How to design educational settings to promote collaborative inquiry: Pedagogical infrastructures for technology-enhanced progressive inquiry

Strategies of scientific, question-driven inquiry are stated to be important cultural practices that should be educated in schools and universities. The present study focuses on investigating multiple efforts to implement a model of Progressive Inquiry and related Web-based tools in primary, secondary and university level education, to develop guidelines for educators in promoting students collaborative inquiry practices with technology. The research consists of four studies. In Study I, the aims were to investigate how a human tutor contributed to the university students collaborative inquiry process through virtual forums, and how the influence of the tutoring activities is demonstrated in the students inquiry discourse. Study II examined an effort to implement technology-enhanced progressive inquiry as a distance working project in a middle school context. Study III examined multiple teachers' methods of organizing progressive inquiry projects in primary and secondary classrooms through a generic analysis framework. In Study IV, a design-based research effort consisting of four consecutive university courses, applying progressive inquiry pedagogy, was retrospectively re-analyzed in order to develop the generic design framework. The results indicate that appropriate teacher support for students collaborative inquiry efforts appears to include interplay between spontaneity and structure. Careful consideration should be given to content mastery, critical working strategies or essential knowledge practices that the inquiry approach is intended to promote. In particular, those elements in students activities should be structured and directed, which are central to the aim of Progressive Inquiry, but which the students do not recognize or demonstrate spontaneously, and which are usually not taken into account in existing pedagogical methods or educational conventions. Such elements are, e.g., productive co-construction activities; sustained engagement in improving produced ideas and explanations; critical reflection of the adopted inquiry practices, and sophisticated use of modern technology for knowledge work. Concerning the scaling-up of inquiry pedagogy, it was concluded that one individual teacher can also apply the principles of Progressive Inquiry in his or her own teaching in many innovative ways, even under various institutional constraints. The developed Pedagogical Infrastructure Framework enabled recognizing and examining some central features and their interplay in the designs of examined inquiry units. The framework may help to recognize and critically evaluate the invisible learning-cultural conventions in various educational settings and can mediate discussions about how to overcome or change them.

Collaborative Design in a Virtual Learning Environment : Three Design Experiments in Textile Teacher Education

The aim of the study was to analyze and facilitate collaborative design in a virtual learning environment (VLE). Discussions of virtual design in design education have typically focused on technological or communication issues, not on pedagogical issues. Yet in order to facilitate collaborative design, it is also necessary to address the pedagogical issues related to the virtual design process. In this study, the progressive inquiry model of collaborative designing was used to give a structural level of facilitation to students working in the VLE. According to this model, all aspects of inquiry, such as creating the design context, constructing a design idea, evaluating the idea, and searching for new information, can be shared in a design community. The study consists of three design projects: 1) designing clothes for premature babies, 2) designing conference bags for an international conference, and 3) designing tactile books for visually impaired children. These design projects constituted a continuum of design experiments, each of which highlighted certain perspectives on collaborative designing. The design experiments were organized so that the participants worked in design teams, both face-to-face and virtually. The first design experiment focused on peer collaboration among textile teacher students in the VLE. The second design experiment took into consideration end-users needs by using a participatory design approach. The third design experiment intensified computer-supported collaboration between students and domain experts. The virtual learning environments, in these design experiments, were designed to support knowledge-building pedagogy and progressive inquiry learning. These environments enabled a detailed recording of all computer-mediated interactions and data related to virtual designing. The data analysis was based on qualitative content analysis of design statements in the VLE. This study indicated four crucial issues concerning collaborative design in the VLE in craft and design education. Firstly, using the collaborative design process in craft and design education gives rise to special challenges of building learning communities, creating appropriate design tasks for them, and providing tools for collaborative activities. Secondly, the progressive inquiry model of collaborative designing can be used as a scaffold support for design thinking and for reflection on the design process. Thirdly, participation and distributed expertise can be facilitated by considering the key stakeholders who are related to the design task or design context, and getting them to participate in virtual designing. Fourthly, in the collaborative design process, it is important that team members create and improve visual and technical ideas together, not just agree or disagree about proposed ideas. Therefore, viewing the VLE as a medium for collaborative construction of the design objects appears crucial in order to understand and facilitate the complex processes in collaborative designing.

