the mediation of teacher education part one & two

The mediation of teacher education David R Cole

COL04154

The mediation of teacher education Part One & Two

David R Cole

Presented at the AARE conference, Melbourne, 2004

University of Tasmania

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Abstract

The way in which teachers are educated is under pressure from a number of sources such as: governmental requirements for teachers in schools, the social perception of ‘education workers for children’, the competitive pitches of academics theorising about how teachers should learn their trade, and the economic needs of business development. This paper is the first part of a four stage process based at the University of Tasmania, which seeks to explore these forces, and to undertake research using a group of in-service BEd student teachers who have attended a summer school at the university. I shall use the following examination of argumentation to map the terrain that will be probed in the research and to provide a path to understanding as to how mediation of teacher education happens in contemporary Australian society.

I must firstly clarify two main points. This paper is not a reductive move in teacher education designed to encompass all activity on BEd in-service programs within literary practise. Nor does it seek to integrate the ‘multi-modal’ expansionism of multi-literacy discourse (Cope & Kalantzis, 2000) into a generalised in-service paradigm. It will use the work of, for example, James Paul Gee, in order to prioritise the meaning making of in-service trainee teachers and to make connections between this meaning making and the context in which they are being educated:

If meaning is not rooted in the signs and texts themselves, or what is in people’s heads: then education cannot be seen as the overt teaching of facts or skills. Education is always and everywhere the initiation of students as apprentices in various historically situated social practises so that they become insiders (Gee, 1992, p.290).

Meaning making

Figure 1. The intersection of the three areas of: meaning making, Teacher Education and Multi Literacy. This figure provides an overall scheme for the paper as a whole.

Multi Teacher Education Literacy

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It is interesting and indeed worthwhile in terms of being a good thought experiment to pply a sense of congruence between the discourse of trainee teacher educators and

ween teacher education and multi-literacy is rough the act of meaning making. It could be said that teachers attending a BEd in-

defined as the norms (values), networks and trust (Coleman, 988; Putnam, 1993) that power the economic and social wheels of society. It draws

athe emergent field of multi-literacy. These nodes of inquiry would seem to sit at opposite ends of a tenuous and extended connective structure. Teacher discourse is saturated with institutional power concerns (Mitchell and Weber, 1999; Connelly & Clandinin, 1999) that require the learning of a technical language and programming and strategic techniques to integrate social policy with particular teaching practises. On the other hand, multi-literacy has, at various points on its trajectory, definition and dissemination, become riddled with the discourse of possibility that underpins western democracy (Cope & Kalantzis, 2000), and, in particular, the communicative and literate possibilities that new digital technologies are extending to global populations. This paper attempts an uneasy marriage of the two areas so that the meaning making of the trainee teachers may emerge through congruence, and from the latest definitions of how that meaning making impinges upon literate understanding in contemporary society. The congruence that may be applied betthservice summer school are part of a designed and specific cohort that create meaning through acts of social engagement and in multiple social contexts (Barton & Hamilton, 1998; Gee, 1996). This is a literate community that not only absorbs meaning from textual practise that is undertaken during the teacher training sessions, but also creates meaning according to intentional rules. It may be stated that embedded within these intentional rules are cognitive skills for manipulating knowledge that are mobilised and coalesced through the action of social capital (Falk & Kilpatrick, 2000). Social capital may be1upon knowledge and identity as an agent of change that will, in the case of teacher educators, help to unlock notions of the self as apprentice teachers. Research has shown that learning communities are given confidence through the introduction and production of social capital (Kilpatrick, Bell, & Falk, 1999), and for BEd in-service students the use of social capital as a cohesive bond would make a positive difference to their meaning making in terms of giving them a sense of connectedness and direction. Yet this positive difference assumes a rational basis for agreement, which may or may not be forthcoming in the context of the summer school activities. If the picture of meaning making for teacher educators in the contemporary context stopped at this point, social capital would be the ‘magic’ solution to our educational problems in democratic society. Yet this is not the case. As the New London Group commentators have noted (Cope & Kalantzis, 2000), meaning making in the contemporary educational situation is complicated by the number of communicative options available to students and teachers alike. To take a simple example, the student teachers may read an article in the newspapers about violence in a multicultural classroom that is contradicted by an internet site and emails in a discussion forum that is given another twist by stereotyped and false representations of teachers in Hollywood films.

