Abstract:

The research is based on an understanding that a variety of learning and teaching strategies offer opportunities for both learners and teachers to select the most appropriate approach for creating learning environments that are conducive in unleashing innovative ideas for problem-solving in the 21st Century. Whilst the two contrasting approaches, namely constructivist environments versus instructivist environments may be identified in the plethora of educational literature relating to face-to-face classrooms, there is still room to consider these two approaches in online learning and teaching. Four years ago, Rogers (2013) recognised that an in-depth insight to pedagogical leadership for e-moderators, (i.e. online teachers) is paramount to successful e-learning, whether in constructivist or instructivist online learning environments. Garrison (2011), in his proposed framework for learning in the 21st century, noted the absent notion of pedagogical leadership, since “the teacher’s scholarly leadership, a legitimate and important authoritative, essential teaching responsibility has been either ignored or downgraded, in online learning environments”.

Thus, the current research problem was to address this gap in knowledge on pedagogical leadership in online teaching, by developing a model, the Pedagogical Variation Model (PVM) for online teachers, based on e-moderator leadership qualities (Rogers, 2004, 2005/2011) for teaching and learning in asynchronous discussion forums. The PVM (Rogers 2013) uses one Boston 2 x 2 Matrix format in an analysis to capture online teacher leadership strategies namely leadership variables as:
(i) transactional (i.e. task-giving) and
(ii) transformational (i.e. empowering) and another Boston 2 x 2 Matrix format in an analysis to capture online e-learner behaviour variables, namely
(i) collaborative (i.e. sharing and exchanging ideas) and
(ii) capacity for knowledge construction (i.e. creative thinking).

Models are useful tools to better understand not only learning processed of students but also for educators to explore new dimensions in their teaching. This is the central aim in the evaluation of the PVM in a collaborative research project with the Faculty of Education, Kuwait University, directed by Dr. Fayiz Aldhafeeri. (2014). An online questionnaire (Rogers 2013), translated into Arabic, was distributed amongst under-graduates and post-graduates in The Faculty of Education. The responses were translated into English for analysis. Interesting outcomes are more fully discussed in the paper.

This collaborative research revealed that whilst a constructivist learning environment (e-learner centred) was recognised by a minority of respondents, the majority of respondents from both samples under-graduate and post-graduate, preferred an instructivist e-moderator approach. Whilst a generalisation of the results cannot be made due to the samples being less than thirty respondents, nevertheless the very important outcome reveals that and instructivist (i.e. respect for teacher-centred learning) remains a preferred learning environment.

The research rationale is broached with insights into different pedagogical concepts that have shaped the research design, including:
(i) the paradoxical nature of two diametrically opposing pedagogies, namely instructivist (high teacher visibility) and constructivist (low teacher visibility) pedagogies, and
(ii) pedagogical leadership in asynchronous learning networks.

Keywords:

Online learning and teaching, e-learning, e-moderating, pedagogical leadership, constructivist, instructivist, collaborative research, Boston Matrix.