Lionhearts of the Playworld : An ethnographic case study of the development of agency in play pedagogy

This is an ethnographic case study of the creation and emergence of a playworld – a pedagogical approach aimed at promoting children’s development and learning in early education settings through the use of play and drama. The data was collected in a Finnish experimental mixed-age elementary school classroom in the school year 2003-2004. In the playworld students and teachers explore different social and cultural phenomena through taking on the roles of characters from a story or a piece of literature and acting inside the frames of an improvised plot. The thesis takes under scrutiny the notion of agency in education. It produces theoretically grounded empirical knowledge of the ways in which children struggle to become recognized and agentive actors in early education settings and how their agency develops in their interaction with adults. The study builds on the activity theoretical and sociocultural tradition and develops a methodological framework called video-based narrative interaction analysis for studying student agency as developing over time but manifesting through the situational material and discursive local interactions. The research questions are: 1. What are the children’s ways of enacting their agency in the playworld? 2. How do the children’s agentive actions change and develop over the spring? 3. What are the potentials and challenges of the playworld for promoting student agency? 4. How do the teachers and the children deal with the contradiction between control and agency in the playworld? The study consists of a summary part and four empirical articles which each have a particular viewpoint. Articles I and II deal with individual students’ paths to agency. In Article I the focus is on the role of resistance and questioning in enabling important spaces for agency. Article II takes a critical gender perspective and analyzes how two girls struggled towards recognition in the playworld. It also illuminates the role of imagination in developing a sense of agency. Article III examines how the open-ended and improvisational nature of the playworld interaction provided experiences and a sense of ‘shared agency’ for the students and teachers in the class. Article IV turns the focus on the teachers and analyzes how their role actions in the playworld helped the children to enact agency. It also discusses the challenges that the teachers faced in this work and asks what makes the playworld activity sustainable in the class. The summary part provides a critical literature review on the concept of agency and argues that the inherently contradictory nature of the phenomenon of agency has not been sufficiently theorized. The summary part also locates the playworld intervention in a historical frame by discussing the changing conceptions of adulthood and childhood in the West. By focusing on the changing role of play and art in both adults’ and children’s contemporary lives, the thesis opens up an important but often neglected perspective on the problem of promoting student agency in education. The results illustrate how engaging in a collectively imagined and dramatized pretend play space together with the children enabled the teachers to momentarily put aside their “knower” positions in the classroom. The fictive roles and the narrative plot helped them to create a necessary incompleteness and open-endedness in the activity that stimulated the children’s initiatives. This meant that the children too could momentarily step out of their traditional classroom positions as pupils and initiate action to further the collective play. Engaging in this kind of unconventional activity and taking up and enacting agency was, however, very challenging for the participating children and teachers. It often contradicted the need to sustain control and order in the classroom. The study concludes that play- and drama-based pedagogies offer a unique but undeveloped potential for developing educational spaces that help teachers and children deal with the often contradictory requirements of schooling.