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In other words, the meaning that students take and make in the course of their training

owever, this perspective has since dimmed in eminence in some quarters, as, for

does not come from a singular perspective. If anything defines the way in which students learn about teaching in contemporary society, it is that there is no one authoritarian source that defines the way in which society understands the process of teaching and learning. Social capital itself is a mediated process that may create division as well as cohesion as every relationship necessarily defines a separation as well as a bond. The opposing perspective to the one that states that the relationships inherent within social capital are mutually beneficial is the one that states that these relationships create inequality between those who are in possession of contacts within the social capital web and those who are outside of its sphere of influence. Nowhere is the perspective of disempowerment and alienation felt more strongly than in the area of educational technology. From the perspective of those ‘enabled’ by the introduction of digital technology into the learning process, for example, Slouka (1995), one may plainly note the differences in opinion about contemporary society and modes of meaning making that, for example, the creation of virtual worlds of learning have produced. These perspectives underline the fact that technology is enabling great changes in the way in which we communicate and think. Within this framework, the BEd teacher trainees are an inter-related sub-set of global literate functioning (the ‘hyper-literate’). This view permeated much of the educational thought of the 1990s, and is exemplified, for example by the writing of Carmen Luke (1996) or Howard Rheingold (1994), who have contributed to the creation of an atmosphere and arena for the existence of what has been defined as the “rhetoric of the technological sublime” (Jones, 1995, p.35). This arena has made inter disciplinary links between academic subjects at will, and has theorised the union and development of a global village connected through communication technology and delivering the promises of western democracy such as universal education. Hexample, the promise of universal education would seem to need reassertion, or at least restatement as to where the idea comes from. Commentators such as Bertram C Bruce (1998) have shied away from the seduction of the cybernetic panorama dominating educational life, and have listed this perspective as just one of several options that relate to the use of technology in teaching and learning. To add cohesion to his meaning making about learning, Bruce has mined the history of educational thought and opted for the ideas of John Dewey (1884). Dewey was led to a constructivist theory of meaning; in his view knowing was a process in which the individual learned through reflection on ordinary experience and through communication with others (Bruce, 1998). It is straightforward to translate this foundational, progressive and rational process to the BEd in-service cohort, who should be reflecting and communicating as an integral part of their summer school experience. Bruce expresses the extension and application of this process as ‘socio-technical practise’ of literacy that could be said to construct meaning by using all the techniques that available technology affords and that is consistent with the body of work on the social construction of technological systems (Bijker, Hughes & Pinch, 1987: Bijker & Law, 1992). This type of constructivist perspective on literacy also confirms Alan Luke’s (1996) opinion that “literacy training is not a matter of who has the ‘right’ or ‘truthful’ theory of mind, language, morality or pedagogy. It is a matter of how various theories and practises shape what people do with the technology of writing.” (p.309).

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This is precisely the point of the research into meaning making of trainee teachers in

t seems to me that the first possibility is well mapped out and clear in terms of

he book that defines the field in the area of the controlled and the oppressed is the

oucault has qualified this movement of normative power in the modern state system

