Co-Organizing the Collective Journey of Inquiry with Idea Thread Mapper

This research integrates theory building, technology design, and design-based research to address a central challenge pertaining to collective inquiry and knowledge building: How can student-driven, ever-deepening inquiry processes become socially organized and pedagogically supported in a community? Different from supporting inquiry using predesigned structures, we propose reflective structuration as a social and temporal mechanism by which members of a community coconstruct/reconstruct shared inquiry structures to shape and guide their ongoing knowledge building processes. Idea Thread Mapper (ITM) was designed to help students and their teacher monitor emergent directions and co-organize the unfolding inquiry processes over time. A study was conducted in two upper primary school classrooms that investigated electricity with the support of ITM. Qualitative analyses of classroom videos and observational data documented the formation and elaboration of shared inquiry structures. Content analysis of the online discourse and student reflective summaries showed that in the classroom with reflective structuration, students made more active and connected contributions to their online discourse, leading to deeper and more coherent scientific understandings

Epistemic agency for costructuring expansive knowledge-building practices

As a hallmark of authentic science practices, students need to enact epistemic agency to shape/reshape the key aspects of their inquiry work as a collaborative community. This study elaborates an emergent temporal mechanism for engaging students\u27 epistemic agency: “reflective structuration” by which members of a classroom community coconstruct ever-evolving inquiry directions and group structures as their collective inquiry work proceeds. Using an interactional ethnography method, we examined how students (n = 22) in a Grade 5 classroom coconstructed shared inquiry directions and flexible group structures to guide their sustained inquiry about human body systems over 7 months supported by a collaborative online environment. Rich data were collected to trace the work of the eye inquiry group as a telling case. With their teacher\u27s support, students took agentic moves to construct an evolving set of wondering areas as a way to frame what their whole class needed to investigate. Flexible groups, such as the eye inquiry group, emerged and evolved in the various areas, leading to progressively deepening inquiry and extensive idea exchanges among students. Implications for research and practice are discussed

A Pedagogy of Slow: Integrating Experiences of Physical and Virtual Gallery Spaces to Foster Critical Engagement in SoTL

This article makes a case for SoTL practitioners to engage in what we term a pedagogy of slow. Here, “slow” connotes with waiting and patience. It takes time to learn and acquire the skills that a SoTL scholar needs. “Doing SoTL” we therefore argue, requires a pedagogy that takes time and sees time as an ally instead of as an opponent. In what the university has become, there seems little room for a pedagogy of slow that both offers and allows for time. In this article we present a case for considering engagement with the visual arts as part of a pedagogy of slow and the development of SoTL. By making the familiar strange, we acknowledge the implications of visual thinking strategies for social engagement by highlighting teaching and learning as relational. Working with colleagues in the context of continuing professional development, we collected data via focus groups and written reflections within physical and virtual gallery spaces to glean insight into participant experiences of slow looking as the antithesis to fast-paced and pressurised environments. We highlight how learning to become a SoTL scholar is an iterative process that requires time and generates what we term “productive friction.” This is the iterative process which creates dislocation and uncertainty within participants, but which also has the capacity to nudge towards a transformation of the professional self

A Pedagogy of Deep Listening in E-Learning

This paper examines deep listening as a pedagogy in 21st century online education. The topic is situated in the intersubjectivity of computer-mediated communication in learning environments that foster transformative experiences. The transdisciplinary orientation of the paper includes the complex and overlapping lenses through which multiple ways of teaching, learning, and knowing are viewed and experienced in the context of fostering transformation in online education in a time of rapid growth in technological innovation, globalization, and significant environmental change. It transcends an individual disciplinary research and focus, bridging epistemologies to consider the felt sense of deep listening in the educator’s role

Online + International: Utilizing Theory to Maximize Intercultural Learning in Virtual Exchange Courses

Virtual exchanges (VEs) are course-based experiences designed to promote global learning, often by integrating cross-cultural interactions and collaborations with people from other areas of the world into coursework in a virtual format. Due to the widespread disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic, VEs have seen an increase in popularity. However, research findings on the effectiveness of VEs are mixed, and limited guidance is available to VE instructors on how to structure and facilitate these programs. The purpose of this paper is to highlight how theories and literature in two distinct areas of scholarship, Intergroup Contact theory and the Community of Inquiry model in online learning, could be applied to VEs to maximize student learning. We discuss each of these theories first and then highlight how they could be applied to VEs using illustrative examples from a pilot study of five VE courses offered at one institution during the summer of 2021

Sustaining Knowledge Building as a Principle-Based Innovation at an Elementary School

This study explores Knowledge Building as a principle-based innovation at an elementary school and makes a case for a principle- versus procedure-based approach to educational innovation, supported by new knowledge media. Thirty-nine Knowledge Building initiatives, each focused on a curriculum theme and facilitated by nine teachers over eight years, were analyzed using measures of student discourse in a Knowledge Building environment--Knowledge Forum. Results were analyzed from the perspective of student, teacher, and principal engagement to identify conditions for Knowledge Building as a school-wide innovation. Analyses of student discourse showed interactive and complementary contributions to a community knowledge space, conceptual content of growing scope and depth, and collective responsibility for knowledge advancement. Analyses of teacher and principal engagement showed supportive conditions such as shared vision; trust in student competencies to the point of enabling transfer of agency for knowledge advancement to students; ever-deepening understanding of Knowledge Building principles; knowledge emergent through collective responsibility; a coherent systems perspective; teacher professional Knowledge Building communities; and leadership supportive of innovation at all levels. More substantial advances for students were related to years of teachers’ experience in this progressive knowledge-advancing enterprise

