Responsive learning design: Epistemic fluency and generative pedagogical practices

Abstract

Several decades of research and development have produced a rich ecology of technologies designed to support active, collaborative constructionist pedagogical practices. Nevertheless, many teachers are reluctant to use these technologies in their teaching or fail to devise learning designs which leverage their qualities. We argue that this tension reflects a dissonance between the epistemic practices (manners of constructing knowledge) implicit in teachers' pedagogical practices and the ones embodied in the technology. We demonstrate this argument in the case of Dynamic Mathematics Environments (DME) through the epistemic practice of identifying invariants, and its dynamic manifestation in the technology, and illustrate it further with examples from an online course on CSCL. For teachers to effectively design learning experiences in a technology rich environment, they need to develop their capacity to critically assess the epistemic and pedagogical practices associated with this environment, identify a set of target epistemic practices and carefully devise the pedagogical practices which will engender these. We call these “generative pedagogical practices.” To do so, teachers need to actively participate in activities that would provide them with opportunities to make that epistemic change: building, experimenting with and designing for learning in diverse environments. Sometimes, applying such an epistemic disposition, requires supressing old practices of activity design.

Modeling Chinese Teachers’ Efficacies for the Teaching of Integrated STEM With Interdisciplinary Communication and Epistemic Fluency

“…Hence, when STEM teachers teaching different subject matter collaborate to design a STEM project, they need to negotiate a shared epistemological framework to avoid being narrowly focused on their own teaching experience and discipline knowledge ( Reynante et al, 2020 ). Continuous negotiations would be needed to move teachers toward sharing their knowledge sources and epistemological frame of reference ( Morrison and Collins, 1995 ; Mor and Abdu, 2018 ). This will ensure that the teachers could adopt others’ perspectives to understand different epistemic frameworks.…”

Towards an ecological-dynamics design framework for embodied-interaction conceptual learning: the case of dynamic mathematics environments

“…Based on an extensive survey, Abdu and Niv (2019) attributed teachers' reluctance to use GeoGebra's constructionist functionalities to the teachers' greater comfort with familiar curricula, discomfort with orchestrating new technological environments, beliefs that the software was suitable for advanced but not beginner students, and disengagement with professionaldevelopment modules oriented on using the software. Mor and Abdu (2018) further show that teachers may experience discomfort with movement-or transformation-based conceptualizations of mathematical ontologies (a challenge, we add, that would probably hold for both xDME and oDME). Consequently, one popular way instructors use xDME is by creating well-defined dynamic modules, as in Fig.…”

“…Second, we focused on the baseline GeoGebra task that students first encounter and, arguably, spend most of their time on. It is the definitive task of this environment, which draws much interest in the literature (Mor and Abdu 2018). Third, the GeoGebra path-tracing task might presumably be self-assigned by students engaged in inquiry, whereas the Trainer assignment is defined by the designers.…”

Teachers as designers of TEL interventions

“…Collaborative learning techniques (Pozzi & Persico, ), eg, are today much more widely known, accepted and used, both in schools and universities, than they used to be a decade ago. The same cannot yet be said for more recent innovations that are made possible by newer or niche technologies: for example, mobile technology (Kali et al, ), learning analytics or discipline‐related technology, that may promote important changes at an epistemological level, in the way a discipline is taught (Mor & Abdu, ).…”

“…But the consequence should also be the promotion of the learning design mindset, and the areas of competence identified by Mishra and Koehler (2006) in their TPACK model: technological, pedagogical and content knowledge, as well as knowledge of their interrelations. In this vein, Mor and Abdu (2018) consider the relations between content and technology, while others (Garreta-Domingo, Sloep, & Hernández-Leo, 2018;Laurillard et al, 2018) do the same with pedagogy, without forgetting the complex intertwining of these three areas.…”