93 research outputs found
E-learning in Africa: una proposta di metodo
No full textl presente contributo vuole avviare una riflessione sul tema dell’istruzione dei giovani e della formazione del capitale umano per l’Africa. Diremo subito che il nostro articolo è una porzione di un discorso più ampio che tocca almeno tre punti topici: lo sviluppo umano da cui deriva la cooperazione allo sviluppo; l’istruzione e l’educazione nei paesi in trasformazione; la diffusione della conoscenza attraverso le ICT( Information Communication Technology ) e correlati. Sono tre pilastri strettamente interconnessi tra loro, su cui è possibile costruire un sistema di elearning per l’Africa e in Africa. Si tenterà di superare il limite di poche pagine per un discorso ampio riferendo di esperienze africane in corso animate da personaggi straordinari, raccontando della cocciuta volontà di alcuni formatori e ricercatori nell’aprire piste nuove per diffondere l’accesso alla conoscenza nelle parti del mondo “sottosviluppate“, delineando infine alcuni progetti realistici, fattibili, che attendono solo il coraggio di qualche illuminato finanziatore.
Proprio per restare aderenti alla realtà ed evitare scorciatoie già viste in altri campi di intervento, e che appartengono alla famiglia “i goals del millennio“, ci permettiamo di avvicinarci al tema dell’e-learning in Africa dopo aver analizzato lo stato dell’arte della Cooperazione Internazionale allo sviluppo e dopo aver attinto ai contributi che derivano da coloro che hanno lavorato per capire come si alimenta e diffonde l’educazione in Africa. Solo in un secondo momento tenteremo qualche analisi di tipo progettuale. Il nostro discorso si compone dunque delle 3 parti di seguito elencate:
1. La cooperazione allo sviluppo: luci e ombre (a cura di Gerolamo Spreafico)
2. Lo stato dell’arte della promozione di ICT (a cura di Magda Pischetola)
3. Alcune piste di lavoro ( a cura di Gerolamo Spreafico e Magda Pischetola )
Nella prima parte di questo articolo tratteremo i primi tre paragrafi e accenneremo brevemente alle possibili indicazioni di lavoro per il futuro, sperando di destare nel lettore la curiosità di seguirci in una seconda parte – che sarà pubblicata sul prossimo numero di Igel – dedicata a una proposta progettuale più dettagliata e alla sua fattibilità
EDUCAZIONE E INCLUSIONE DIGITALE: TEORIE, METODI E STRUMENTI
No full textQuesto lavoro è un tentativo di precisare dimensioni e condizioni del digital divide, a partire dalla scelta di una specifica accezione del termine, che lo inserisce nella più ampia e articolata problematica della disuguaglianza sociale.
Le Information and Communication Technologies sollevano il problema del significato attuale della cittadinanza e dell’inclusione sociale, che nei contesti socialmente ed economicamente più arretrati si traducono in lotta alla povertà, chiamando in causa la complessa relazione tra tecnologia e sviluppo umano. L’accesso significativo alle tecnologie corrisponde all’applicazione di capacità intellettuale e comprende alcuni elementi di fondamentale importanza, come la gestione e rielaborazione dell’informazione, la crescita di competenze utili a sfruttare i vantaggi della tecnologia. La penetrazione delle tecnologie nella società contemporanea pone alcune sfide al rinnovamento della scuola e rende indispensabile valutare che tipo di competenze sono necessarie, come poterle sviluppare e quali metodologie adottare nella didattica, affinché le nuove generazioni crescano con la capacità di partecipare attivamente al cambiamento della società.
A tale scopo, il presente contributo propone una ricerca sul campo che mette a confronto l’implementazione del progetto One Laptop Per Child in due realtà agli antipodi dell’indice di sviluppo umano – l’Italia e l’Etiopia – con un’attenzione specifica al potenziale sviluppo di “competenze digitali” e all’evoluzione della metodologia di insegnamento, elementi che in linea teorica corrispondono ai primi ingredienti di una incentivazione dell’inclusione sociale. La ricerca è di tipo qualitativo, utilizza gli strumenti del focus group, dell’intervista, del questionario e dell’osservazione partecipante, prendendo in esame 13 classi e 18 insegnanti/coordinatori per ciascun campo. I risultati più importanti mostrano che una azione efficace in termini di inclusione digitale è condizionata da una organizzazione educativa programmatica, promozione di iniziative con un valore locale, interventi di formazione e di capacity building che non sconvolgano sistemi socio-culturali consolidati, ma che incidano sulla motivazione dei destinatari valorizzando il capitale umano e sociale. È questo che intendiamo con innovazione della scuola.The term digital divide echoes a kind of technological determinism. It has often suggested that inequalities depend on physical access to Information and Communication Technologies and that simply achieving such access would solve problems of social exclusion.
