Pre Service Teachers Use of Technology To Create Instructional Materials A School College Partnership
Pre Service Teachers Use of Technology To Create Instructional Materials A School College Partnership
Pre Service Teachers Use of Technology To Create Instructional Materials A School College Partnership
Askin Asan
To cite this article: Askin Asan (2002) Pre-service teachers' use of technology to create
instructional materials: a school-college partnership, Technology, Pedagogy and Education, 11:2,
217-232, DOI: 10.1080/14759390200200133
ASKIN ASAN
Karadeniz Technical University, Trabzon, Turkey
ABSTRACT The field experience component has always been a vital part of
teacher education programs (Paese, 1989). This article describes collaborative
work designed to give an opportunity to pre-service teachers to mesh theory
with practice in an instructional material preparation course. Pre-service
teachers were assigned to complete a computer project, which will be used to
support classroom lessons. These projects were supervised by the classroom
teachers at the basic education schools and the supervising professor at the
College of Education. As a result of this collaborative work, pre-service
teachers and classroom teachers practiced developing instructional materials
and integrating technology in subject content areas, became more comfortable
with the technology and developed greater proficiency in their computer use.
Introduction
Technology is a rapidly developing and changing phenomenon, resulting in
great challenges and changes for educators and education. The
restructuring of schools, the composition of national and provincial
curricula, the development of benchmark assessments – all these things are
of little value if they do not take the teacher into account (Hargreaves,
1996). Effective adoption of new technologies in classroom settings requires
teachers not only to have the knowledge about the technology but also to
have experienced successful models of computer integration in a teaching
and learning environment (Lee, 1997).
The movement toward the development of national education in
Turkey revitalized interest in using computer technology in basic education.
The Ministry of National Education (MONE) has made efforts to encourage
the use of technology in education to cope with the new challenges of an
information society. The Government has sought assistance to introduce a
number of projects aimed at improving the quality of education. These
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o helping pre-service teachers get acquainted with the school and develop
their pedagogical knowledge, skill and attitudes;
o increasing strategies by which pre-service teachers can better develop
instructional materials;
o creating an environment for pre-service and in-service teachers to express
positive attitudes toward computer tasks;
o building an effective faculty-school partnership.
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least one lesson plan in the mentor teachers’ regular curriculum. The
computer projects were mainly focused on producing instructional materials
by using available computer application programs. The researcher provided
guidance, ideas, and suggestions during the development process. The
collaborative effort of the students was supported by the mentor teacher
who took responsibility for the outcome of the collaborative effort.
To further examine what may contribute to successful learning and
how to increase teachers’ appreciation of computers in education, the
researcher administered a survey and interviewed the pre-service teachers
and mentor teachers.
Participants were interviewed, observed, and asked to keep a journal of
their experiences. Interview questions contained items concerning
perceptions of the learning tasks and the participants’ experiences
(Appendix A). Participants were also asked to think about the whole
experience and write a journal that described how this experience has
affected them as a teacher (Appendix B). The methods utilized were
naturalistic and flowed from the mentor teacher-student teacher interactions.
Responses were content analyzed and grouped according to themes that
emerged.
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Information
Gathering
Knowledge
Presentation Information
Processing
Choosing a Subject
The first step was to select a subject area to work in. Every group of pre-
service teachers worked with mentor teachers who were subject matter
experts and familiar with the subject content and the general needs of
students in that field. The chosen general subject area was too broad a topic
to deal with in a single set of instructional material, so dividing the topic
into subtopics was a logical second step. This is done by examining
curriculum guides, textbooks, and standardized tests in the field to
determine exactly what the curriculum consists of. After identifying a
potential topic, the team considered what kind of instructional media could
help to teach the subject and what other instructional needs were relevant
to that topic. Mentor teachers played an important role in determining the
instructional needs.
In this collaborative work, upon selection of a topic, the team worked
on concept mapping and explored the roots of the subject and its
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Stating Objectives
At this stage, it was necessary to translate the needs and goals into
performance objectives that were sufficiently specific and detailed in order to
plan and develop the materials and the delivery system (Gagné et al, 1992).
The mentor teachers assisted the pre-service teachers when formulating
objectives. They tried to state objectives clearly and unambiguously.
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Knowledge Presentation
The process by which the knowledge obtained becomes a presentation is not
only a technical procedure; it is a reflective process of learning (Levy, 1999).
To produce a presentation of their work, the pre-service teachers recapped
the entire learning process in terms of the aims of their project. The mentor
teachers assisted them with clarifying the logic of the ideas of the
presentation. The team reconsidered and planned what they wished to say,
show and present. A tutorial lesson was designed by the researcher to
familiarize pre-service teachers and mentor teachers with the technical
aspects of constructing their own presentations. A step-by-step, simplified set
of instructions was given to each team.
After the tutorial lesson, each team began to create their projects,
which would be the material for the mentor teachers’ classrooms during the
following academic year. They imported documents from scanned artifacts,
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to work with the school teacher and to help him to integrate technology into
his lesson plan. I also had sufficient time to practice my computer skills.’
