Transcript Flexibility and Responsibility in Teacher Education

About the distance learning
program at the Iceland University
of Education
Þuríður Jóhannsdóttir
March 16. 2004
Völvunetið
Flexibility and Responsibility in Teacher
Education: Experiences and Possibilities in
Iceland and North-Norway
Paper presented at the NERA congress:
Randi Skelmo og Þuríður Jóhannsdóttir
• Iceland University of Education in Reykjavík
• Department of Teacher Education in Tromsø
University College
• serving the need for having educated
teachers in sparsely populated rural areas
Methods and theoretical
background
• How different needs of communities and
individuals have been met with flexible programs,
• the important role that the Internet has played in
opening up new possibilities for distance education
• How the use of diverse ICT tools has influenced
the structure of the programs as well as both
learning tasks and teaching methods
• Situated learning - learning is a function of the
activity, context, and culture in which it is situated
• Activity theory used to enhance understanding where
both learning and teaching are looked upon as activities,
performed in a certain context that is historically situated
The Case of the Iceland
University of Education
• over 2000 students, of which more
than 50% are enrolled in distance
education programs.
• IUE has played a leading role in the
development of distance education
on the Internet in Iceland
First steps in flexible teacher
education in Iceland
• 1979 one-time opportunity for people that had
served in rural schools
• teacher shortages in rural communities
• 1988 – still need
• Self-studies played a crucial role
• Seen in the light of situated learning theories, all
learning can be understood as some kind of
enculturation
• with that in mind, the advantages of being a part
of the school culture while simultaneously
learning to become a teacher are obvious.
New Possibilities Open Up with
the Internet
• In January 1993: a full Bachelor of
Education (B. Ed.) degree through
distance education using the new
possibilities that were opening up with ICT
• organized as a part-time course
• E-mail was supposed to be the main
media of communication
• correspondence school using e-mail
• Students and staff alike recognized the
importance of meeting face-to-face
Technological and Pedagogical
Support in the Community
• Early build-up of Internet connections in Icelandic
primary schools through the Icelandic Educational
Network – Ísmennt
• Ísmennt: a grassroots movement of several rural
schools in North Iceland
• The distance program could rely on their support
• District educational offices supporting the student’s
access to necessary technology.
• These offices were also important promoters of this
educational opportunity for rural schools
• Student teachers had job in local schools
The Use of ICT as a tool in
Distance Education
• E-mail mailing lists make it possible to
communicate in a collective way
• A community of learners on the Internet
• Web-based solutions have made
discussion and collaboration even easier
• Now a web site is set up for each course
in the distance program, either in systems
like WebCT, or an open web site that
teachers make
Learning tasks
• Discussions about the learning material
• Publishing completed assignments on the
course-web
• Some teachers have asked the students to
keep a digital portfolio
– Evaluations of distance students
– and for the students to monitor their progress
Verkefni sem nemendur sinna á Netinu
Leggja fram efni á
vefumræðum
31
3
Eiga samskipti við aðra
nemendur með tölvupósti
42
36
Senda fyrirspurnir til
kennara með tölvupósti
13
5
26
25
Leita að námsefni með
leitarvélum
Sækja námsefni
36
25
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
%
Staðnám
Fjarnám
35
40
45
Námsmat
Próf
42
20
28
Umræður á vef
59
45
Hópverkefni
79
67
69
Símat
61
Ritgerðir
74
82
Einstaklingsverkefni
0
20
40
60
%
Kvenkennarar
Karlkennarar
80
93
100
E-Learning award year 2002
• The teacher, Salvör Gissurardóttir, used digital
portfolios with multimodal representations of
learning assignments in a creative and
successful way.
• The novelty was also a new way of using blogg
(web-log) both
– to motivate and
– to map students’ learning
– as well as enhancing the learning community, as the
students were able to follow their fellow students’
learning logs
More interesting examples
• History courses where students (and
teachers) have used an open web site to
publish historical information on the
Icelandic turf-house tradition
http://saga.khi.is/torf
• A database with information collected from
old people in their families or communities,
in text, drawing, and photo formats
• Teacher: Þorsteinn Helgason
Interesting examples - 3
• BarnUng a Web on children´s litterature
• Aimed at teachers and student teachers, with the
Internet playing a key role as a medium and environment
for learning
• Building on the learning theories of social constructivism,
the web is a common arena for the teacher and the
students to construct knowledge
• A resource for primary school teachers, supporting them
and their pupils to use children’s literature in the
classroom
• Teacher: Þuríður Jóhannsdóttir
The Development in Iceland
• Policy to be an open and flexible institution that
offers all its educational programs at a distance
through the Internet
• This form of education is becoming a known and
popular form for learning
• Life-long learning centres in rural communities
support distance learners
• Positive effects of distance teacher education in
rural communities
• Continuing – graduate studies
The driving motivation
• No longer shortage of educated teachers
in rural communities
• But demand for open and flexible
education in an educational market
• Emerging needs in society for new form
and content in education
• The universities’ role to be alert
participants in dialogue with their social
environment
Challenges Ahead
• Be prepared to respond to demands from
non-traditional student groups
• The strength of the flexible teacher
education programs has been that the
teacher students had jobs as teachers in
the schools
• Now the teacher students, recruited to
distance learning programs, do not have to
have teacher experience nor do they have
to live in the countryside.
• the teacher educators cannot assume that
teacher students are working at local
schools.
Distance learning in social context
• The first distance-learning programs
involving the use of the Internet in Iceland
in 1993 is a good example of how studies
were planned in a social and technocultural context where distance teaching
and learning activity was scaffolded by
both ICT technology and the school
communities in the district.
More challenges
• Heterogeneous student groups
• Distance students are in different places and
different social positions with inherent
differences in possibilities and interests
• The teachers’ challenge to learn to use ICT-tools
to support students
• Extend their professionalism to include distance
teaching and learning
• Both technical and social contexts are important