In this work the original literal sense of “access” will be replaced by a set of more concrete operational definitions. It extends the model of a gap between haves and have-nots to a concept of a broader digital inequality, depending on the so-called “digital skills”. It calls attention to information as a primary good in the contemporary society, to be considered as the main goal to achieve through a meaningful use of ICT. The emphasis is therefore placed on education, where the digital literacy can provide the ability to access, manage, integrate, evaluate, and create information.
Social opportunities of digital technology are underlined both in developed and developing countries. We argue in fact that, whenever integrated in school subjects, ICT might become a great opportunity to innovate learning and teaching, to accomplish a renovated citizenship in the Nord of the world and help to achieve better standards of development in the South.
A comparative analysis of two opposite contexts investigate understandings of the digital inclusion by exploring best practices for sustainable projects. The field research focuses on the One Laptop Per Child worldwide project, comparing the use of the same technological tool in primary schools of Italy and Ethiopia. The data presented are based on observations, focus group and interviews with a sample of 13 classes and 18 teachers/coordinators for each field, conducted during the school year 2008-2009. Results indicate that often children capabilities are complementary to teachers’ ones, that ICT provide the flexibility to meet diverse learners’ needs, that training is essential to motivate and empower teachers to use ICT and revise traditional didactics, that social capital has a central role in the school. The concept of capacity building emerges from these concepts and suggests pathways to improve skills access in the long run and adapt school curricula to collaborative environments. This is what the present study calls innovation
Technology in Education, between political demands and teachers' functions.:Cross-case analysis from Denmark and Brazil, Nordisk Forening for Pædagogiske Forskere, NERA, Turku, Marts 2020
No full textNERA 2020 Technology in Education, between political demands and teachers' functions. Cross-case analysis from Denmark and Brazil. Karen Borgnakke, University of Copenhagen, UCPH Magda Pischetola, Pontificia Universidade Catolica do Rio de Janeiro, PUC-Rio Abstract In the last two decades, Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) integration in education has been on the highest agenda for public policies worldwide. At the macro level of the political discourse, the introduction of new tools in the educational context is supposed to change the way pupils access information, elaborate it into knowledge and develop new skills. In addition, it points to teaching reforms, raising demands for 'high professionalism' of the teachers, which includes functions such as 'learning management' and 'digital formation'. At the micro level, we observe teachers at a crossroad between the expectations of the policy-makers, and their concrete activities in situated classroom settings. The contrast about the educational policy discourse and the everyday dilemmas that the professionals face in school contexts raises the need of a better understanding of the teachers' functions. The paper addresses this conflict, referring to results from case studies undertaken in four different countries – Denmark, Italy, Ethiopia and Brazil – between 2000 and 2019. Based on meta-ethnographic analyses across fieldwork, this paper will sharpen the focus on cross-case analysis from Denmark and Brazil and exemplify the main themes and research findings about the practical consequences for teachers' functions. The empirical-analytical framework shows, at the policy level, an increasing amount of top-down policies, which extend the demands for a wider spectrum of teacher functions, such as student-centered and collaborative work in the classroom; group mentoring; ICT-based activities to address the subject matter; interdisciplinary school projects; digital learning management. At the practical level, the meta-analysis explores how these demands created a work overload for teachers, who are expected to integrate ICT in their daily practices, otherwise being considered 'resistant' by academic and political assessments. Cross-case demands and cross-case dilemmas result in a conflict between intentions and practicalities, given by the contextual conditions of the policies implementation process. The paper concludes by discussing how in meta-analysis the decades 2000–2019 are marked by a shift, where the powerful discourse about the ICT-based learning paradigm and top-down directed demands for change did not implement alternative teaching practices, but provided teachers with a greater accumulation of functions. References Borgnakke, K. (2012). Challenges for the Next Generation in Upper Secondary School: Between