the BEd in-service context. These students will positively integrate socio-technical practises into their meaning making as trainee teachers, as they are and have been practitioners in socio-technical techniques as part of the work-force. This factor has influenced my choice of this particular cohort, as the question still remains as to what they will do with this practise in terms of their writing and meaning making, and in particular the connections that they will make between their meaning making as trainee teachers and the mediation of teacher training as they perceive it. Certainly one of the strongest factors in play in the decision making of the student teachers is the ‘digital divide’, and the way in which they may articulate its effect upon their literacy learning. The fundamental question informing this project may therefore be framed as: whether the trainee teachers may integrate multi-literacy meaning making into their understanding of an enhanced teacher functioning due to the digital technology available and the use of social capital and socio-technical techniques; or whether the amalgam of social, moral, economic and political forces readily acting upon individual student teachers due to the digital explosion of communicative possibilities giving free access to information, will overwhelm their meaning making and their understanding of mediated teacher training. Iprocess and design. We are perhaps assuming a definition of multi-literacy at this point in the exploration; this will be dealt with later in the paper. First, we must address the second possibility, to mark out the way in which we can understand how a loss of meaning, identity and control over meaning making may be understood in terms of teacher education. For this possibility to become clearer, we must turn to critical social theory; and in particular the work of Michel Foucault. Tseminal Discipline & Punishment. One might say that this work has advanced a sense of the existence of literacy for the jailed and the subjugated; it has articulated the way in which society is divided and the forces at work in this division. Firstly, a normative projection of the individual must be applied for subjugation to take place; this Foucault has termed as ‘knowable man’. The knowable man is a synthesis of normative qualities, and in the context of digitally mediated society, knowable man is a simulation of normality that can be utilised to amplify the corporeal control of society by exercising power in the most efficient manner possible (Nichols, 2002). The criteria of normality are the self-reflective discourses of abstraction that violate the reality of the individual due to their deceptive nature; as Bogard (1996) has put it: “they feign what they do not possess” (p.4), and in so doing they obscure the boundaries between reality and myth. This obfuscation is prescient in the hands of the modern state armed with digital technology, as the administrative structures far from analysing the human data of normality in a neutral fashion, are able to construct simulations of efficient and expedient outcomes (Bogard, 1996, p.20). Fthrough his description of the disciplinary tactics, and the three criteria of their action: 1) they obtain the exercise of power at the lowest possible cost. 2) They maximise the reach and intensity of social power. 3) They increase both the utility and docility of all elements of the system (Foucault, 1995, p.218). Such criteria of the disciplines attached to the normalisation of society in the modern state were congealed in the

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physical examination, and as Foucault has termed it, the ‘normalising observation’ (Foucault, 1995, p.217). This technique has found a home in the construction of surveillance processes, the social sciences and the panopticon of the utilitarian prison system. In terms of education, normalising observation is a common technique for classroom control, and it is played out through teacher training in terms of peer and social pressure to fit in with a certain socially acceptable, professional teacher profile (the knowable educator). Foucault has more recently explored this notion in terms of the power/knowledge conjunction, and in particular, how the ‘technologies of the self’ are controlled through institutional discourses of self discipline and of action, practise and identity (Foucault, 1980). Before we explore this context, it is perhaps worth noting Maurice Blanchot’s comment on the prison system and the way in which it works in contemporary society:

The penal system, which goes from the secrecy of torture and the spectacle of executions

In a sense it is the ambiguity that is being explored through this paper. On one hand,

ultiliteracies as it has been explained by the New London Group is a theory of

1) Situated practise: this draws on progressive pedagogies such as whole language and

2) nd focused learning episodes which draw upon teacher-centred transmission pedagogies such as traditional grammar and direct instruction.

to the refined use of ‘model-prisons’ in which some may acquire advanced university degrees, while others resort to a contented life of tranquilizers, brings us back to the ambiguous demands and perverse constraints of a progressivism that is, however, unavoidable and even beneficent (Blanchot, 1987, p.83).

digital technology gives central powers such as the modern state system a greater ability to control the power/knowledge constellation, and the further possibility for intrusive inquiry and disclosure (Rouse, 1994, p.96). On the other hand, the swarming effect of the disciplinary mechanisms is accelerated through the use of digital media, as local information is readily compiled and transmitted on computers, making central control quickly reach saturation or limit point (Rouse, 1994, p.96). The focus for trainee teachers learning their trades in local situations such as Tasmania; is rather how their inner nature will be objectified and dominated through the intervention of the normalising power from the exterior. Charles Taylor has expressed this intervention as being through, “the disciplines of organised bodily movement, the employment of time, and the ordering of living/working space.” (Taylor, 1986, p.77). We shall now examine how the notion of multi-literacy bears up against these forces in education, and the resultant meaning making for the trainee teachers. Mliteracy practise that is meant to open up and emancipate the learner by giving him or her the opportunity to design their literate behaviour. It is not only about technology in learning, but the recognition that meaning making has gone beyond the solely linguistic, and now must embrace many other elements, such as visual literacy to arrive at what has been termed as multimodal discourse (Cope & Kalantzis, 2000, p.155). Kress has theorised multimodal discourse in terms of explaining the rational, choice laden layers that constitute its construction. He has aimed at combining the agency of the user with representation, so that individual learners may be positioned as designers through transformative practise. Cope & Kalantzis have used this notion of meaning making and included it in their four pedagogic practises:

process writing and engages & immerses students in literate practises and topics that are part of their community context. Overt instruction: these are explicit a

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3) Critical framing: this is pedagogy that draws upon the paradigm of critical literacy. Transformed practise: this is pedagogy that focuses upon the transfer of strategies from one con

4) text to another (Cope & Kalantzis, 2000).

