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Self-determined teacher learning in a digital context fundamental change in thinking and practice

Butler, Deirdre (2004) Self-determined teacher learning in a digital context fundamental change in thinking and practice. PhD thesis, Dublin City University.

Abstract
“Self-determined Teacher Learning in a Digital Context” reports on a longitudinal study of teacher empowerment through Constructionist learning about computational technologies and learning about learning itself. The study includes but looks beyond how teachers engage with technology, to how they redefine their own understandings o f learning as they use technology in working alongside their students. The teachers’ emerging self-reflective practice enables them to better understand the multifaceted structure of the learning situation and their own relations to its social, cognitive, and affective aspects. The “Empowering Minds” study also addresses how teachers can become critical judges o f technologies, in order to define for themselves and suggest for others what being digital can mean in learning. These processes have the potential to change educational strategies on personal, community and national scales. How teachers understand learning and how we conceptualise teacher learning will directly affect future generations’ potentials. Teachers grapple with epistemological issues in designing and developing environments around new protean materials that enable each person’s construction of ideas and expression of self. Learning theory becomes less abstract and more meaningful as teachers create a language for talking among themselves about learning. The resulting concrétisation of learning processes becomes possible through anchoring the learning with and about technologies in the teachers’ everyday reality o f the classroom. Teachers become empowered to use their own practice as “an object-to-thinkwith” in the Papertian sense. By externalising and examining their understandings of learning, they experiment with and ultimately transform their teaching practice, their relationships with their students, and their understandings of their role as teachers. Constructionists have been challenged to demonstrate that their assertions about education work. The approach described here is a compelling response. Furthermore its continuance among the original participants and its extension to a variety o f new initiatives demonstrate both sustainability and scalability.
Metadata
Item Type:Thesis (PhD)
Date of Award:November 2004
Refereed:No
Supervisor(s):Papert, Seymour and Gash, Hugh
Uncontrolled Keywords:Digital learning
Subjects:Social Sciences > Education
Social Sciences > Teaching
DCU Faculties and Centres:DCU Faculties and Schools > Institute of Education
Use License:This item is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License. View License
ID Code:22464
Deposited On:20 Jul 2018 11:16 by Thomas Murtagh . Last Modified 25 Jul 2018 11:35
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