HOW TO EFFECTIVELY TEACH PRE-SERVICE TEACHERS TO LEARN AND, EVENTUALLY, USE ICT RESPONSIBLY WHEN THEY HAVE THEIR OWN CLASSROOMS

A persistent problem in pre-service education is how to effectively teach pre-service teachers to learn and, eventually, use ICT responsibly when they have their own classrooms. This qualitative research project has been an effort to address the problem in a unique way by involving pre-service students from two different cultures in a learning experience about teaching and using information technology in the classroom. Seven pre-service students from Barcelona and five students from Chicago, were simultaneously enrolled in an education IT course at their respective universities. As part of each course, students used a web-based program to communicate with their peers (whom they had never met) 1/3 the way around the world. The steps the students and their professors took to inform each other about culture, teaching, and IT were guided by constructivism and action research.

The immediate aim of the project was to create a learning environment that (1) exploited the potential of technology in a way nearly impossible without ICT, and that (2) was so enticing as to attract the participation of even technophobic students (Bullough and Pinnegar, 2001). Students and professors in Barcelona and Chicago communicated with each other about issues of culture, teaching, and the use of ICT for nine weeks using a web-based, workspace called Knowledge Forum (KF); a new topic was introduced each week. We three teachers “felt our way” as we cautiously constructed a learning experience with the students in a form of “trans-Atlantic pedagogy.” During the process we monitored how (qualitatively) effective such an approach was from the participants’ and our points of view. This self-study emphasizes our own reflections about the nature of our participation (Dinkelman, 2003; Samaras and Freese, 2006; Zeichner, 2007)—these reflections were captured in emails to each other.

The paper analyzes our deliberations and reflections on the entirety of the project, with emphasis on our own participation and self-study as teachers. We kept an ongoing conversation about the shape and direction of the project as it unfolded during the nine weeks. There were nine action research cycles (corresponding to the 9 weeks/topics of the project) in which we interrogated ourselves and each other as to what was happening and what should be happening. Because the project was “mindful,” but not pre-planned in detail, our deliberations and reflections (captured in e-mail) on what was happening as it unfolded became a record of re-inventing ourselves as professors of education. In short, the dynamic quality of the project forced us to re-think our roles in ways that would have been unlikely had the project not been trans-Atlantic and via ICT.