Figur2000, p.

he four pedagogic practises and the ultimodal meaning making (figu e should be encouraging our BEd

e 2. The multimodal meaning diagram adapted from Cope & Kalantzis 26) (

DesElem

ign ents

Linguistic meaning such as modality.

Music & sound effect

Ecosystem and geographic meanings.

Bodily behaviour, physicality,

& gesturesensuality.

Visual meaning: eg, colours

& perspective.

Mode of meaning

MULTIMODAL

Spatial Design

Gestural Design

Audio Design

Linguistic Design

Visual Design

MULTIMODAL

We may ask ourselves, is the combination of tre 2), what wm

trainee teachers to become proficient at in the present context? It is certainly a convincing picture of meaning making for the contemporary teacher, as it gives them a process to understand the way in which meaning making is changing. As Cope & Kalantzis (2000) have expressed the point, “meaning making is much more than the sum of linguistic, visual, spatial, gestural and audio modes of meaning. It also involves processes of integration and moving the emphasis backwards and forwards between the various modes” (p.211). In other words, teachers will have to carefully focus their teaching practise on choosing material, the consequent analysis and expression of points arising from that material in order to produce teaching sessions that should provide the multimodal meaning making that does not prioritise one mode of meaning making over another.

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However, how practical a suggestion is this for our trainee teachers? In order to return to the point of social critique taken from Foucault, and Taylor’s summary of the

ower of the normalising forces: we should ask how will the introduction of multi-

.89).

mpt to introduce ordered dispositions of living and working space in the eparation of the life world and the school world. They do come together, but this

ormalising powers of the modern state as they have been identified through e social critique of Foucault. The teachers on the BEd in-service course will be able

pliterate mores control inner nature through the organization of bodily movement, the employment of time and the ordered dispositions of living/working space? Michele Anstey and Geoff Bull (2004) have adapted the multiliteracies perspective on identity to mark out the terrain of a combined and contemporary literacy identity:

Figure 3. The production of literacy identity adapted from Anstey & Bull (2004,

Life World Including social and

s

Literacy Identity Experience

e

School world Pedagogic

with texts.Cultural,

cultural activitiesand

social & technological knowledgabout texts.

experiencesuch as reading.

mediation of text.

p Through examination of this diagram (figure 3), one might say that multi-literacy is an attesconnectedness is a prioritisation of what the authors have privileged as literacy identity, and this adds to the separation and ordering of the living and working space. Time is employed in multi-literacy through the transformed practise, which is an endless task of transference and adaptation. Bodies are organised in that the present system of teachers and pupils is the training ground through which the ideas of multi-literacy and multimodal meaning making (figure 2) are perhaps beginning to be applied. In conclusion, I am able to perceive many parallels between the multiliteracies project and the nthto make meaning that may or may not reach multimodality and therefore transformed practise, depending upon whether they are given the principles and resources to understand how it should function in their teacher’s repertoire. The point of the research is an exploration of how the factors involved with multi-literacy such as the

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plethora of meaning making options in the technologically enriched environment, play themselves out in terms of trainee teachers and the way in which they are socialised. To study this process, I shall introduce a CD Rom into the training program of the BEd in-service and compare the responses of the students with regards to their perceived literacy with students learning through the summer school. The methodology and results from this study will be presented in a follow up paper. References

nstey, M. & Bull, G. (2004). The literacy labyrinth (second edition). Frenchs Forest: Pearson tion Australia. Hamilton, M. (1998). Local literacies: Reading & writing in one community. UK:

ed 25th of February,

AEduca

arton, D. & BRoutledge.

