Changing technologies and changing ecologies : pedagogical technologists in schools

Abstract

ICT use in classrooms can change student learning but many schools do not succeed in ICT-enabled innovation, that is, changing not only classroom practices through specific ICT use, but also many aspects of a school’s operations to support changing classrooms. This study investigates the process of ICT-enabled innovation in schools with an ecological view, which comprises the concepts of complex systems. However, there has been little investigation of how the ecological view is realized in a school-based innovation context. Moreover, the specific research context concerns an emergent role: the pedagogical technologist (PT), which facilitates ICT-enabled innovation, and has been found in some private international schools in Asia. There has been scarce empirical evidence about how a PT facilitates innovation, and how a school’s ecology impacts the PT role.

This study conceptually frames the ecological view with the learning architectures, that is, the organizational structures and mechanisms available to facilitate innovation. The investigation of the PT’s role within the learning architectures takes on three stages: identifying the intended role of the PT through documenting the initial organizational structures within the first six months of the role’s creation; tracing the realized role of the PT through the cycles of innovation implementation during an academic year, and documenting the outcomes of the innovation in the process; and formulating a consolidated pathway of change in the learning architectures as each PT realizes their role from the intended role.

This study develops four, qualitative cases. The PTs and other research participants were identified through convenience and snowball sampling. Data collection and analysis were iterative and stage-specific. Interviews with PTs, school documents, and interviews with PT colleagues informed the intended role; interviews with the PTs, interaction observations, interviews with PT colleagues, and interaction artifacts informed the realized role. The coding scheme for the learning architecture structures and mechanisms is derived from theory. Intercoder reliability tests were performed to ensure the reliability and quality of the coding.

Findings from PTs’ initial, organizational structures show the PT role could be intended for either curriculum and pedagogy or ICT infrastructure development. The intended role was largely the result of senior leader teams’ implementation scope decision-making. Findings from the innovation in motion show that innovation implementation initiated by teachers, or middle leaders and teachers together may be more beneficial for innovation outcomes than implementation initiated by senior leaders, or middle leaders. Analysis of the consolidated learning architectures showed that neither a particular intended role nor realizing an intended role was necessarily beneficial for innovation outcomes. The findings may be useful to facilitate innovation in other schools, to explore further with other cases, and to stimulate research at broader, education system levels. One methodological contribution from this study is a fine-grained learning architectures instrument that can facilitate research in similar contexts. Another contribution is the specific structures and mechanisms of PTs that legitimize a PT role and may facilitate its development in other schools.