From Paralyzing Myths to Expansive Action: Building Computer-Supported Knowledge Work into the Curriculum from Below

摘要

Technology-driven CSCL solutions are often difficult to integrate into the instructional practices of a school community. We report on an intervention study in a middle school where the entire teaching staff engaged in a year-long effort to change their instructional practices by means of incorporating information and communication technologies in pilot curriculum units. The teachers set out to make pedagogical changes along two dimensions, from procedure-oriented drill to problem- and principle-oriented knowledge production, and from encapsulated c assroom work to networked learning in partnerships between the school and organizations outside. They employed conceptual models to anchor their change efforts 'upward' in a long-term general vision. They also anchored their change efforts 'downward', in videotaped examples of classroom practice. Technical tools were subordinate to a pedagogical object. For the pedagogical object to gain momentum and become a true motive for the teachers, they needed to take ( xpansive actions that moved them from myth-driven to object-driven discourse. These expansive actions were actions oi redefining the students as capable, and consequently redefining a new model of teaching as possible.