Literacy, Numeracy, and Technacy. I W. T. Pink (red.), Schools for Marginalized Youth : An International Perspective (s. 117-172). New York: Hampton Press. Understanding Education, Social Justice and Policy. Borgnakke, K., Dovemark, M., & Marques da Silva, S. (red.) (2017). The postmodern professional: Contemporary learning practices, dilemmas and perspectives. London: Tufnell Press. Borgnakke, K. (2019). Ethnographic methods for researching online learning and e-pedagogy. I G. Noblit (red.), Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Education Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264093.013.542 Pischetola, M., Heinsfeld, B. D. (2018). Technologies and teacher’s motivational style: A research study in Brazilian public schools.Journal of Educational, Cultural and Psychological Studies, 17, 163-177. Doi: https://doi.org/10.7358/ecps-2018-017-pisc Pischetola, M. (2015).Technology for Inclusion and Change: comparative research studies on one to-one programs in Italy, Ethiopia and Brazil In: Pereira, S. (ed.). Digital Literacy, Technology and Social Inclusion. Making sense of one-to-one computer programmes around the world. Famalição: Humus Lda, p. 129-164
What Counts as Pedagogy? A Research Agenda for Post-Platform Schooling
No full textThe pervasive involvement of technologies in education has raised questions about the authority of digital platforms in shaping the future of educational practices. Through datafied surveillance, predictive analytics, automated teaching, digital platforms exercise their power not only on the infrastructures of pedagogy, but also on the political configurations of what counts as pedagogical knowledge (Cone, 2023).This paper aims at developing a research agenda to pursue alternatives tocommercially driven logics underpinning current platformisation of education. In our proposal, this entails challenging habitual narrations of both humanism andtechnology-driven educational change to shift the focus from instrumental perspectives to collective and ethical stances (Pischetola, 2021). In relation to wonted assumptions of humanism, we argue, an ethical stance is characterised by its emphasis on the embodied and historical nature of digital education as something that requires situated judgements about the different forms of living that are coming into the world (Masschelein & Simons, 2015). Such judgments involve looking at the history of digital platforms and analysing both the materiality of what appears to be without material consequence – concepts, policies, tools, practices – and the discursivity of what appears to be fixed and passive – classroom settings, whiteboards. Pedagogy, in this view, becomes a posthuman practice directed toward drawing forth the forces at play in human becoming – rather than an attempt to realise certain pregiven ideas of becoming human (Biesta, 2011).As for assumptions around technology-driven change, our proposal to begin from pedagogy and ethics pushes beyond discourses that place technology at the vanguard of educational innovation, as this ultimately replicates modern ontologies and colonial epistemologies (Karumbaiah & Brooks, 2021). At every appearance of a new technology, utopian and dystopian narratives emerge – listing benefits and dangers, opportunities and risks, potentials and limitations – and by so doing, they avoid addressing more complex issues of distributed oppression, institutional materialisations of power, and exacerbation ofstructural inequalities. Post-platform schooling, we suggest, can be imagined only by understanding digital platforms as part of an ecosystem made of human and material actors (Pischetola & Miranda, 2020), and by exploring how technologies can become environmental forces for affirmative political transformation (Zembylas, 2023). On these grounds, a research agenda for post-platform education requires not merely investing in digital literacy, critical skills, and human empowerment, but also unveiling political and ethical stances that platforms present for education, with discussions about embodied intersubjectivity, responsibility, agency and justice
Technologies and Teacher’s Motivational Style: A Research Study in Brazilian Public Schools
Get PDFInformation and Communications Technology (ICT) is increasingly a part of discussions on educational innovation and teaching practices. Research from the last decade points out the difficulty of integrating technologies in education and highlights the variety of elements favouring/preventing change in teaching and learning methods. In this article, we defend that the methodology adopted by teachers, their approach with regard to students in the classroom and what literature calls educational professionals’ «motivational style» (Decy & Ryan, 1985 and 2000; Reeve, Bolt, & Cai, 1999; Guimarães & Boruchovitch, 2004; Pischetola, 2016) are the elements that most lead to a significant role for ICT in teaching practices. The discussion relies on self-determination theory and the assumption of the existence of more autonomy-supportive or more controlling teacher’s motivating styles. Based on this premise, we present here a qualitative study undertaken between 2014 and 2016 at eight municipal primary schools in the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. As a whole, we undertook 64 semi-structured interviews with teachers from the selected schools. The obtained results have allowed us to demonstrate a relationship between teachers’ motivational style with the use of technology and the creation (or otherwise) of a dialogue-based and democratic space in the classroom
