As We Think We May Teach: Ideologies on IT in the Classroom

Abstract

The extended use of IT devices has raised scholars’ awareness to its impact on the organization of classroom interactions. Studies claim that the intensive use of IT in the classroom has the potential of revolutionizing education in a way that it increases students’ ownership and control over their learning processes (Ryberg 2013). Others claim that devices such as interactive whiteboards contribute to the emergence of an “effective style” of teaching (Gillen et al. 2007: 254). Further, Lotherington & Ronda (2014) emphasize the role of IT, multimedia, multimodality, collaborative communication, agentive participation and multitasking for a contemporary understanding of what they call “communicative competence 2.0” (p. 19). However, as both Gillen et al. (2007) and Ryberg (2013) establish, it is not the technology in itself but the ”role of teachers” (Ryberg et al. 2013: 102) and the transformation of ”underlying pedagogy” (Gillen et al. 2007: 254) what count in pedagogical revolutions. Based on the above considerations, I investigate how IT-based classroom scenes are discursively reconstructed in teacher training videos. These videos explicitly aim at influencing current practices, so their investigation illuminates (sometimes hidden) policies in teacher education as well as in curriculum planning and implementation.