Matka koulun kestävän kehittämisen maisemassa

A Journey in the Landscape of Sustainable School Development “A Journey in the Landscape of Sustainable School Development” is a story of the Sorrila School development process. This research deals with a school development project as a process, and as a part of international projects on Education for Sustainable Development, with ENSI (Environment and School Initiatives) being the most important. The main purpose of the study was to analyze the change process as a general phenomenon as well as the learning connected to it. The research describes the development period 2001–2008 at the Sorrila Primary school. The research questions are as follows: 1. What did pupils learn during the research and development period? 2. How did the coordinating teacher develop personally? 3. How were the ENSI targets and other closely linked projects reached? 4. What was the feedback from the pupils, their parents and other teachers at the school? 5. How did the developing process proceed in 2001–2008? The method used was integrating action research, which also had ethnographical elements. Narrative was the form of the data as well as the manner of reporting. The method as a whole was integrating, ethnographical action research as a story. The research data consisted mostly of Knowledge Forum notes written by the teacher-researcher. Knowledge Forum is an Internetbased collaborative knowledge-building programme. Pupils’, parents’ and other teachers’ feedback, newspaper articles and students’ writings complied the data, which consists of material from seven years. Sustainable development was the basis of the school improvement. The targets of the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (2005–2014) were part of the development projects. According to the research results the school was seen as part of complex systems where manifold and interactive learning took place. The learning of pupils, teachers and the school as a community can be characterised socioculturally. The school was able to reach a level of collaborative transformative learning. As well as several concrete projects, such as Comenius school project, school development consisted of networking at many levels. Along with the projects and networking, the school was able to apply the pedagogy of connection, by carrying out integrative and cross-disciplinary themes and using various learning and teaching methods. International cooperation was a natural part of the work. A figure of Aunt Green, the role model of the teacher researcher, was an innovation which resembled a change agent. The other role of the teacherresearcher as a coordinator, was important for her own professional development. According to the results the change process, which relied on sustainable school development, led the school along a road of positive renewals. It was not a series of projects but an ongoing process. The objectives of the international projects were accomplished to a great extent during the research period. According to the principles of action research, the main results were put forward in order to help others to develop their schools. Frictions and problems as well as positive experiences and rejecting dualities were seen as change forces. Keywords: education for sustainable development (ESD), sustainable school development, teacher professional development, integrating, pedagogy of connection, transformative learning

Representing the epistemic nature of teachers’ practical knowledge : The case of class teachers’ general pedagogy

The present study addressed the epistemology of teachers’ practical knowledge. Drawing from the literature, teachers’ practical knowledge is defined as all teachers’ cognitions (e.g., beliefs, values, motives, procedural knowing, and declarative knowledge) that guide their practice of teaching. The teachers’ reasoning that lies behind their practical knowledge is addressed to gain insight into its epistemic nature. I studied six class teachers’ practical knowledge; they teach in the metropolitan region of Helsinki. Relying on the assumptions of the phenomenographic inquiry, I collected and analyzed the data. I analyzed the data in two stages where the first stage involved an abductive procedure, and the second stage an inductive procedure for interpretation, and thus developed the system of categories. In the end, a quantitative analysis nested into the qualitative findings to study the patterns of the teachers’’ reasoning. The results indicated that teachers justified their practical knowledge based on morality and efficiency of action; efficiency of action was found to be presented in two different ways: authentic efficiency and naïve efficiency. The epistemic weight of morality was embedded in what I call “moral care”. The core intention of teachers in the moral care was the commitment that they felt about the “whole character” of students. From this perspective the “dignity” and the moral character of the students should not replaced for any other “instrumental price”. “Caring pedagogy” was the epistemic value of teachers’ reasoning in the authentic efficiency. The central idea in the caring pedagogy was teachers’ intentions to improve the “intellectual properties” of “all or most” of the students using “flexible” and “diverse” pedagogies. However, “regulating pedagogy” was the epistemic condition of practice in the cases corresponding to naïve efficiency. Teachers argued that an effective practical knowledge should regulate and manage the classroom activities, but the targets of the practical knowledge were mainly other “issues “or a certain percentage of the students. In these cases, the teachers’ arguments were mainly based on the notion of “what worked” regardless of reflecting on “what did not work”. Drawing from the theoretical background and the data, teachers’ practical knowledge calls for “praxial knowledge” when they used the epistemic conditions of “caring pedagogy” and “moral care”. It however calls for “practicable” epistemic status when teachers use the epistemic condition of regulating pedagogy. As such, praxial knowledge with the dimensions of caring pedagogy and moral care represents the “normative” perspective on teachers’ practical knowledge, and thus reflects a higher epistemic status in comparison to “practicable” knowledge, which represents a “descriptive” perception toward teachers’ practical knowledge and teaching.

