Example of ‘Unstructured’ Problem Solving

This lesson was workshop based but unlike the majority of workshop lessons this was not examination orientated and did not use printed course materials. There were six learners and a teacher [T16]. Each learner worked individually, at their own pace, on their own webpage project. The learners decided how they wanted their website to be and what skills they needed to achieve desired results. The teacher moved around the room acting as a trouble shooter, helping learners solve problems and demonstrating how to use Dreamweaver to create the desired effects. T16 explained that in the past he had used a more structured approach, with taught sessions and handouts, but had found that often learners were spending time learning material that they did not need for the kind of websites they wanted to build so he had adopted this more flexible, individualistic practice.

The degree of this individualism was highlighted by an interesting feature of this particular lesson. One learner who was attending the course for a second time had taken it upon himself to act as unofficial learner mentor. He moved around the room helping other learners as a teacher substitute, when the teacher was busy, or as a partner to problem solving activity. His learning had thus become bound, not just with his own project, but also by those of his fellow learners.

Although this mentor role was not initiated by the teacher, it fitted well with his declared socially constructed view of knowledge.

T16: …. this business of underpinnings of teaching as being something to do with the business of interpersonal communication, how people relate to each other and how meaning is generated by these social interactions…… I think this is the crucial core of what this is all about.

For this teacher knowledge was not passed from the teacher to the learner but was a process dependent on social interaction

T16: ……. putting people into situations where they can experience a process that leads them to understand how a particular system works .……… [and] what I refer to as the dialectic, the constant byplay of ideas back and forth between the student and the teacher, student, teacher, student, teacher all the time

He felt that this put the learner in control

T16: and it allows you feel as if it’s your process not somebody else’s. …….You need to know you’re steering yourself through not just the knowledge but the understanding of the knowledge in practical terms, the application of it.

This teacher had for many years also been involved in teacher training. He had perhaps, therefore, developed a greater theoretical knowledge than many of the other participants which might, in part, explain his developed commitment to constructivist understandings of knowledge. Like T9, T16 was a teacher whose experience covered a range of subjects so his teaching style may have been adapted from his non-ICT teaching experiences.

This chapter has described observed practices in the ICT user classroom. Two underlying approaches, workshop or group, have been identified. Within these approaches a variety of teaching foci have been described and explored. The majority of the teachers were predominantly, although not exclusively, ‘procedural’ or ‘instructional’ in style and concern seemed to emphasis functional knowledge and structural understanding. For these teachers attention to competencies beyond operational skills appeared vague and dependent on individual teacher/learner interaction. A few of the teachers adopted more learner-centred approaches and actively addressed problem solving activities. To explore why there might be these differences discussion will now move on to examine the influences on these teachers’ professional knowledge and their perceptions of the teaching/learning environment. The following three chapters will examine these influences through the teachers’ experience and understanding of subject, pedagogy and context.

This research aims to go beyond a description of current practice and seeks to explore and explain practices from the teachers’ professional knowledge perspective. The next three chapters, therefore, move on from what practices were observed, to the teachers’ experience and perceptions of teaching as revealed in interview. Discussion is concerned with the two research questions a) ‘How did these teachers of adult ICT developed and maintained PCK?’ and b) ‘How did these teachers construe ICT teaching and what factors informed their vision?’ This chapter is largely concerned with the first of these questions in relation to subject constructions. It will first explore how the participating teachers may have developed their professional identity, then how that identity is maintained through CPD opportunities and finally how the teachers’ define their subject role. The following chapter will move on to explore the teachers’ interpretations of pedagogy and the teaching role. Finally discussion will explore the wider institutional or social influences the teachers described as impacting on practice.

Twelve full interviews [Appendix B2] were conducted involving 14 teachers. Due to lack of time T5 and T6 had a joint interview as did T9 and T10. The sample is small so can only provide a snapshot into teachers’ PCK. Exploratory data analysis methods were used to help seek hidden patterns in responses but findings ought to be treated cautiously (Hartwig and Dearing, 1979). They should not be seen as conclusive as a number of ‘invisible’ factors, such as the method of data gathering and analyse could influence results. The discussion here essentially describes how these teachers replied in interview and the researcher’s interpretation of that data.

The teachers’ experience of teaching ICT ranged from 2 to 27 years. The majority (70%) had taught ICT for between 5 and 10 years but were perhaps older than these years of experience would indicate, as for all but one this was a second or third career. Only four teachers had experience of teaching other subjects. To explore whether there was a discernable relationship between experience and style, the teachers’ years of teaching experience, length of ICT

teaching and teaching style were represented graphically [Chart 6.1]. Style was allocated a number between 1 and 5 according to those identified during observation and relative position on the teacher/learner centred continuum [Table 5.1]; 1 being teacher-centred and 5 learner-centred. Allocation was according to the most dominant style observed during classroom observations. It should be remembered that the teachers often displayed use of more than one style and that all of the teachers used procedural, transmissive techniques at some point during observation. They may also use other styles and approaches in other, unobserved lessons or situations.

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 T4 T5 T6 T7 T14 T15 T1 T3 T8 T17 T2 T9 T10 T16 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 2 2 2 3 4 4 5

Teacher (Tx) and Predoninant Style

Y

e

a

rs

Key:

1 Procedural 2 Instructional 3 Finding-out 4 Constructional 5 Problem Solving