title: Developing digital smarts in initial teacher education: What motivates new teachers to continue using digital technologies for learning?

authors: Wright, Noeline

subjects: continuance theory

abstract: The New Zealand Curriculum, the overarching curriculum document for both primary and secondary education, enshrines an expectation that teachers engage in Teaching as Inquiry. This is seen as linking to both evidence-informed practice and evolving pedagogical content knowledge. In a rapidly developing, complex mobile digital education, the need for teachers to constantly evolve their technological pedagogical content knowledge is pressing. In initial teacher education (ITE), one challenge is how teacher educators support ITE students’ development of evidence-informed reflective practices with digital technologies to match their content knowledge. For ITE students, this is heightened because they are growing their pedagogical knowledge concurrently with learning to incorporate digital technologies in lessons, mostly for the first time. ITE students are in the position of working out how to appropriate unfamiliar digital affordances and devices for learning in unfamiliar classrooms of students, in unfamiliar schools, and sometimes teaching unfamiliar content.
The focus of this chapter is, through a qualitative, thematically analysed study of 74 ITE students, an examination of their efforts in this regard via online postings about their practicum experiences as they experimented with digital technologies in secondary school classrooms. The key question for the study was What do secondary graduate ITE students come to value regarding using digital technologies in learning contexts? Findings showed these students creatively applied digital technologies to learning contexts, while adapting to differences among schools and their technological constraints or affordances. Findings also suggest that continuance theory can help understand ITE students’ decisions about what prompts them to continue using digital technologies for learning, and how continuance theory links to agency, structures and cultural practices.

text: Developing digital smarts in initial teacher education: What motivates new teachers to continue using digital technologies for learning? The New Zealand Curriculum, the overarching curriculum document for both primary and secondary education, enshrines an expectation that teachers engage in Teaching as Inquiry. This is seen as linking to both evidence-informed practice and evolving pedagogical content knowledge. In a rapidly developing, complex mobile digital education, the need for teachers to constantly evolve their technological pedagogical content knowledge is pressing. In initial teacher education (ITE), one challenge is how teacher educators support ITE students’ development of evidence-informed reflective practices with digital technologies to match their content knowledge. For ITE students, this is heightened because they are growing their pedagogical knowledge concurrently with learning to incorporate digital technologies in lessons, mostly for the first time. ITE students are in the position of working out how to appropriate unfamiliar digital affordances and devices for learning in unfamiliar classrooms of students, in unfamiliar schools, and sometimes teaching unfamiliar content.
The focus of this chapter is, through a qualitative, thematically analysed study of 74 ITE students, an examination of their efforts in this regard via online postings about their practicum experiences as they experimented with digital technologies in secondary school classrooms. The key question for the study was What do secondary graduate ITE students come to value regarding using digital technologies in learning contexts? Findings showed these students creatively applied digital technologies to learning contexts, while adapting to differences among schools and their technological constraints or affordances. Findings also suggest that continuance theory can help understand ITE students’ decisions about what prompts them to continue using digital technologies for learning, and how continuance theory links to agency, structures and cultural practices.

year: 2015

title: Weber's law and the scalar property of timing: A test of canine timing

authors: Cliff, Jessica Helen

subjects: Science & Technology

abstract: Domestic dogs completed a temporal bisection procedure that required a response to one lever following a light stimulus of short duration and to another lever following a light stimulus of a longer duration. The short and long durations across the four conditions were (0.5–2.0 s, 1.0–4.0 s, 2.0–8.0 s, and 4.0–16.0 s). Durations that were intermediate, the training durations, and the training durations, were presented during generalization tests. The dogs bisected the intervals near the geometric mean of the short and long-stimulus pair. Weber fractions were not constant when plotted as a function of time: A U-shaped function described them. These results replicate the findings of previous research reporting points of subjective equality falling close to the geometric mean and also confirm recent reports of systematic departures from Weber’s law.