Bijker, W. E. & Law, J. (Eds) (1992). Shaping Technology/Building society: Studies in sociotechnical change. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Bijker, W. E., Hughes T. P. & Pinch T. (1987). The social construction of technological systems. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Blanchot, M. (1987). Michel Foucault as I imagine him. New York: Zone Books. Bogard, W. (1996). The simulation of surveillance: Hypercontrol in Telematic Societies. New York:

Cambridge University Press. Bruce, B. (1998). Literacy Technologies: What stance should we take? Retriev

2004 from http://www.schools.ash.org.au/litweb/chip.htmlColeman, J. (1988). Social capital in the creation of human capital. American Journal of Sociology. 94

Supplement S, 95-120. Connelly, F. M. & Clandinin D. J. (Eds) (1999). Shaping a professional Identity: Stories of

Educational practise. New York: Teacher College Press. Cope B. & Kalantzis M. (2000). Multiliteracies: Literacy learning and the design of social futures.

South Yarra: Macmillan publishers. Dewey, J. (1884). The new psychology. Andover Review II, pp. 281-285.

& Kilpatrick, S. (2000). What is social capital? A studyFalk, I. of rural communities. Sociologia Ruralis 40 (1), 87-110. M. (1Foucault, 995). Discipline & Punishment: The birth of the prison. Alan Sheridan, Trans. New

ourses. USA: Taylor and Francis.

nal

York: Random House. Foucault, M. (1980). Power/knowledge. New York: Pantheon. Gee, J. (1992). Literacies: tuning in to forms of life. F Christie (ed.) The Politics of literacy. A special

edition of Education Australia, November 1992. Gee, J. (1996). Social linguistics and literacies: Ideology in discJones, S. (1995). Cybersociety: Computer-Mediated Communication and Community. London: Sage

Publications. k, S., Bell, R. & FalKilpatric k, I. (1999). The role of group learning in building social capital. Jourof Vocational Education and Training, 51 (1), pp. 129-144.

Luke, A. (1996). Genres of power? Literacy education and the production of capital. R. Hansen & G. Williams (Eds). Literacy in society. Pp.308-338. New York: Longman.

Luke, Carmen. (1996). ekstasis@cyberia. Discourse 1996, 17(2), 187-208. Retrieved 25th of February, 2004 from http://gseis.ucla.edu/courses/ed253a/Luke/CYBERDIS.html

Mitchell, C. and Weber, S. (1999). Reinventing ourselves as teachers: Beyond Nostalgia. London: Falmer Press.

Nichols, J. (2002). Data Doubles: Surveillance of Subject without Substance. Retrieved on the 20th of January, 2004 from http://www.ctheory.net

Putnam, R. (1993). Making democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Rheingold, H. (1994). The virtual community: Homesteading on the electronic frontier. New York: Harper Perennial.

Rouse, J. (1994). Power/knowledge. Gutting, G. (Ed). The Cambridge Companion to Foucault. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Slouka, M. (1995). War of the worlds: Cyberspace & the assault on reality. New York: Basic Books. Taylor, C. (1986). Foucault on Freedom & Truth. Couzens Hoy, D. (Ed). Foucault: A critical reader.

Oxford: Blackwell.

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The mediation of teacher education: Part two

rds a model for CD RoTowa m teacher education learning

the

t it encourages in the trainee teachers.

he se

for the CD Rom learning is based upon an amalgam of two

tation of Bergson’s cone of memory:

Figure 1. Deleuze’s interpretation of Bergson’s cone of memory.

A summary of the principles that we have taken from our initial exploration ofield are: f

x The model of learning should not be normalising with respect to the identity

thax The aspect of time should be addressed in the model, not as an infinite task of

negotiation between modes of knowing, but in terms of making a concrete difference to the life of the trainee.

x The product should not encourage a separation of the notions of working and living space through its application of teaching ideas.

x The product should include elements which extol, excite and augment the physical elements of teaching so that it does not act as a medium for docility and conformity of agency of the trainee teachers that use it.

