Teacher education as design: technology-rich learning environments and trajectories

Abstract

Traditional school subjects are being challenged by the accelerating production and development of knowledge in all domains. This creates a need to educate student teachers not only to appropriate existing practices but to be prepared to take the initiative in designing and developing new ones. This paper examines the challenges that confront teacher education when both the amount of information and its complexity are increasing due to the growing use of technology. We argue first that we need a richer view of technology than is often found in decision documents and in some of the didactics literature. We then introduce the concept of design as both an analytical and a didactic concept that links technology-rich environments and learning trajectories to knowledge development. From an activity-theoretical perspective, we approach the notion of design as a key component in teacher education and consider how it materializes through the use of a wiki, and in a new type of exam. The aim is to contribute to enhancing the quality of teacher education by making visible some of the more underlying qualities of what professional ICT competence can entail.