Source: Teaching and Teacher Education, Volume 28, Issue 4, p. 578-588 May 2012.
(Reviewed by the Portal Team)
This article describes a case study, which conducted in the course to investigate the pre-service teachers’ changes in technology competency as well as reasoning on the interplays between technology, pedagogy, and content.
The authors used the Modeled Analysis, Guided Development, Articulated Implementation, and Reflected Evaluation (MAGDAIRE ) framework.
Method
The participants were sixteen pre-service teachers and four teacher instructors in in Taiwan, who participated a science teacher education course.
Data were collected through several sources: Technical Proficiency of Flash Concept and Skill tests (TPF-C and TPF-S); semi-structured interview; online discussions on OSC designs, online submission of the pre-service teachers’ weekly courseworks, the pre-service teachers’ feedbacks on peers’ OSC designs; and video-recordings of the pre-service teachers’ teaching practices.
The findings suggest that MAGDAIRE significantly improved the pre-service teachers’ technology competency levels.
The data indicate that sixteen pre-service teachers believed that their technology competency were promoted, and fourteen preservice teachers thought they were better prepared to integrate technology into instruction.
Moreover, MAGDAIRE facilitated the pre-service teachers’ critical reexamination of the affordances of Flash for their teaching practices from the views of subject matter selection, motivation empowerment, information presentation, activity design, and pedagogy transition.
For example, the pre-service teachers became aware that technology could be an activator for arousing students to think harder about the subject matter, rather than a medium for transmitting knowledge.
They expressed an interest in more student-centered approaches by means of highlighting the interactive activities with computers.
Overall, the pre-service teachers recommended that the technology-integrated learning should be introduced as a blended learning approach, which combines both teacher-centered and student-centered pedagogies, to students in classroom settings.
The authors conclude that the pre-service teachers’ Flash proficiency, as an example of a particular technology competency, was significantly improved within the context of MAGDAIRE.
By the closing stages of this study, MAGDAIRE not only fostered the preservice teachers’ abilities to design and develop technology-integrated materials, but also stimulated them to ponder how to effectively prepare, conduct, and revise technology-integrated instruction for current classroom settings and the overall educational atmosphere in Taiwan.
This study may provide teacher educators, as well as teacher-education researcher, insights for innovating science teacher preparation programs in the digital age.
Implications for teaching practices
The authors suggest the following three potential additions when incorporating MAGDAIRE into science teacher education courses:
(1) To provide sustained encouragement to pre-service teachers while they exploring pedagogical rationale of technology use.
(2) To maintain the online community of practice in which preservice teachers can collaboratively solve skill-related problems after school.
(3) To extend the life cycle of MAGDAIRE across teacher preparation programs.
It might prompt pre-service teachers to further revise their OSCs and thus spread out their reasoning on the interplays between technology, pedagogy, and content.