Switching perspectives: from a language teacher to a designer of language learning with new technologies

Abstract

Abstract. Despite abundant research on educational technology and strategic input in the field, various surveys have shown that (language) teachers do not seem to embrace in their teaching the full potential of information and communication technology available in our everyday life. Language students soon entering the professional field could accelerate the process, which highlights the role of teacher education in contributing to the change. The students should see how technology-development may change the affordances for languagelearning, at the same time transforming the teachers' professional roles and practices. However, taking an active role in designing a new kind of language pedagogy seems to be challenging for students. This study explores an attempt to facilitate the students' perspective-switch from the teacher role to the designer position through participatory design. This effort was to lead the students to envisioning new practices for language learning and teaching with new technologies. However, initial analyses of the research materials indicated that despite the support the students were not fully able to see their role as designers for the future. Cultural-historical activity theory was used to examine the problem more closely. The analysis suggests that in order to position themselves as designers of the future language learning activity, language students need to understand their role as designers, conduct real-life experiments on the evolving visions with their learners, and involve learners as participants in the design activity by sharing visions and collaborative reflection on the experiments. The findings of the study provide tools for language teacher educators to make these activity systems visible and, thus, target for change.

Exclusions in social inclusion projects: Struggles in involving children in digital technology development

“…Our interdisciplinary research group has organized a number of digital technology development projects with children (see Iivari et al, ; Iivari & Kinnula, ; Iivari & Kinnula, ; Kinnula, Laari‐Salmela, & Iivari, ; Kuure et al, ; Kuure, Halkola, Iivari, Kinnula, & Molin‐Juustila, ; Molin‐Juustila, Kinnula, Iivari, Kuure, & Halkola, ). Five of the six presented studies have been conducted in the context of Finnish schools.…”

“…However, despite financial and pedagogic input as well as abundant research in the field, no great changes seem to have taken place in schools yet on a wider scale (OECD, ; European Union, ). Opportunities for children to take an active role in shaping their own technology‐rich environment have been scarce, despite the participatory and learner‐centred approaches used in digital education curricula (Kuure et al, ). For teachers and student teachers, it seems to be difficult to change practices and get pupils to envision future technologies collaboratively (Kuure et al, ).…”

“…Opportunities for children to take an active role in shaping their own technology‐rich environment have been scarce, despite the participatory and learner‐centred approaches used in digital education curricula (Kuure et al, ). For teachers and student teachers, it seems to be difficult to change practices and get pupils to envision future technologies collaboratively (Kuure et al, ). As Ross (, p. 214) states, “Working with the not‐yetness of digital education means engaging with complexity, uncertainty and risk, not as factors to be minimized or resolved, but as necessary dimensions of technologies and practices which are unknown and in flux.”…”

“…They were not invited to be active participants in the design process, and their experiences were not considered. Despite the efforts made by the researchers, the student teachers were unable to adopt a participatory designer stance to integrate new technologies into language learning (Kuure et al, ).…”

I Can’t Program! Customizable Mobile Language-Learning Resources for Researchers and Practitioners

“…A team from the University of Oulu in Finland, for example, found that, when provided the opportunity to work as CALL designers to develop and implement their own materials, student-teachers may still have difficulty viewing themselves as future CALL designers [5]. The authors argue that since the role of a CALL teacher-designer is not yet clear to future teachers, it should therefore be more clearly established; it is critical for potential teacher designers to feel like they can be worthy participants in CALL material development.…”