Is technology enhancing education?:Analyzing discourse and practices of Brazilian teachers through a sociomaterial perspective
No full textTechnology adoption in teaching practices has been at the core of debates concerning educational innovation for the last two decades (Retalis et al., 2010; Weller, 2018). However, despite extensive investments in edtech solutions, with software and devices saturation in schools, there is little evidence of an effective transformation of pedagogy, and teachers are mostly held responsible for limited didactical innovation (Brasilino et al., 2018; King et al., 2016; Pischetola et al., 2019). A growing body of literature has pointed at the need to adopt a more critical perspective on the use of technologies in education (Hamilton & Friesen, 2013; Selwyn, 2017), one that would be able to avoid pre-determined interpretations of ICT in schools and make teachers less vulnerable. By showing sociomaterial entanglements that take place in a school classroom, contributions from Science and Technology Studies are shaping a new frame for research (Fenwick et al., 2011; Lenz Taguchi, 2010). In this perspective, day-to-day teaching practices are both relational and emergent (Law, 2009), as teacher’s agency is enabled by the sociomateriality of spaces, artefacts and technologies (Sørensen, 2009; Viteritti & Landriscina, 2016). On these grounds, the paper presents an ethnographic research undertaken in two public primary schools of the municipality of Rio de Janeiro, between 2015 and 2018. The schools were chosen based on their public visibility around edtech projects. Participant observation in the classrooms, in-depth interviews with teachers and principals, and focus groups with selected teachers were used as tools for data collection. Findings show that the way teachers ally with technologies in their work is never neutral or predictable. Their situated actions emerge from sociomaterial interactions, often detached from their initial intentions. Furthermore, shared spaces, such as the teachers’ room or the school corridors, represent the material expression of networked meaning-making processes and common understanding of technology
O que resta dos protestos? Movimentos sociais e empoderamento da juventude no Brasil
Get PDFOver the past few years, new forms of socialization of politics through social media have found expression in collective mobilizations. The paper examines the case of the recent uprisings in Brazil. It presents the results of a qualitative research carried out between June 2013 and June 2015, with focus on the actors involved, their reasons to participate, as well as the continuity of their action. Three research tools were used in the study: social media mapping, an online survey and interviews with activists. The findings give credit to the existence of a connective logic on the social networks, as they illustrate that what attracted the masses in June 2013 was mainly the ‘event of a protest’. Nevertheless, political engagement was found to increase in smaller circles, among groups of youth who got involved during the uprisings, and are motivated by the idea of a political resistance up to present days.Nos últimos anos, novas formas de socialização da atividade política através das mídias sociais têm encontrado expressão em mobilizações coletivas. O artigo examina as recentes revoltas no Brasil, apresentando os resultados de uma pesquisa qualitativa realizada entre Junho de 2013 e Junho de 2015, com foco nos atores envolvidos, suas razões para participarem e a continuidade de sua ação. Três instrumentos de pesquisa foram utilizados no estudo: um mapeamento inicial das mídias sociais, um breve questionário on-line e algumas entrevistas com ativistas. Os resultados mostram a existência de uma "lógica conectiva" nas redes sociais e ilustram que o que atraiu as massas em junho de 2013 foi principalmente o "evento" de um protesto. No entanto, verifica-se que o engajamento político dos jovens está aumentando aos poucos, entre grupos que se envolveram durante os protestos e continuam motivados pela ideia da resistência política até os dias de hoje
[en] TEACHERS TRAINING AND EDUCATIONAL PRACTICE WITH TECHNOLOGIES: A CORRELATIONAL STUDY ON THE TIC EDUCAÇÃO 2014 DATA BASIS
No full text[pt] TRAJETÓRIA DA DOCUMENTAÇÃO DIGITAL E DA PRÁTICA REFLEXIVA: TORNANDO A PRÁTICA DOCENTE VISÍVEL, CRÍTICA E ACESSÍVEL
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