text: Weber's law and the scalar property of timing: A test of canine timing Domestic dogs completed a temporal bisection procedure that required a response to one lever following a light stimulus of short duration and to another lever following a light stimulus of a longer duration. The short and long durations across the four conditions were (0.5–2.0 s, 1.0–4.0 s, 2.0–8.0 s, and 4.0–16.0 s). Durations that were intermediate, the training durations, and the training durations, were presented during generalization tests. The dogs bisected the intervals near the geometric mean of the short and long-stimulus pair. Weber fractions were not constant when plotted as a function of time: A U-shaped function described them. These results replicate the findings of previous research reporting points of subjective equality falling close to the geometric mean and also confirm recent reports of systematic departures from Weber’s law.

year: 2019

title: Can te ao Māori worldviews exist within a western institute’s online teaching and learning environment?

authors: Hudson, Petera Whaiao

subjects: whakawhanaungatanga

abstract: Tertiary institutions in Aotearoa (New Zealand) offer students online teaching and learning papers across a variety of disciplines. The purpose of this research was to examine whether online teaching and learning environments in a tertiary institute provide opportunities to create conditions that promote te ao Māori (a Māori world view) aspirations for Māori scholars. Following a critical review of selected literature on how technologies and its pedagogical implications can realise cultural, educational, political and social aspirations in an online environment (see Chapter 2), the ethical practices according to Kaupapa Māori theory methodology, whakawhanaungatanga and spiral discourse is outlined (see Chapter 3). These practices together with spiral discourse and conversation analysis, were used to analyse the factors that facilitated or hindered optimal conditions that promoted teacher and student aspirations in the online environment (see Chapter 4). That analysis, conducted in relation to a number of focus points, revealed that when Māori practices of tikanga and ako pedagogy were applied in this realm, Māori scholars experienced the fulfilment of personal aspirations. Participants also experienced positive outcomes when whanaungatanga, the creation of interrelationships relationships between Māori students and teachers, whānau, friends, colleagues, was a focus together with good support facilities and services, and quality resources. This research supports the conclusion that online teaching and learning environments in a tertiary institute can provide opportunities to create conditions that promote te ao Māori aspirations for Māori scholars. Further investigations are needed to unravel the types and nature of the interrelationships between ako Māori pedagogies and the student and teacher, and whanaungatanga between students and other students that facilitate conditions that promoted Māori aspirations in an online environment.

text: Can te ao Māori worldviews exist within a western institute’s online teaching and learning environment? Tertiary institutions in Aotearoa (New Zealand) offer students online teaching and learning papers across a variety of disciplines. The purpose of this research was to examine whether online teaching and learning environments in a tertiary institute provide opportunities to create conditions that promote te ao Māori (a Māori world view) aspirations for Māori scholars. Following a critical review of selected literature on how technologies and its pedagogical implications can realise cultural, educational, political and social aspirations in an online environment (see Chapter 2), the ethical practices according to Kaupapa Māori theory methodology, whakawhanaungatanga and spiral discourse is outlined (see Chapter 3). These practices together with spiral discourse and conversation analysis, were used to analyse the factors that facilitated or hindered optimal conditions that promoted teacher and student aspirations in the online environment (see Chapter 4). That analysis, conducted in relation to a number of focus points, revealed that when Māori practices of tikanga and ako pedagogy were applied in this realm, Māori scholars experienced the fulfilment of personal aspirations. Participants also experienced positive outcomes when whanaungatanga, the creation of interrelationships relationships between Māori students and teachers, whānau, friends, colleagues, was a focus together with good support facilities and services, and quality resources. This research supports the conclusion that online teaching and learning environments in a tertiary institute can provide opportunities to create conditions that promote te ao Māori aspirations for Māori scholars. Further investigations are needed to unravel the types and nature of the interrelationships between ako Māori pedagogies and the student and teacher, and whanaungatanga between students and other students that facilitate conditions that promoted Māori aspirations in an online environment.

year: 2020