Tuesday 5 May 2009, 1530 - 1600

Presenter: Eva Dobozy

Edith Cowan University, WA

Presenter Biography

Eva Dobozy is a teacher educator with over 20 years experience in education at all levels in Australian and Switzerland.

Abstract

The digital divide is growing here in Australia as it is elsewhere. As a result of the rapid changes that characterise technologyenhanced teaching and learning in the knowledge era, many teacher education students, who are the future teachers of knowledge workers, are failing to obtain adequate skills to confidently incorporate technology into their learning and consequently into their plans for teaching. However, is this a problem of skills-development or attitude-change? A newly developed unit is used as a case study to explore the surfacing problems of Learning 2.0 as the new front in the culture wars, raising questions about teacher education, cultural diversity and the role of digital pedagogy in the education of newly graduating teachers.

In this paper, I report on a pilot study that investigated students’ utilisation of flexible learning provisions in a unit called ‘Values Education’. The aim of the study was to measure engagement levels of teacher education students enrolled in their final oncampus unit prior to graduation. As these students are effectively one step away from teaching, their embrace of flexible online learning provisions is of particular interest. The preliminary results provide an insight into next-generation teachers’ perception of the value-adding nature of digital pedagogy. They show the utilisation patterns of flexible online learning provisions, pointing to some concerning trends. The results indicate that problems of ‘participation gap’, ‘surface engagement’ and ‘lack of motivation’ that have plagued education on all levels for centuries and have fuelled debates in education since the introduction of mass education are now spilling over into online learning environments. These trends cannot be ignored; they need innovative and creative solutions and collaborative action.