gather qualitative data from learners and teachers.

The two research questions Peppi explored here were:

  • what literacy practices d6 learners and teachers engage in both inside and outside school?
  • what kind of learning environments exist and are created in schools

The findings suggest that the skills learnt in schools are not necessarily the skills learners need in their life outside school. There is a mismatch between learners' and teachers' perceptions about the use of the Web in the classroom. Peppi pointed out that out of school, teachers use the Web for quick searches for e.g. train timetables, online banking etc, while students use online communities most.

Although Peppi agrees that to be a good teacher it isn't necessary to join online communities, but it is alarming that in the survey, teachers not only didn't know about life online, but they didn't want to know about it.

In conclusion, there are different in and out of school views of reading and writing; teachers' and students' views, attitudes and use of the Web is very different and we need to take a different approach to teacher training to address this.

There were many questions at the end of this presentation, mostly asking about the data in more detail. Peppi wanted me to challenge her, but, in fact, I totally agree with her on this one! So, maybe someone else will put forward a challenge here?

Find out more at http://www.jyu.fi/tolp

2 comments:

LindaBradley said...

Sorry for missing your presentation, Peppi! We were so convinced that you said it had been moved from Saturday to FRIDAY! It sounds like it was a very interesting presentation. Maybe we can hear about it later.

We just listened to Marie-Madeleine Kenning. She talked about the promotion of autonomous learning. There is a tension between the autonomy that teachers want and the resistance students have to it. She also talked about the development of technology usage in daily life and language learning and how it has changed over time.

Minna Scheinin said...

Hi Peppi, Lesley and all others, this is to say hello to you from Turku, Finland and to let you know, that I try to follow the discussion on your virtual strand. I have also tried to open your video streamings, but haven't succeeded yet. Maybe next year I can attend the conference.
Minna S. from Turku

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