Negotiating change - A case study of teachers making sense and use of ground rules for talk and microblogging for exploratory talk in the classroom

Abstract

With increasing use of technology in the classrooms, it requires clear pedagogical intentions and activities in order to promote students’ learning. Educational research has emphasized studies showing that many teachers use technology as an extension of established pedagogical strategies. Even though this might promote efficient teaching strategies, it does not automatically lead to increased learning outcomes for the students. The current field of educational research also highlights the significance of 21st century skills such as critical thinking, problem solving and collaboration. These skills are becoming increasingly necessary for students to learn as they enter into an ever-changing, unpredictable world. This case study is placed within the early phases of an educational research-intervention where a combination of methodology and technology is introduced to a group of teachers. The researchers want to examine if and how the combination of ground rules for talk and the microblogging tool TalkWall might enhance students’ agency in the classroom exploratory talk in order to promote 21st century skills such as collaboration and critical thinking. Through a combination of the qualitative methods interviews and observation, I have studied how teachers participating in this research project, perceive the combination of ground rules for talk and TalkWall, and how they make use of ground rules for talk and TalkWall in the early phases of the intervention-project. My research questions were: RQ1 How do teachers perceive the relationship between ground rules for talk, dialogic teaching and TalkWall?, RQ2 How do teachers perceive practice change at this point in the intervention-project?, RQ3 How do teachers use ground rules for talk and TalkWall in the classroom? The theoretical stance is based on theories about dialogue connected to the sociocultural learning theory and selected elements from Activity Theory. The main findings from the interview analysis suggest that teachers are negotiating with the introduced methodology and technology as they problematize and show signs of destabilizing their established practices. Their negotiation seems to be related to a discrepancy between teachers’ and researchers’ goal for the appropriation of this combination in the classroom. Teachers seem to focus on their teaching efforts when working with the subject-matter content rather than focusing on what this combination could mean for a new practice towards enhancing students’ agency in the exploratory dialogue. The interaction analysis from observation data indicates that dependent on the use of TalkWall in their lesson designs, teachers are affected by the new technology in terms of using the tool to mediate classroom talk in ways that would not have been available without it. Overall the interaction analysis serves to exemplify how teachers negotiate between established and new tools and thus between established and new forms of practice. They show signs of using TalkWall in ways that promote a ‘dialogic space’ in which their interaction with students in whole-class settings shows traces of dialogic markers that are related to exploratory talk. Together, these analyses suggest how the teachers in different ways negotiate with the intervention in light of their established practices. In sum this thesis has illuminated how negotiating change is related to signs of teachers’ gradual change in the early phases of the intervention-project.