Abstract:

A qualitative study done as part of the Israeli MOFET research network on pedagogical innovation is presented. One hundred and ten faculty members from eight colleges of education responded during 2012 to an open-ended questionnaire designed to bring about those teacher educators’ stories about pedagogical innovation, as these emerge from their professional experiences in the field. Early in the inductive analysis of the stories we found out that the participants in our study tended to include practical examples of using educational technologies, even when the questionnaire didn’t mention technology at all. This tendency constituted the first finding. Two additional results emerged from further analytic steps: faculty members in Israeli colleges of education indeed connect between “pedagogical innovation” and educational technologies; however the mentioned technologies were not the most innovative ones (by the time the study took place). Thus, the stories we analyzed reflected a gap that might exist between pedagogical innovation and technological innovation within the participants’ conceptual framework. Also, we found out that the teacher educators’ discourse usually related “pedagogical innovation” to educational technology using general terms like “distance learning” and “course website”, and less by referring to specific learning technologies. The presentation will discuss these findings and their implications to the changing field of teacher education and to the cultural change the colleges of education have been witnessing.