Section archive - ICT & Teaching

In this article, the authors explore challenges encountered by K-12 educators in establishing classroom cultures that support creative learning activities with the Scratch programming language. The analysis is organized into three thematic clusters that elaborate this conflict: teacher vs. self, teacher vs. student, and teacher vs. culture. Teacher vs. self explores the role of teacher identity and psychology in supporting creative activities in the classroom. Teacher vs. student discusses unanticipated resistance from young learners encountering creative activities in school settings. Teacher vs. culture describes how expectations from beyond the classroom setting can constrain creative activities within the classroom, including the role of parents, administrators, and policy.

In order to overcome the pedagogical limitations in distance learning environments and to lead the process of change and innovation by means of distance teaching and learning, the 'Mediating Teacher' Model for Distance Teaching and Learning was developed and tested on Israeli high-school students in the framework of the present writer's doctoral dissertation during the years 2010-2015. According to this model, in addition to the distance teacher, a 'mediating teacher' is present in the classroom. From the writer's own personal experience with the project, both the high-school teachers and the students display a great deal of interest in and satisfaction with the course.

This article explores issues staff and students in initial teacher education (ITE) organisations faced in implementing a series of information and communication technology (ICT) projects.To help those implementing ICT projects in education to unravel the nature of these interactions, the authors used their cross-case analysis to develop an implementation model. The model is based on data from a national evaluation of ICT-based projects in initial teacher education, which included a large-scale questionnaire survey and six in-depth case studies.

The present article focuses on a virtual research environment (VRE) and how it facilitated the networking of teacher educators participating in an Economic and Social Research Council-funded research capacity-building project. The authors argue that three main factors affected the use of the VRE, and in particular its wiki tool: the individual’s motivation to learn and to engage with (more) new technologies; the emerging dynamics of each research group as they developed shared working practices; and the institutional climates, which supported or discouraged the individuals’ engagement with both the technology and a regional Teacher Education Research Network that used this technology.