Attitudes
Both pre-service teachers and mentor teachers had a strong motivation and
expressed positive attitudes towards the power of computers and the value
of using computers in education. They found the computer tasks interesting
and useful, and showed great appreciation of the computer resources. The
mentor teachers came up with good ideas to apply computers in their
everyday classes, and demonstrated great appreciation of the possibilities of
computers. They expressed great enthusiasm when engaged in some
practical tasks for productivity purposes. The pre-service teachers did not
have the practical school experience but after the collaborative work they
understood the necessity to improve their work with computers. The pre-
service and mentor teachers’ positive attitudes helped contribute to more
meaningful learning and higher appreciation about computer tasks.
Jonassen et al (1999) described meaningful learning as an active,
constructive, intentional, authentic, and cooperative process. In meaningful
learning processes learners interact with an environment and manipulate the
objects in that environment, observing the effects of their interventions and
constructing their own interpretations of the phenomena and the results of
the manipulation. Learners articulate their learning goals and learning tasks
that are situated in some case-based or problem-based learning
environments. They can work in groups, socially negotiating a common
expectation and understanding of the task and the methods they will use to
accomplish it. In this study, mentor teachers reported remarkable gains,
because as one said:
I was very frightened at first, when we began talking about the
computer with the pre-service teachers, I must admit that I was
frustrated and felt overwhelmed. I feel that as a teacher I should have
knowledge of how the computer works. Therefore I think it was very
important for me to have this kind of experience.
Another responded:
I had participated in an in-service training course organized by the
ministry, but the lessons were very meaningless. But now I think that
the computer has superiority. You yourself create something on the
computer.
A clear area of growth was in participants’ attitudes, skills, and knowledge
regarding the use of computers in the classroom. In the words of four pre-
service teachers:
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College courses are usually theoretical, you can’t examine the real
situation. To use the computer in the real school setting, of course, was
very beneficial and meaningful for us.
… this class has changed the way I think about teaching. Having this
kind of experience with the computer gives new ways to design lessons
and activities.
Collaboration
The pre-service teachers and mentor teachers helped one another through
an effective exchange of ideas and information. The pre-service teachers had
access to the campus computers on a frequent basis and during group
working they and the mentor teachers had easy access to computers at their
school. Access to the Internet provided a host of opportunities for
exploration and resources on an endless variety of topics for students and
teachers. Both pre-service teachers and mentor teachers enjoyed working on
a computer with a group. They found the tasks interesting and they felt
encouraged in producing quality products. Learning in a cooperative setting
was fun.
Use of technology provided unrestricted access to video, graphical,
audio, and textual material. While working on the project participants
obtained the technical skills and knowledge needed for working with a word
processor, spreadsheet, presentation software and the Internet and exploited
the potential of computer use and their ability to integrate this technology
into teaching situations. The pre-service teachers and mentor teachers
agreed together that this was one way to expose students to a learning
environment in which they could experience aspects of classroom teaching
from a range of perspectives, and to view a multitude of important ideas and
representations of knowledge. One mentor teacher reflected:
I realize the power of new technologies to impact on teaching and
learning. Bringing this technology into the classroom will change
teaching methods. Also I saw that technology could be a meaningful,
active component of the entire curriculum.
The following is one example of a pre-service teacher response:
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There is little doubt that our group relationship was a key factor in our
success. Developing such a positive relationship helped a truly enjoyable
experience for us. Another benefit to working collaboratively is that our
total attention was on the task at hand, thus allowing us to make
significant progress in a short amount of time.
Conclusion
There is a strong emphasis today on computer integration into the
classroom with a focus on the technologies available. In addition to being
proficient in employing effective instructional materials, teachers who are
keen to succeed in today’s world must also have technology skills.
One of the problems in teacher education is a disconnection between
theory and practice during the process of student teaching. However, giving
an opportunity for pre-service teachers to work with teachers in a real
school setting can facilitate the construction of more powerful and
productive understandings – the sort of understanding that will be needed
as the pre-service teachers move into their own classrooms. There is also a
challenge for classroom teachers to use and incorporate technology into
their classroom activities.
This collaborative work helped pre-service teachers and classroom
teachers to become more comfortable with the technology and develop a
greater proficiency in their computer use. The classroom teachers were
willing to commit to in-service training that would expand and enrich them
in their profession. Pre-service teachers explored new teaching methods in
an environment of collaboration with experienced teachers. It appeared that
collaboration in learning worked well for classroom teachers as well as pre-
service teachers.
Correspondence
Dr Askin Asan, Computer Education and Instructional Technology
Department, Faculty of Education, Karadeniz Technical University,
Sogutlu, Trabzon, Turkey ([email protected]).
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APPENDIX A
Interview questions (for pre-service teachers and mentor teachers)
Please answer the following questions:
o How would you describe the learning environment? Does it facilitate
learning? How do you know?
o What was your most useful experience?
o What do you think was the most effective part of this activity?
o What is your overall impression of this group activity?
o How has this collaborative work helped you?
o What worked really well?
o What did you enjoy doing?
o What did you learn about yourself throughout this process?
APPENDIX B
Journal entries (for pre-service teachers and mentor teachers)
REFLECTIVE QUESTIONS
An area of growth and development I noticed in my student teacher
Something I learned from my student teacher during this activity
What I learned about myself as a teacher during this experience
Was this experience worthwhile for me and for my classroom?
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