Community forestry and environmental literacy in northern Thailand : Towards collaborative natural resource management and conservation

Conservation and sustainable management of tropical forests needs a holistic approach: in addition to ecological concerns, socio-economic issues including cultural aspects must be taken into consideration. An ability to adapt practices is a key to successful collaborative natural resource management. Achieving this requires local participation and understanding of local conceptions of the environment. This study examined these issues in the context of northern Thailand. Northern uplands are the home of much of the remaining natural forest in Thailand and several ethnic minority groups commonly referred to as hill tribes. The overall purpose of this study was to grasp a regional view of an ethnically diverse forested area and to elicit prospects to develop community forestry for conservation purposes and for securing people s livelihood. Conservation was a central goal of management as the forests in the area were largely designated as protected. The aim was to study local perceptions, objectives, values and practices of forest management, under the umbrella of the concept environmental literacy, as well as the effects of forest policy on community management goals and activities. Environmental literacy refers to holistic understanding of the environment. It was used as a tool to examine people s views, interests, knowledge and motivation associated to forests. The material for this study was gathered in six villages in Chiang Mai Province. Three minority groups were included in the study, the Karen, Hmong and Lawa, and also the Thai. Household and focus group interviews were conducted in the villages. In addition, officials at district, regional and national levels, workers of non-governmental organisations, and academics were interviewed, and some data were gathered from the students of a local school. The results showed that motivation for protecting the forests existed among each ethnic group studied. This was a result of culture and traditions evolved in the forest environment but also of a need to adapt to a changed situation and environment and to outside pressures. The consequences of deforestation were widely agreed on in the villages, and the impact of socio-economic changes on the forests and livelihood was also recognised. The forest was regarded as a source of livelihood providing land, products and services essential to the people inhabiting rural uplands. Traditions, fire control, cooperation, reforestation, separation of protected and utilisable areas, and rules were viewed as central for conservation. For the villagers, however, conservation meant sustainable use, whereas the government has tended to prefer strict restrictions on forest resource use. Thus, conflicts had arisen. Between communities, cooperation was more dominant than conflict. The results indicated that the heterogeneity of forest dwellers, although it has to be recognised, should not be overemphasised: ethnic diversity can be considered as no major obstacle for successful community forestry. Collaborative management is particularly important in protected areas in order to meet the conservation goals while providing opportunities for livelihood. Forest management needs more positive incentives and increased dialogue.

Teachers' attitudes to and beliefs about web-based Collaborative Learning Environments in the context of an international implementation

"Fifty-six teachers, from four European countries, were interviewed to ascertain their attitudes to and beliefs about the Collaborative Learning Environments (CLEs) which were designed under the Innovative Technologies for Collaborative Learning Project. Their responses were analysed using categories based on a model from cultural-historical activity theory [Engestrom, Y. (1987). Learning by expanding.- An activity-theoretical approach to developmental research. Helsinki: Orienta-Konsultit; Engestrom, Y., Engestrom, R., & Suntio, A. (2002). Can a school community learn to master its own future? An activity-theoretical study of expansive learning among middle school teachers. In G. Wells & G. Claxton (Eds.), Learning for life in the 21st century. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers]. The teachers were positive about CLEs and their possible role in initiating pedagogical innovation and enhancing personal professional development. This positive perception held across cultures and national boundaries. Teachers were aware of the fact that demanding planning was needed for successful implementations of CLEs. However, the specific strategies through which the teachers can guide students' inquiries in CLEs and the assessment of new competencies that may characterize student performance in the CLEs were poorly represented in the teachers' reflections on CLEs. The attitudes and beliefs of the teachers from separate countries had many similarities, but there were also some clear differences, which are discussed in the article. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved."

Implementing virtual collaborative inquiry practises in a middle-school context

The aim of the present study was to investigate the challenges that relate to the implementation of virtual inquiry practises in middle school. The case was a school course in which a group of Finnish students (N = 14) and teachers (N = 7) completed group inquiries through virtual collaboration, using a web-based learning environment. The task was to accomplish a cross-disciplinary inquiry into cultural issues. The students worked mainly at home and took much responsibility for their course achievements. The investigators analysed the pedagogical design of the course and the content of the participants' interaction patterns in the web-based environment, using qualitative content analysis and social network analysis. The findings suggest that the students succeeded in producing distinctive cultural products, and both the students and the teachers adopted novel roles during the inquiry. The web-based learning environment was used more as a coordination tool for organizing the collaborative work than as a forum for epistemic inquiry. The tension between the school curriculum and the inquiry practises was manifest in the participants' discussions of the assessment criteria of the course.