arch for a model T The model that I will use ore schemas: c

1) Deleuze’s conception of the virtual and actual, involving the specific

interpre

A

Á

Ä

E

É

Ë

S

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While point S denotes the actual present, we cannot treat it strictly as a point because it includes the past of this present, a virtual image that doubles the actual image. Moreover, the various sections of the cone, such as AE, ÁÉ, ÄË, are not for Deleuze psychological circuits to which recollections-images would correspond, but rather purely virtual circuits with each containing the whole of the past as it is preserved in itself (pure recollection). Psychological circuits only come into operation by being actualised, and this involves leaping from S to a section of the cone; in short, it involves an actualization of something that is purely virtual. It is the relative circuits between present and past that refer back, on the one hand, to a small circuit between a present and its own past (an actual image and its virtual image), and, on the other, to ever deeper and deeper virtual circuits which put into movement the whole of the past. As Deleuze has written:

The crystal-image has these two aspects: an internal limit of all the relative circuits, but also an outer-most, variable and ‘re-shapable’ envelope, at the edges of the world, beyond even moments of the world. The little crystalline seed and the vast crystallisable universe: everything is included in the capacity for expansion of the collection constituted by the seed and the universe. Memories, dreams, even worlds are only apparen lative circuits which depend on the variations of this Whole. (Deleuze 1989 80-1).

As Keith Ansell Pearson has stated this schema for learning takes us into the not learning about

ersonal project, and one in which the physical elements f teaching must intrude as the virtual is not an abstract construction. Learning in this

manner te virtual reality an picture of the illant and centrali training curricu tation of Bergso p the burgeoning imagination of the trainee. This is an actual force based upon the continuum of S that is present when the

t re, p.

paradoxes of time and resolves them in an ‘uncanny’ sense; and

the past by simply engaging in acts of recollection or reminiscence (Ansell Pearson, 2002, p.195). It acts as a core schema because it reflects a dynamic theory of time that helps to unlock the creative imagination in learning as it connects the virtual with the actual. Figure 1 is a basis for learning that does not artificially separate that which is learnt (now) with that which has been learnt in the past. The past is continually reinvested in the circuits of becoming that are acting through the present. The reference to the crystal-image from Deleuze is an important counter-point to the form of learning that may be induced through the use of the CD Rom by in-service teachers. The inner life of the trainee is directly accessed through the notion that their image may be reflected, enhanced or distorted as happens in a crystal and in learning. This is identity as a complex po

also detracts from the psychological elements of memory as a concreis being formed around the actual present. In contrast to an OrwelliCD Rom learning product being used in an obtrusive, surve

sed and controlling sense (to deliver an immutable teacherlum); the design of this product based upon Deleuze’s interpren’s cone of memory, should act to open u

trainee sits down and uses the product. The additional paradox that we must resolve is how to make the effective learning time of the trainee correspond to the intensification and connection of the circuits of the virtual that flow through the present. Firstly, we must finish the work necessary to build a definite model of learning that satisfies the principles as defined above.

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2) Arnold’s spiral model of psychodynamic discourse development.

A igure 2. Spiral model of psychodynamic discourse development

– Core self.

– Transactional discours

his m mory as a oncrete repre y understand their semantic unctioning within the virtual context. As Roslyn Arnold explains it, the ‘core self’ is whirlpool of ex and transactional polarity ccessible through the spirals of expression (Arnold 1991, p.20). This polarity is not near or straightforw teacher training, which sits side and precludes a complex separation of the inner and outer self; enabled through e public scrutiny of ity is also a discursive presentation of the schizophrenia of teacher training that has been alluded to in the

esearch of teacher training carried p and Parsons (1989), or cWilliam’s in her Feminist Ta ent Teacher Education (1994).

he two models combine to create a fluid, and transformative picture of the way in hich teachers may learn through the use of a CD Rom. The vital perspective that is

arning ‘cycles’ that act ich the trainee may

ngage. The virtual images correspond to the discursive development that students n their journey to becoming a teacher. This process is recognisably

writing int being to effect a potential field

riting or teacher communication.

C B D F

AB – Expressive self incorporating expressive discourse (spoken and written). C e (spoken and written). D – Poetic discourse (spoken and written). T odel of learning development sits on top of Bergson’s cone of mec sentation of the way in which teachers mafa perience, with a definite developmental ali ard, and is parallel to the process ofinth the self as ‘teacher’. The polarrer out by BeauchamM les for a Differ Twbeing opened up through this exploration is the one of lethrough the cone of memory and the spirals of discourse in whemay pinpoint iidiosyncratic, and parallels the work that has been done in the field ofdevelopment (Bruner 1972, Moffett 1981); the poof force around experience and turn it into w

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The model and the interface To translate the work on the model of learning into a interactive interface, I shall analyse two teacher training CD Roms, in order to determine the necessary ‘inter-facial’ strategy that would encourage the combinational mode of learning as has been described in the model above:

1) PD on CD: literacy. Professional development in literacy, published by the Curriculum Corporation (1995).