Visualisation Method Toolkit: a shared vocabulary to face complexity

With companies, universities, individuals or entire departments, promoting open dialogue, constant interdisciplinary collaboration is a challenge that still meets some resistance. Learning to deal with complexity, with the coexistence of different points of view, learning to work in more heterogeneous teams, in relation to know-how combined in new, sometimes original and challenging formulations, brings particular needs. From the importance of language and a shared vocabulary to the ever-increasing need to work on tools and not just applications, from the constant promotion of collaboration and contamination between different backgrounds and disciplines to the guarantee of a continuous training process through laboratory activities and workshop, this contribution - through the Visualisation Method Toolkit project and its experimentation - investigates the potential of data visualization as a medium to bring design closer to a company's core business as well as support students, institutions and other organizations in communication, both in the analysis and/or scenario phase and in support of dissemination actions towards a more informed quanti/qualitative collective decision making with the aim of enabling new innovative and sustainable good practices

Integrando aprendizaje-servicio y tecnologías digitales: análisis de sus desafíos y promesas

Our intent is to frame the integration of service learning and digital technologies broadly in teaching and learning and to explore some of the complexities of the challenge and the promise, thereby setting up readers’ engagement with the questions and issues that follow in the papers of RIED.  We seek to provide perspectives that may contribute to subsequent implementation of pedagogical innovations and research that will improve practice and, in consequence, outcomes for all.  We begin by offering an overview of the what’s and why’s of service learning.  We then examine some of the how’s of service learning in the context of its integration with digital technologies.  Finally, we explore several issues that may shape new developments at the interface of these two pedagogical innovation.En este artículo pretendemos enmarcar la incorporación del aprendizaje-servicio y las tecnologías digitales en la enseñanza y el aprendizaje, a la vez que analizar la complejidad de algunos de sus desafíos y promesas. De esta forma, se compromete a los lectores con las preguntas y los problemas que se abordan en los artículos que componen este monográfico de RIED. Buscamos proporcionar perspectivas que puedan contribuir a la implementación de innovaciones e investigaciones pedagógicas que mejorarán la práctica y, en consecuencia, los resultados de aprendizaje. Comenzamos brindando una descripción general de lo qué es y el porqué del aprendizaje-servicio, para examinar, en una segunda parte, el cómo del aprendizaje-servicio en escenarios digitales. Finalmente, exploramos varios temas que pueden dar forma a nuevos desarrollos en el contexto de estas dos innovaciones pedagógicas

NMC Horizon Report: 2017 Higher Education Edition

The NMC Horizon Report > 2017 Higher Education Edition is a collaborative effort between the NMC and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI). This 14th edition describes annual findings from the NMC Horizon Project, an ongoing research project designed to identify and describe emerging technologies likely to have an impact on learning, teaching, and creative inquiry in education. Six key trends, six significant challenges, and six important developments in educational technology are placed directly in the context of their likely impact on the core missions of universities and colleges. The three key sections of this report constitute a reference and straightforward technology-planning guide for educators, higher education leaders, administrators, policymakers, and technologists. It is our hope that this research will help to inform the choices that institutions are making about technology to improve, support, or extend teaching, learning, and creative inquiry in higher education across the globe. All of the topics were selected by an expert panel that represented a range of backgrounds and perspectives

Digital Journeys: A Narrative Inquiry Into The Experiences Of Third- Grade Through Fifth-Grade General Education Teachers Implementing Instructional Technology In Northern California

The problem studied was the utilization of instructional technology in elementary classrooms, from third-grade through fifth-grade, and how teachers experience the use of technology in teaching methods and student learning. The purpose of this qualitative narrative inquiry was to understand the experiences of third-grade through fifth-grade teachers regarding the implementation of instructional technology in their classrooms. The study\u27s timing captured teachers\u27 views on technology before, during, and after the 2020-2021 academic year, which was heavily impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic and distance learning. Qualitative narrative inquiry allowed for a rich exploration of the teachers\u27 experiences, with results of the study informing future decisions and research related to instructional technology implementation in upper elementary settings. Purposeful sampling identified five participants meeting specific criteria. Virtual interviews provided detailed accounts of their encounters with instructional technology. The analysis involved restorying interview data, coding, and member-checking each narrative for accuracy. Four distinct themes emerged from this process: the evolutionary journey of technology integration, collaboration as a mode of professional learning, adaptability to change, and the personalization of learning experiences. The findings of this study underscore the necessity to empower teachers with ample time, resources, and collaborative platforms, enabling effective implementation of instructional technology that significantly enhances their teaching practice and fosters meaningful student learning outcomes