There is overwhelming evidence that today's education is inadequate for responding to the demands of the 21st century and probably beyond. In order to facilitate students' learning and education, it will be pivotal to firstly re-consider what is required from the teacher and teacher professional competency. In this paper, we argue that for education being responsive to the requirements of the digital age, it is important to support teachers' creative design thinking and creative teaching practices realised by a teacher-culture of participation. Such a culture can nurse a “Can Do” mindset and “Want to” culture of participation leading to educational practices responsive to the needs of diverse students and society.
There are many researchers who argue that due to the traditional concept of schooling,
inflexible curricula and learning materials and the traditional role of teacher, as central
authority that teaches one subject at a time, there is little space for personalised and
creative learning and teaching practices
This short paper explores the importance of why we need to focus firstly on facilitating a teacher-culture of participation, before we shall look at cultivating a culture of participation for student’s learning and education. It discusses the opportunities and possible meanings of a teacher-culture of participation and Edukata as an example of a meta-design framework for a teacher-culture of participation.
For every successful cultural transition there are two plans needed: short-term and
longterm. The short-term plan looks at how we can use the status quo for better in order to
be able to make a culture shift or system change happen. The long-term plan looks at
how to connect the dots of multiple short-term interventions in order to make a cultural
transition happen. There is a strong body of research that argues that today’s education
system still carries artefacts from the 20th century, which are not adequate anymore to
prepare current and future generation for the 21st century and beyond
Therefore, teachers often know their classroom, students and learning environment
best. Yet teachers are often confronted with educational technology and digital games
that are closed systems, with little space for adaptation. This often results in a lack of
ownership over and comfort with new technologies and media, such digital games for
learning
Copyright © 2016 for the individual papers by the papers' authors. Copying permitted for private and academic purposes. This volume is published and copyrighted by its editors.
Yet, we suggest that before we provide conceptual frameworks and socio-technical environments that support a “want-to” participation, it will be necessary to first provide exercises, trainings, environments and tools that empower teacher’s creative design confidence and therefore foster a “can do” culture and mindset (as illustrated in Fig. 1). Therefore, we argue that a “can do” mindset is an unavoidable prerequisite to a “wantto” teacher-culture of participation. Thus, it will be pivotal to provide courses on creative design thinking and creative teaching practices as part of teacher education and professional development. In addition, these course need to be supported with tools and creation opportunities that will allow teachers to transform their design thinking into Proc. of Fourth International Workshop on Cultures of Participation in the Digital Age - CoPDA 2016 Gothenburg (Sweden), October 23, 2016 (published at http://ceur-ws.org).
Copyright © 2016 for the individual papers by the papers' authors. Copying permitted for private and academic purposes. This volume is published and copyrighted by its editors.
practice. Consequently, if teachers have the necessary confidence and “can do” mindset, it will be easier to move towards a teacher-culture of participation and provide teachers with a library of conceptual frameworks, socio-technical environments and meta-designs.
Example of a Teacher-Culture of Participation Meta-Design: Edukata.
A good example of meta-design model for teachers that supports a “want-to” culture of
participation is “Edukata” (Fig. 2) by Toikkanen et al (2015), who developed a
participatory design model with teachers for designing learning activities in schools. In
particular, Edukata is a participatory meta-design model for educators that allows teachers
to collectively design challenges for digital technology supported learning activities.
Moreover, Edukata’s participatory meta-design approach does not just provide a
“design for designers” model, but also strengthens the teacher’s confidence and abilities as
designer and design thinker of innovative classroom activities. To facilitate a
participatory Edukata design workshop at a school, there needs to be one facilitator, who is
preferably a certified Edukata facilitator, in order to lead the design process. The
facilitator is also responsible for recruiting one or two full-time members who are fully
committed to the design process and who can and want to join all design phases.
Additionally, an Edukata design process requires three to five part-time members, ideally
those members are directly affected by the learning activity, hence, part-time members
can also be students. By emphasizing that the members of the Edukata design process
are locals from the school and at the same time providing an online forum, for
exchanging and discussing ideas, and a library of templates for learning activities, Edukata
addresses key indicators of Fischer’s (2014) culture of participation. Thus, the importance
of addressing voices from different places (online forum), voices from the past (online
database that documents various learning activities and outcomes) and voices from
different communities (teachers and student as part of the design workshop). In addition
to the participatory design method, teachers can access a free guidebook in various
languages online, which provides all the necessary information to start facilitating
design workshops at their school, hence, this provides a meta-design framework for
teachers across the globe in various languages, which reduces entrance barriers in order
to let teachers participate in meaningful activities. The creators of Edukata emphasized
the necessity to reduce the complextity to minimum and to make Edukata as accessible
as possible for teachers, so that there are no professional designers, psychologists or
graphical artists are needed
Accoriding to
Copyright © 2016 for the individual papers by the papers' authors. Copying permitted for private and academic purposes. This volume is published and copyrighted by its editors.
Facilitating a culture of participation for education, and designing learning opportunities where personalised, creative, self-guided learning occurs and in which the learner takes part in solving personally meaningful problems, is a complex endeavour. Yet, if we look at the teacher, who has great influence on students learning experience, we suggest that it is of importance to firstly facilitate a teacher-culture of participation in order to facilitate a student culture of participation in their classroom. Hence, we argue that it will be crucial to firstly enable a teacher-culture of participation, however, this also raises several questions and challenges. It will be necessary to investigate and define the indicators of a teacher-culture of participation. Additionally, the question arises what kind of exercises, material, support and environment will be needed to facilitate a “Can Do” mindset and how can we provide (better) design frameworks for EdTech companies that allow teachers to engage as a meta-designer?
In this short-paper we did not intend to provide answers to these challenges and questions, but rather we tried to emphasize the need of a teacher-culture of participation by exploring the importance of why we need to focus firstly on facilitating a teacherculture of participation before we try to facilitate a culture of participation for education. Facilitating a teacher-culture of participation opens up an opportunity to start reframing the the role of teacher in a digital age and to empower teachers as designer of their classroom. Finally, by allowing teachers to design learning environments we could move towards a culture of participation for education in which students become design thinkers and self-directed learners, who can and want to engage in learning that matters. Proc. of Fourth International Workshop on Cultures of Participation in the Digital Age - CoPDA 2016 Gothenburg (Sweden), October 23, 2016 (published at http://ceur-ws.org).
Copyright © 2016 for the individual papers by the papers' authors. Copying permitted for private and academic purposes. This volume is published and copyrighted by its editors.