Investigating teachers authoring their own learning designs

Matthew Kearney, Anne Prescott, Kirsty Young
University of Technology, Sydney

The ‘project in progress’ is situated in pre-service education and investigates prospective teachers authoring and use of their own online learning designs. Secondary and primary pre-service teachers adopted exemplary, well-researched learning strategies to inform the design of their own specific online learning tasks. (Strategies included analogical reasoning; predict-observe-explain; and ‘learners’ questions’ approach.) The teachers then used their online tasks in the context of their teaching practicum. The web-based Learning Activity Management System (LAMS) acted as a ‘test-bed’ and support for their designs and implementation. This poster will report on preliminary findings from the study, focusing on key issues relating to the student teachers’ professional learning. Research questions addressed in this poster are: How does this authoring and implementation process help student teachers to ‘build bridges’ between theory and practice in their teaching degree? To what extent do they develop their knowledge of (online and face to face) teaching and learning? To what extent is their understanding of specific learning strategies enhanced?

Keywords: teacher education, learning designs, learning strategies