This CD Rom interface gives the user a number of headed options that define a path

a learning module. For example, the learner might chose, Teaching & Learning, tofollowed by, Literacy Issues, followed by, Functional Model of Language Overview. Once the learner has arrived at this module the agent will be asked to follow a series of frames, which contain images, video tape, written statements and audio explanations of the ideas.

Figure 3. An example of a frame taken from, PD on CD: literacy. Curriculum Corporation (1995). It is clear that the type of learning that will be produced through use of this CD Rom

linear. There is recognition in terms of a ticked box when you have been through one of the learning modules, though the linear tendency that is encouraged leads inexorably to the disruption of the learning sequence before you have reached the end of a module. This type of distracted behaviour mirrors poor educational practise, as time is artificially segmented into learning sequences that do not reflect discursive behaviour. It is also a cluttered and immersive approach to learning that does not facilitate personal engagement in the exercises or the feeling that the agents are developing in a broad sense. Even though the frames are clearly presented and contain a lot of logically structured information; the combinational model of learning, involving the virtual imagination and spirals of discursive development would not be produced through use of this style of learning product.

is

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2) BUILT: Building Understandings in Literacy and Teaching (2nd Edition). NATE: The University of Melbourne (2001).

This product does incorporate a specific interface that does not merely define a path to a learning unit:

Figure 4. The BUILT interface. The organisational BUILT metaphor focuses the learner in terms of scaffolding the learning. They are constructing a mental image that will endure through time whenever they access the specific modules and consequently fit the learning together in terms of the shapes as represented above. Once the agent has accessed a particular unit, they find a sequence of lessons that include paragraphs of explanation with highlighted key words, video tape of teachers and learners that demonstrate linguistic points, diagrams and animated figures, exercises that should be filled in using a pop up notebook and recorded voice overs. This content defines an interactive and interesting experience for the agent; yet it also tends towards linearity as the frames are part of a numbered sequence that goes from beginning to end with the ‘exit’ tak

hilst the BUILT project does mark a progression from the Curriculum Corporation

of the sequenced lessons, and the interface concept. The point at ake in terms of the type of learning model that is encouraged is similar. Unless the

students are simultaneously engaging in another interaction (for example, talking with colleagues or an instructor), when they are accessing the sequences of lessons; the linearity of the exercises will discourage the creation of the virtual imagination and the spiral of discursive development. It will encourage fragmented segments of learning that may be useful, but will be difficult to remember and share once the unit sequence on the CD Rom has been switched off. Principles for the interface and learning environment

x The initial interface is vital in establishing a virtual image for the user that will change in time with use and is memorable.

ing the agent back to the initial ‘start-up’ mode of the CD Rom program.

Wproduct in terms of the quality of the interactive technology that is being used in the instructional modest

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x The initial interface should not be part of the navigation system as this immediately establishes linearity in terms of a directed learning sequence.

x The interface should lead onto the separate teacher training units, which will not be arranged in a linear fashion, but spiralled and accessed in any order when the agent so wishes.

x The units should provide interactive learning experiences that are not sequential and contain links to other units, forums and internet sites that complexify the learning sequences that the agents shall embark upon.

x The learning units should not ‘play’ as if they are taken from an instruction manual, but should fit into a narrative and discursive context that has been set up through the initial interface.

The interfacial image

, the visual presentation of a CD Rom is extremely portant as it directs and defines the context for the learning experience that the

As Katina Zammit has explainedimproduct gives rise to (Callow, 1999, p.88). The image chosen must therefore be striking, and work in terms of the principles as have been outlined above.

Fig Ref e Ansell P

Arnold, R. (1991). Writing Development: Magic in the brain. Milton Keynes: Open University Press.

ure 5. Fractal image representing the power of mathematical permutation.

er nces

earson, K. (2002). Philosophy and the Adventure of the Virtual: Bergson and the time of life. London: Routledge.

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Bea a

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