Frontline Learning Research

Towards an Integrated Perspective of Teachers’ Technology Integration: A Preliminary Model and Future Research Directions

Andreas Lachner, Iris Backfisch, Ulrike Franke — Thu, 11 Jan 2024 00:00:00 -0800

Technology integration is regarded as a crucial and complex endeavour to enhance students’ learning and prepare them to participate in a digital society. Although the research landscape on teachers’ technology integration is vivid and stimulating, an analytical model which synthesises different strands of research to model antecedents (i.e., teachers’ professional competences), processes and outcomes of technology integration in an integrated manner is missing. That said, previous research was often rather product-oriented and ignored potential effects on students’ learning processes and their achievement. To fill this gap, in this paper, we outline a preliminary model, the TPTI-model (teachers’ professional competence for technology integration), in which we deliberately link different research perspectives on teachers’ professional competences, professional vision and students’ learning (processes) to model technology integration during teaching. Based on the preliminary TPTI-model, we propose future research directions, which may allow to gain a better understanding of the teacher- and student-related conditions as well as processes of technology integration and their effects on students’ learning.

The development of visual expertise in a virtual environment: A case of maritime pilots in training

Charlott Sellberg, Elin Nordenström, Roger Säljö — Fri, 12 Jan 2024 00:00:00 -0800

This study connects to an ongoing discussion about the limits and affordances of simulators as realistic and relevant contexts for professional learning, in this case in the development of visual expertise. Earlier studies of simulator-based maritime pilot training conclude that there are risks associated with so-called negative skills transfer due to a lack of photorealism in simulator environments. The aim of this study is to carefully examine how visual expertise develops in and through training in a simulated environment. Through a practice-based approach to the development of visual expertise, and by using qualitative interaction analysis of video recorded training sessions, the analytical focus is directed towards maritime pilot trainees’ talk about imperfections and inconsistencies in the virtual environment during exercises in a high-fidelity bridge simulator. Considering the multi-layered nature of the maritime pilot’s visual expertise, findings show that the maritime pilots in training noticed and adapted to the specific methodological and technological challenges when manoeuvring a simulated vessel. During such reflection-in-action, they also commented on and explored the differences between, navigating in a simulator, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, navigating on board a ship. Instead of concluding that there is a risk for negative skills transfer that follows from the differences between the two contexts of navigating, we argue that the challenges introduced by representations encountered when training in a virtual environment may add to the expertise of the trainees and lead to enriched conceptual, methodological, and technical knowledge regarding the specificities of visually demanding and ambiguous navigation situations. In this way, this study contributes to advance our understanding of learning in virtual environments to the frontline of learning research.

Student teachers’ opportunities to learn through observation, own practice and feedback on the practice while in field practice placements: a graphical model approach

Tine Nielsen — Thu, 25 Jan 2024 00:00:00 -0800

Field practice placement is a crucial part of teacher education, as it affords a real-life context, where teacher and teacher-related skills can be enacted and trained. The present study examined the associations between student teacher opportunities to learn through observation, own practice and the receiving of feedback of said practice, while in field practice placements through a teacher education programme. Chain graph models were used to analyse data from 560 Danish student teachers who had just completed field practice at one of three levels. Results showed that opportunities to learn through observation of fellow students and other teachers was negatively associated with level of field practice, and thus was reported less and less the further along students were in the programme, while opportunities to learn through own practice was positively associated with level of field practice. Opportunities to learn through receiving feedback on own practice was associated with level of field practice only via opportunities to learn through own practice. Results did not reveal gender or age-wise inequity in the opportunities to learn afforded in the field practice. Teacher education programmes could benefit from placing additional focus on opportunities to learn through observation in the later field practice placements.

New perspectives on civic engagement as outcome of higher education: an exploratory case study

Oscar van den Wijngaard, Simon Beausaert, Wim Gijselaers, Mien Segers — Tue, 27 Feb 2024 00:00:00 -0800

This study explores the potential of a new perspective on research into the impact higher education has on the civic engagement of students. We propose a shift from viewing engagement itself as the key dependent variable to two ‘fundamental constituents’, political interest and agency. Both constituents have been presented as either static or determined entirely by factors external to education such as maturation, but also as dynamic and affected by various aspects of the educational experience in higher education. Furthermore, as analyses of these effects based on sample means do not account sufficiently for the intersectionality of background variables that define the student experience, we propose that data are explored through cluster analysis. Employing this type of analysis, a case study conducted at a small international liberal arts college in the Netherlands showed four distinctly different patterns in the development of both constituents of civic engagement. Based on further data obtained from the same sample, we offer suggestions for specific foci in further research about the impact of higher education on the development of civic engagement.

Revisiting the Three Basic Dimensions model: A critical empirical investigation of the indirect effects of student-perceived teaching quality on student outcomes

Fri, 08 Mar 2024 00:00:00 -0800

The Three Basic Dimensions model, theorizes three mediators for the effect of teaching quality dimensions on student outcomes. However, the proposed mediating paths and their effects have largely not been empirically tested. This study investigated the mediating role of depth-of-processing, time-on-task, and need satisfaction between student-perceived teaching quality and student mathematics achievement and interest, expanding the TBD model to include mediation paths suggested by theories of motivation, cognition, and effort. Data from the TALIS Video Study for Germany, comprising 958 secondary school students in 41 classrooms, were used to run multilevel longitudinal and correlational mediation analyses. The results only found mediation effects at the student level; there were no mediating effects at the classroom level. Not all of the hypothesized relationships thought to exist between the mediators and achievement and interest outcomes were confirmed. The conceptual sequence of the variables, the choice of correlational vs. longitudinal evidence, and the level of analysis were all shown to have an impact on the results. The study thus confirms some of the assumptions of the TBD model, identifies new paths between teaching quality and student outcomes, and provides suggestions for how to proceed with further investigation of a model which should be expanded and more thoroughly empirically tested.